Many countries have recognized the danger that combination of DRM and anti-circumvention legislation may effectively eliminate user rights or copyright exceptions in the digital environment. Creating exceptions is one way to address the issue, but another is to adopt an approach of "with rights comes responsibilities." In this case, if companies are going to obtain new legal rights for DRM, they must also shoulder the responsibility of unlocking their content when requested to do so by users for legal purposes. This is a common theme in copyright laws around the world which often identify courts, tribunals or mediators as the source to ensure that rightsholders do not use DRM to eliminate user rights. Three examples of many:
Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP
Copyright
Bell’s Expandable PVR and C-61
Several people have written about a new Bell commercial that is running during the Olympics promoting its expandable PVR. The PVR includes an option that allows users to transfer recorded programs to an external hard drive for archiving purposes. The commercial notes the benefits of "unlimited" disk space since users […]
61 Reforms to C-61, Day 36: TPMs – No Identification of Authorized Circumventers
The removal of the provisions that target the legality of circumvention devices is one way to help ensure that the law does not eliminate basic copyright user rights. There are other approaches, however, that can be introduced in tandem with that change. New Zealand's new copyright law introduces the concept […]
Meeting With Bob Rae on C-61
A constituent reports on their meeting with Liberal MP Bob Rae.
61 Reforms to C-61, Day 35: TPMs – Unnecessary Coverage of Circumvention Devices
I have spent much of the past month identifying problems with Bill C-61's anti-circumvention provisions. While the bill misses many necessary exceptions and includes exceptions that do not withstand careful analysis, even the current list of exceptions pre-suppose that a person has the technical ability to circumvent. There may be a group of Canadians with sufficient technical expertise to do so, but my sense is that the overwhelming majority would not even know where to begin.
There are several mechanisms that could be used to address this issue (and note that it must be addressed or else even the meagre exceptions within C-61 will be illusory). The first would be to ensure that the bill does not touch the legality of circumvention devices themselves.
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