Geist On Copyright As Canada Consult Nears End 38
An anonymous reader writes "Canadian law professor Michael Geist, who has been leading the charge on the national copyright consultation with his SpeakOutOnCopyright.ca site, has posted his own submission to the consultation. Geist focuses on issues like fair use and circumvention, and warns against a Canadian DMCA, copyright term extension, and three-strikes program. 'If copyright veers too far toward specific technologies by mandating new protection for specific business models or technological innovations, those rules risk being overtaken as the technologies and marketplace evolve. ... It should only be a violation of the law to circumvent a technological protection measure if the underlying purpose is to infringe copyright.' He also pointed out a few days ago that Bell Canada seems to be advising content owners to sue its own customers. The public consultation ends on September 13th."
Re:Not Relevant to Most Slashdotters (Score:5, Insightful)
I think any copyright battles that are won and lost are relevant to any /. reader. Law is largely based on precedent and countries often look to foreign neighbors for insight into domestic policy. Likewise these evil companies are always prying at politicians to spin things into law.
âoeEducation is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.â
Oh, and I almost forgot... (Score:4, Insightful)
And you happen to be a corporation.
I did it (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're Canadian, take half an hour and submit an email or letter (letter is better). Use the template, or copy and paste from Prof. Geist's text, or better still write something in your own words. Stand up like the guy in the Molson's Canadian commercial.
copyright is negative, punitive (Score:4, Insightful)
Negative and punitive systems distort society. Some of those systems are somewhat successful and therefore tolerable. Copyright however isn't a success story, as it must be propped up at great expense to function in a marginal manner. We should replace every such system that is both punitive and broken. Copy "right" is all about a legal taking away of the fundamental principle of nature, used by radio stations, which is that information naturally propagates, same as heat naturally flows from hot things to cold things. Copyright maximalists would spitefully have our very brains lose the ability to remember a tune, if they couldn't monetize it. Such a limitation just isn't workable. It is impossible to restrict the ability to copy through technical means, and there is no natural way for information to be uncopyable. Penalties that run to extremes in harshness and random arbitrariness are yet another indication that a system does not work. And we've turned copyrights into tradeable items, which puts the artists at a big disadvantage to the organizations who specialize in accumulating copyrights, and who also most unfairly can greatly influence the value, and who can even distort the laws regulating the business.
So rather than focusing on how to stop the "evil" of piracy, on hypothetical millions in lost profits, we should think of all the very real and unnecessary costs. It costs a lot of taxpayer monies to run the court, and those resources should not be wasted on such foolishness. There have been repeated attempts to force wholly unrelated organizations to police users, at all too conveniently overlooked massive expense to both the organization and all its users. Chilling effects go beyond scaring would-be artists away, there is also an encouragement of selfish, secretive, hoarding behavior. That slows down advancement at who knows what cost. Then, we could gain millions if budding artists didn't have to beg for permission for the use of every tiny little thing that might possibly infringe, or more like, take their chances that they won't be sued. Art would be better if artists were freer to explore, if they could discover and learn from everything others had done. If customers needed to buy even more equipment to handle their music libraries, if everyone could indulge their unique creativeness with any material that inspired them, in ways far beyond anything one lone artist could ever have envisioned-- it's incalculable the wealth that is being squandered.
Rather than trying to demonize something that isn't actually harmful, dangerous, or immoral, and try to punish violators, we should reward artists in a way that does not trample upon our right to our own culture and which gives its blessing to the highly beneficial and necessary sharing we all do all the time anyway. Patronage is such a way. Pay the artists. Don't hand them bombs and tell them they have to spend time threatening everyone who makes use of their work without negotiating price on an individual basis. Don't burden them and all society with all the extra work required to work the system. Just pay them, and let them concentrate on their art as much as possible. Patronage is not a new, untested idea either. Too easy to cast an idea as new even when it isn't, and whip up hysteria and fear of the unknown over it.
Re:copyright is negative, punitive (Score:0, Insightful)
Copyright needs bigger changes (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole idea of millions of people being criminals because they use internet is ridiculous. Copyright should be changed to make sure that there are no provisions making "default" uses like copying and distributing bits found from the internet illegal. Question to ask is this: if you find some work from internet, what steps do you need to do to receive valid permission to use and share that work on internet? Contacting _all_ copyright owners of the work is clearly not suitable solution, because finding them all might be impossible, and even if you find them, every one of them is unlikely to agree on your request. And doing this for every bit that you find from internet is clearly impossible. There needs to be a solution where individual end users can be confident that what they're doing with the internet is legal. Currently such mechanism is missing. Even web use (reading news sites) or publishing material that you created yourself is extreamly risky, because current laws make some use, copying and distribution acts illegal by default. Everything you do on internet relies on copying bits from one computer to another, and the default being that this is illegal is not very good. We should count the number of criminals these laws are creating and decide that the actions are not serious enough that it should be used as basis of making half the population criminals.
Re:but you have to understand their point of view. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear ISP Owner:
We have observed that customer IPs ____, ____, ____, ....., ____, _____, and _____ have been sharing files. We also observed this is their third offense. Please unplug their connection from your service or else we will... blah blah blah.
Thank you RIAA.
.
Dear RIAA,
Fuck off. It's not my job to police YOUR limited, temporary copy privileges. I need those people to survive in this poor economy, and will continue providing a connection so long as they continue paying. Sue the customers in court if you want, but don't involve me in your paranoia.
Signed,
ISP Owner
Re:I did it (Score:2, Insightful)
It's your decision, of course, but please vote. It matters a lot right now. If you're not in the country I know it's a hassle, but please do. The only reason we've had the chance for this consultation, and for the failure of the last 3 bills submitted with DMCA-like changes to copyright law, is probably the fact that the last 3 Canadian parliaments have been minority ones. If either of the parties in power had a majority when those prior bills were introduced we would probably have a DMCA-like law on the books by now. With a majority and enough industry lobbying they'd ram it through. It's only now, after trying several times, that they've been forced to pay real attention to us.
You care enough about this issue to make a submission. That's great, and it is genuinely appreciated. But please help make sure that the government is obliged to do similar consultations in the future by also participating in the vote that forces them to be accountable -- more so than usual thanks to the minority government.