Tech Companies Say Don't Blame Canada For Copyright Problems 104
An anonymous reader writes "The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which includes a who's-who of the tech world, including Microsoft, Google, T-Mobile, Fujitsu, AMD, eBay, Intuit, Oracle, and Yahoo, has issued a strong defense of current Canadian copyright law, arguing that the US is wrong to place Canada on the annual Special 301 list. The submission argues that the US should not criticize Canada for not implementing anti-circumvention rules (PDF) and warns against using the Special 301 process to 'remake the world in the image of the DMCA.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Proudly Canadian (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Proudly Canadian (Score:5, Informative)
The reason that things like file sharing are legal in Canada is specifically because Canadian copyright law *hasn't* changed. Our laws were written in the 1980's, when it wasn't really easy to copy a large volume of music, and the risk was mostly just people copying a CD to a cassette for a friend, or making a mix tape for somebody. You weren't dealing with high volume copies, and you weren't dealing with anything near the ubiquity that the Internet affords, which is a large part of why the laws are so relaxed here.
Re:Proudly Canadian (Score:1, Informative)
That's true. Friends of mine have received warning notices from Telus for downloading via P2P clients. They've all since moved to Shaw, who doesn't seem to care what people download as long as the bill is paid.
Re:Proudly Canadian (Score:5, Informative)
The reason that things like file sharing are legal in Canada is specifically because Canadian copyright law *hasn't* changed.
Actually, Canadian copyright law has been changing constantly. [pch.gc.ca]
Our laws were written in the 1980's
Incorrect. 1988 was the first major overhaul since the law was written in 1924, however there have been a bunch of updates (in 1989, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2001 and 2007) to bring it to its current state - for example, when the 1988 law was enacted, the private copying right that we now enjoy (and that this thread is about) did not exist - it was illegal to copy any music without written permission, regardless of the reason. It wasn't until the amendment in 1997 that we gained the legal right to make private copies.
Re:Proudly Canadian (Score:1, Informative)
Ha!
No, it means our politicians are as ineffective as other places, perhaps more so. They've tried to reform copyright law 2 times already and failed to pass the bills into law. Thus our copyright law is stuck in the 1980s, which turns out to be better than DMCA-style laws.
There are times when ineffective government is good government :-)
It also helps that we've had a string of minority governments, which has kept each party in power from ramming whatever they like through parliament, and makes them more answerable than usual to public opinion -- the main reason the last bill failed was the way people have become more aware of the implications of copyright and voiced their concerns over the changes. After two failures we *finally* had real public consultation over the last year, rather than the lobbyists == "public consultation" of the prior bill. Maybe that will result in a third bill that isn't insanely stupid. I'm not optimistic, but it is progress.
IIPA and open source software (Score:2, Informative)
I took a look in the IIPA Special 301 report for Brazil at http://www.iipa.com/rbc/2010/2010SPEC301BRAZIL.pdf, it's very instructive. I particularly appreciated the following part in page 141:
Priority actions requested to be taken in 2010: ... ...
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- Avoid legislation on the mandatory use of open source software by government agencies and government controlled companies.
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Honestly, is there a justifiable link between protecting intellectual property and putting restrictions on the adoption of open source software? If people used more OSS, software piracy would drop. Maybe the IIPA believes that OSS platforms are mostly used for doing software piracy... ;-)