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Sure, there are things wrong with this scheme, but the problems aren't the ones most of you are talking about. Here are some I posted on my Web log:

#1: It creates a great opportunity for traffic analysis by the government, marketers, etc., because the escrow agents can collect data on who's emailing whom. The recipient gets to choose their escrow agent, so an individual participant doesn't have the option of only dealing with reputable or privacy-respecting escrow agents.

#2: It creates a money trail alongside the email trail, making anonymity almost impossible (especially because the recipient can choose the escrow agent, see above). This issue actually could be turned to an advantage because remailers could use the bond system to collect "postage", clear postage between themselves while obfuscating the money trail, and reduce their own spam problem into the bargain, but it'll be a big headache for them, and the anonymity of the remailers to the escrow agencies is hard to maintain.

#3: Trolling can become financially profitable. The business plan goes something like this: 1. Post something to Slashdot or Usenet that lots of people will want to respond to by email. 2. Collect a small enough bond from each responder that they'll be willing to pay it. 3. Profit! One could argue that that's an acceptable business (because you're only collecting money from the people who decide they're willing to give it to you) but I'd argue that it's a bad thing to encourage this business, because it also imposes on many people who do not want to respond to you, and damages the infrastructure for everyone. It's like saying "Selling SUVs is morally okay because I'm only selling them to people who are willing to accept the environmental impact" - hello, it's not just your customers who bear the brunt of the environmental impact!

#4: Participants who are poor, or penniless, just can't have email anymore. That includes children, the homeless, and many people in developing countries. Moreover, even among people with nonzero disposable income, it stratifies email along economic lines: I will demand attention bonds roughly proportional to my income (because otherwise they won't have the intended effect of compensating me for time lost) and then someone with less income than me has to make a disproportionate sacrifice to talk to me, and someone with more income than me can spam me with no hardship. I have received legitimate, important email from a scholarship student in Uganda, and in an official capacity from the legal department of a multi-billion-dollar US corporation; the value of a dollar to those two parties is totally different. Note that it's not good enough to say "Oh, we just won't collect the bond from people who are poor" because they still have to have the money in order to promise it in the first place. Children have no money, not just a small amount - especially if, as would necessarily be the case, enforcement of the bonds is tied to legally binding contracts in jurisdictions where children's right to make commitments is not recognized, so the children wouldn't even be allowed to spend money this way if they got some.

#5: If only applied to email, it'll encourage spammers to move to other media - Usenet, Web BBSes, and referrer logs, for instance. Attention bonds can't be easily applied to some of these.

#6: If you offer to sell your time to all comers for $0.50, then you have to actually do that, and at least glance at all the messages sent to you by people who are willing to put up the $0.50. If it were actually the case that there were lots of evil perverts out there sending pornography more or less at random to innocent children out of sheer perversity (I don't believe that, but many people do), then this kind of arrangement would make it harder to block them. Even under a more realistic threat model for pornography in particular (people only sell that stuff to make money, and so will only send it to you if they think

Please do not rape the bar

(I've seen variants on this sign elsewhere, but this was the only image I could find on short notice. And no, it's not my page.)

It brings to my mind the hack that was done on CyberPatrol, a censorware or dumb internet filter, and the two guys then published a description of how they did it.

I can still clearly remember the night that I read it, and though I couldn't follow some of the technical details, it was more fascinating to me than "How-Done-It"s of Agatha Christie. This is what the Wired article is probably designed to achieve.

In case of CyberPartol hack unfortunately, the guys got sued by CyberPatrol, cowed down (maybe not), and settled out of court. More details are here Cyber Partol Break FAQ" i.e. http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/cpbfaq.html Similarly Tech Industry sued the DeCSS author. But, Wired probably will be ok because suing Wired will probably be pretty low on the Slammer Writer's priorities.

I needed one which didn't use a database, but only flatfiles. It took me a while to find them but here is what I've found:
CafeRSS The one I'm using rigth now. Really easy.
OnyxRSS More powerful, uses the XML parsing fetures of PHP
Rippy Another one, I just don't know.
Have fun!
quake74

I just wrote a science fiction novel for NaNoWriMo and posted it on my Web site. I can't claim that it's Great Science Fiction, but my friends who've read it have liked it and you can't beat free-as-in-beer.

Go read it!

- Matthew Skala

Here's what I posted in my web log when this story broke a couple days ago:

SearchKing runs an elaborate baiting scheme of fake Web pages that link to each other, to try to convince the Google robot to rank its clients' pages higher than you or I would think the pages deserve. Google updated its algorithm to better resist the scheme. SearchKing loses money because of that; SearchKing sues.

I think this is actually less clear-cut than it sounds. SearchKing are bad actors - they were trying to cheat, they don't have a right to do that, it's okay for Google to tweak its algorithms to avoid them, that much is clear. However: what everyone is going to say about this is that Google is a private company and they have a free-speech right to rank pages however the heck they want, and I'm not sure that's actually true. I think there could be situations (not this one, but) where it would be okay for a company to sue Google for ranking them too low.

The reason is that Google is in a monopoly position. Let me say that again: Google is in a monopoly position. It really is. If your Web site gets delisted by Google, or penalized by Google's page ranking algorithm, you don't have the option of saying, "Oh, well, people will find us in some other search engine." It doesn't work that way - everyone uses Google, and if you're not in Google, you're nowhere. Just like everyone uses Microsoft Windows, and if you can't run under Microsoft Windows, you can't run anywhere. Linux, sure, but if you can't run under Windows, you can't run in a large enough number of places that you have a big problem if you were counting on running under Windows. The Google monopoly is actually more solid than Microsoft's because it's not tied to specific independent companies (Intel, etc.) for support.

Google's monopoly means that it does not have complete freedom to rank things however the heck it wants to, the way a smaller search engine might. Google has responsibilities that come from its monopoly. Microsoft cannot legally design its operating system to deliberately screw up its competitors' applications. (Okay, they do that, but they do it illegally.) Google, similarly, should not be allowed to tweak its ranking algorithm in ways that are sneaky and bad. I don't think that penalizing SearchKing is sneaky and bad... but it's easy to imagine that Google could do things that would be sneaky and bad. We just have to trust them not to, and that gives me the willies, especially because Google could do all kinds of things that we'd never know about.

For instance, Google could decide to advocate a political party, and rank that party's pages higher than others, always. Maybe if you searched "Democrat" you would get the Republican anti-Democrat site before the actual Democrat site. (I name U.S. parties because it's more plausible that Google would care about them.) They have plausible deniability, because they could claim that the ranking comes from an objective ranking scheme based on how many links there are, and "Oh, well, I guess there were a whole lot of links to the Republican Web site". That would be sneaky and bad. Google has already shown a willingness to tamper with their search results for reasons that have nothing to do with page relevance, in the xenu.net affair. Granted they were between a rock and a hard place on that one, legally, but I'm not sure they made the right decision, and it's a step that puts them on a slippery slope.

Suppose Google quietly made a site disappear; or, better yet, they just make it appear a few notches lower on the list than it otherwise would. That's a very real harm to the site because people only look at the top few links in the search results; losing one position on the list translates into a loss of a large amount of mindshare. If it was a small site that would normally appear low on the list anyway, would we ever know there was manipulation going on? That's why Google's monopoly frightens me - PageRank is secret, we can tell that overall it seems to work fairly, but they could make a large number of individual exceptions to fair ranking and we, the users, would just chalk that up to "Oh, the algorithm isn't perfect". Google could manipulate its results a whole lot and we would have no way of knowing. We just have to trust Google to be honest. Just like we have to trust censorware companies not to put their political and social agendas into the blocking lists. You know how far I trust censorware companies.

I don't think that Google is abusing its monopoly yet - certainly not in the SearchKing case and probably not anywhere else either. But I do think Google has a monopoly, I do think that monopolies are very dangerous, and I think the Google monopoly needs to be watched. I don't think we should be fooled by their open-source heritage and their cute holiday graphics and so on. Google is a large U.S. corporation that's making a lot of money from their monopoly on an important part of the computing business, we have very little way of knowing whether they are acting honestly, and they have incentives to act dishonestly. This is a dangerous situation. Who will be the Linux to Google's Microsoft?

Oh, and hey, they decided they wanted everyone to come to them first for Internet news reporting too. When Conrad Black did that with Canadian news papers, a lot of us were kind of concerned; but when it's the Web, and it's Google, it's all good, and we all like it, because Google Is Cool. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Here's what I posted in my web log when this story broke a couple days ago:

SearchKing runs an elaborate baiting scheme of fake Web pages that link to each other, to try to convince the Google robot to rank its clients' pages higher than you or I would think the pages deserve. Google updated its algorithm to better resist the scheme. SearchKing loses money because of that; SearchKing sues.

I think this is actually less clear-cut than it sounds. SearchKing are bad actors - they were trying to cheat, they don't have a right to do that, it's okay for Google to tweak its algorithms to avoid them, that much is clear. However: what everyone is going to say about this is that Google is a private company and they have a free-speech right to rank pages however the heck they want, and I'm not sure that's actually true. I think there could be situations (not this one, but) where it would be okay for a company to sue Google for ranking them too low.

The reason is that Google is in a monopoly position. Let me say that again: Google is in a monopoly position. It really is. If your Web site gets delisted by Google, or penalized by Google's page ranking algorithm, you don't have the option of saying, "Oh, well, people will find us in some other search engine." It doesn't work that way - everyone uses Google, and if you're not in Google, you're nowhere. Just like everyone uses Microsoft Windows, and if you can't run under Microsoft Windows, you can't run anywhere. Linux, sure, but if you can't run under Windows, you can't run in a large enough number of places that you have a big problem if you were counting on running under Windows. The Google monopoly is actually more solid than Microsoft's because it's not tied to specific independent companies (Intel, etc.) for support.

Google's monopoly means that it does not have complete freedom to rank things however the heck it wants to, the way a smaller search engine might. Google has responsibilities that come from its monopoly. Microsoft cannot legally design its operating system to deliberately screw up its competitors' applications. (Okay, they do that, but they do it illegally.) Google, similarly, should not be allowed to tweak its ranking algorithm in ways that are sneaky and bad. I don't think that penalizing SearchKing is sneaky and bad... but it's easy to imagine that Google could do things that would be sneaky and bad. We just have to trust them not to, and that gives me the willies, especially because Google could do all kinds of things that we'd never know about.

For instance, Google could decide to advocate a political party, and rank that party's pages higher than others, always. Maybe if you searched "Democrat" you would get the Republican anti-Democrat site before the actual Democrat site. (I name U.S. parties because it's more plausible that Google would care about them.) They have plausible deniability, because they could claim that the ranking comes from an objective ranking scheme based on how many links there are, and "Oh, well, I guess there were a whole lot of links to the Republican Web site". That would be sneaky and bad. Google has already shown a willingness to tamper with their search results for reasons that have nothing to do with page relevance, in the xenu.net affair. Granted they were between a rock and a hard place on that one, legally, but I'm not sure they made the right decision, and it's a step that puts them on a slippery slope.

Suppose Google quietly made a site disappear; or, better yet, they just make it appear a few notches lower on the list than it otherwise would. That's a very real harm to the site because people only look at the top few links in the search results; losing one position on the list translates into a loss of a large amount of mindshare. If it was a small site that would normally appear low on the list anyway, would we ever know there was manipulation going on? That's why Google's monopoly frightens me - PageRank is secret, we can tell that overall it seems to work fairly, but they could make a large number of individual exceptions to fair ranking and we, the users, would just chalk that up to "Oh, the algorithm isn't perfect". Google could manipulate its results a whole lot and we would have no way of knowing. We just have to trust Google to be honest. Just like we have to trust censorware companies not to put their political and social agendas into the blocking lists. You know how far I trust censorware companies.

I don't think that Google is abusing its monopoly yet - certainly not in the SearchKing case and probably not anywhere else either. But I do think Google has a monopoly, I do think that monopolies are very dangerous, and I think the Google monopoly needs to be watched. I don't think we should be fooled by their open-source heritage and their cute holiday graphics and so on. Google is a large U.S. corporation that's making a lot of money from their monopoly on an important part of the computing business, we have very little way of knowing whether they are acting honestly, and they have incentives to act dishonestly. This is a dangerous situation. Who will be the Linux to Google's Microsoft?

Oh, and hey, they decided they wanted everyone to come to them first for Internet news reporting too. When Conrad Black did that with Canadian news papers, a lot of us were kind of concerned; but when it's the Web, and it's Google, it's all good, and we all like it, because Google Is Cool. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It's old news, but people who are interested in the Cyber Patrol case mentioned in the interview could do worse than to read this FAQ posted by one of the programmers. He also has a links page covering the ongoing fight against DMCA-style copyright extension in Canada.

It's old news, but people who are interested in the Cyber Patrol case mentioned in the interview could do worse than to read this FAQ posted by one of the programmers. He also has a links page covering the ongoing fight against DMCA-style copyright extension in Canada.

It sounds rather DMCA-like. I wonder if Parliament passed something DMCA-like with almost no fanfare.

No. Heritage Canada and Industry Canada have been collaborating in a very significant consultation process accross Canada. I attended their Ottawa consultation meeting, which had surprisingly strong "citizen" representation. The big american content producers were given their say, but not given a lot of credibility. Michael Geist, a U of Ottawa lawyer , was particularly good with not letting things by.

Canada DMCA opponents mailing list.
Digital-Copyright.ca
Thorough background brought to you by Matthew Skala, the chap that broke (IIRC) the Cyber-Patrol encryption and, again IIRC, was pursued by Mattel for DMCA violations, despite being a Canadian.

I went to similar meetings (government consultation sessions on digital copyright issues) in Toronto and Ottawa, and the situation was totally different. My reports from the two meetings are both online (Toronto, Ottawa).

It was a totally different scene from what you describe. The geek activists were well-dressed and polite; we chose our best speakers to represent our views in a clear and sensible way; and as a result, we were listened to. It's a strategy that even USAns should consider.

I went to similar meetings (government consultation sessions on digital copyright issues) in Toronto and Ottawa, and the situation was totally different. My reports from the two meetings are both online (Toronto, Ottawa).

It was a totally different scene from what you describe. The geek activists were well-dressed and polite; we chose our best speakers to represent our views in a clear and sensible way; and as a result, we were listened to. It's a strategy that even USAns should consider.

Maybe you should read first nations of the net... velly intavesting

Yea, I'm gonna give you my email address. Don't think so...

Well, you could use a throw-away account. Though I tend to discount those, since I don't want to deal with trolls. I'm trying to walk a line between being willing to answer honest questions, and not being troll-fodder. And being reasonable about discussion. This is what I mean by muddling through. If I err, have pity on my good heart.

The point about Michael Sims breaking legal trust in publicizing my censorware decryptions is not an assertion of illegal conduct, but rather that what he did was harmful and destructive far beyond flame-war/shut-up/let-it-go levels. That he shows a willingness to do such legally damaging things, should cut me some slack if my reactions to them aren't as preached.

Repeat: I haven't hijacked any domain. I never asked Slashdot to fire Michael Sims. (my Slashdot code proposal was primarily concerned with minimizing my legal risks for anticensorware work). It is not insane babbling to worry about censorware companies suing

Name-calling is useless. I've seen it before, and will see it again.

I don't know what more I can tell you. All I can say is that I've replied to you as best I'm able, and backed-up my reasons. And I've treated you far more politely than you've treated me.

If you know so much about censorware, why not comment on topic?

If you read the bulk of my message Court listened to my anticensorware work! , you would note that it is concerned with the court's decision, and how my anticensorware work seems to have entered into it.

I do think that's on-topic. And I also think the destructiveness done in hijacking censorware.org is relevant. It's not nice. But how could such hijacking be a pleasant topic?

Understand, programmers have been sued for doing anticensorware work. It's not an easy thing, and it's legally risky.

Look, how would you feel, if a Slashdot editor had maliciously trashed your group website, stolen the domain from the group, and then used his journalist position to escape consequences? I suggest to you that many of the people counseling never to mention it, would not be so noble and forebearing if they were in a similar situation.

It's very, very, easy to write personal attacks. Especially if one is a journalist and has no cost to whatever one does. It's much harder to be doing volunteer free-speech work and have to deal with the sabotage of a Slashdot editor. This is not ancient history, it matters right now, and the hijacking and attacks continue. Please don't apply moral equivalence.

The above post appears to be nothing more than a personal vendetta.

No. It's in the main part a discussion of personal legal risk, in the context of someone urging me to personally take action similar to the DMCA case which 2600 has done (on-topic!). I could do it (on-topic!), in a censorware context . And I am quite worried about what will happen to me if I do (on-topic! - wow, given this legal appeal failure, is it on-topic!). That's very far from "nothing more".

For background, please read about programmers having been sued for anticensorware work, and even going to jail over the DMCA.

That's not "personal" at all, except in the sense that I don't personally want to go to jail, or get sued. Am I wrong for that? (or is it off-topic?).

"Slashdot editors abusing their privileges" may strike a chord with some, but it is definitely not the case here.

That's not what I said. Quote:

So I feel heavily constrained as to what I can do to fight the DMCA, in large part because I have to worry about a Slashdot editor who has already shown he's extremely willing to abuse power for revenge.

Which part of this do you disagree, purely as a statement of fact? Was Michael Sims correct in the domain hijacking of What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) ? Am I wrong to worry about the potential for him to abuse his power as a Slashdot editor? I am indeed concerned about personal smears, because such attacks, even from Slashdot comments, ended up as DeCSS court evidence! Is this inaccurate? Is this false? Is this even off-topic for this thread, given that it's about the court decision in the 2600 DeCSS case against the DMCA?

I realize people say these Slashdot comments lessen me. What can I tell you? It's very frustrating to contemplate the potential legal consequences of doing something to fight the DMCA. It's one thing to post rah-rah comments in a discussion thread. But when one sits down to real consideration of what's involved, that's far, far, more serious.

Look, you don't have to like me. You don't have to believe that I'm a pleasant person. But I would ask you to respect the severe legal and personal consequences involved in any action against the DMCA.

1) I can NEVER write an article proposal to his employers?

2) If I do, it constitutes "harassing" to discuss a serious legal concern of mine based on Michael Sims' actions?

Really, I'm curious, I'll pay the karma here.

Read the issues I outline. Am I wrong? Frankly, the proposal seemed like a clever idea to me to solve my legal-risk problem and what damage Michael Sims might do in such a situation.

Remember, for revenge, he posted an extensive legally-sensitive message from Censorware Project attorney James Tyre, detailing EVERYTHING I did in terms of decrypting censorware, great stuff for any censorware company to use if they wanted to sue me.

But do you think I'm in the wrong for bringing up this action as a part of why I'm worried in doing legally-risky work? It's "harrassing email"? What Michael Sims did in breaching the trust the lawyer placed in him is ... what? Fun and games?

How many times do I have to say this? It's not a matter of silly rant/flame/shut-off-machine and leave it. Programmers get sued for this work!

New sig for today: My proposal to Slashdot for CIPA article

Again, I keep stressing, we are not in the same position. I worry a lot about getting sued. I respond many times to Sims-smears. Yes, I say the same things over and over, because I'm asked the same things over and over.

I did not do almost all of what Sims accuses me of doing. I deny it today. I denied it yesterday. If asked, I will deny it tomorrow.

It is a cruel thing to then turn around and claim the repeated false accusations are somehow proof of truth.

On-topic: This is not just a flame war. It has serious implications for my anticensorware work, related to issues such as CIPA. All the things I planned were derailed by Michael Sims' attack.

New sig for today: My proposal to Slashdot for CIPA article

For the amusement value, take a look at the following proposal I recently sent to Slashdot. I wrote this more for my sense of humor than expecting them to take me up on it. No reply, which wasn't a surprise. I should note, loyalty oath, it's their utter and complete right not to reply.

Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 23:46:09 -0500
From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf[at-sign]sethf.com>
To: malda
Cc: [Three lawyers and two Slashdot editors]
Subject: Proposed Feature - Censorware description, along with testing code

Per: http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.shtml#ed500
> I want to write an editorial. What should I do? >
> Before you get carried away, mail me a synopsis of your idea (put the
> text 'Proposed Feature' in the subject). That way I can tell you if it
> is something we would consider posting before you bother to write the
> whole thing.

With the upcoming CIPA trial about government-mandated censorware, I'd like to write something about censorware. I think I'm eminently qualified, as I won an EFF 2001 Pioneer Award for my anticensorware work http://sethf.com/pioneer/ , and was the key figure behind exposing what censorware actually blacklists.

I'm particularly interested in pursuing something related to releasing code. One of the things I've discovered is that N2H2's [rest of the paragraph redacted]

I've been hesitant to release this code, since I worry I'll be sued, and would face a lot of bad publicity. In fact, your infamous editor, Michael Sims, just breached confidentiality on Censorware Project legal material and posted a detailed legally sensitive internal message from Censorware Project attorney James Tyre, listing specific past decryptions I've done. All the details of which programs and what I did, in the words of Censorware Project's own lawyer. If you care, it's at http://censorware.org/censorware.org_tyre_revelati on.txt

Anyway, my inspiration is that if you have an editor who does these vengeful actions, my best bet is paradoxically to go straight to the lion's den and *offer you* the story, so it becomes in part your legal problem to publish the actual code. This way any legal threats are both your problem and mine, rather than having situations such as one of your editors releasing damaging legal material about me just as one of the biggest censorware-related trials is about to get underway.

Let me know if you're interested in something along these lines. Of course, I'd be happy to write a standard editorial about my experiences fighting censorware, censorware internals, winning an EFF Pioneer Award for my work, commentary on the technical accuracy of the trial, or so on, whatever might be appealing. But I think it's very productive and unique to do something code-related.

Sincerely,
--
Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf[at-sign]sethf.com

[I realized after writing the above, that someone might be confused as to: "How come you're complaining about Michael Sims releasing damaging legal material, when the information is on your website's Pioneer section?"So I then immediately added the following clarification]

Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 00:03:31 -0500
From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf[at-sign]sethf.com>
Subject: Re: Proposed Feature - Censorware description, along with testing code

On Sun, Mar 24, 2002 at 11:46:09PM -0500, Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> as I won an EFF 2001 Pioneer Award for my anticensorware work
> http://sethf.com/pioneer/

Small note of clarification - I only released all the Pioneer Award nomination material on this page after Michael Sims broke Censorware Project confidentiality, and publicly posted Censorware Project attorney James Tyre's internal message detailing all the decryptions I'd done. At that point, I figured since this information was being publicized in a negative context, I might as well publicize it myself in a positive context. Again, this leads to the idea behind my code/story proposal. better the legal risks be "our" problem than just "my" problem.

Sincerely,
--
Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf[at-sign]sethf.com

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

See Matthew Skala's "blind substring" paper. He shows that it's possible to construct a substring searcher where even if you reverse engineer the code, you can't easily find out what substrings are being searched short of just guessing all possible substrings until one matches. The possible applications include censorware, which is pretty amusing when you consider the author's later, more famous, work...

Some links:

• Robomail Evaluation
• Robomail 1/2
• Robomail 2/2

Jason

Now the shoe is on the other foot. cphack, anyone?

In Canada, the "blank media" levy is bigger and applied to more media, including data CD-R discs, so it's even more upsetting. Activists there have already noted that it's incompatible with the arguments for anti-fair-dealing measures. The record companies have to give up one or the other (at least!). The earliest mention of this issue that I've seen is in the September 14, 2001 submission of Eric R. Smith, PhD to the Canadian government's copyright reform comment process, and flagged in a reply comment of Matthew Skala.

But of course, it wasn't news for Slashdot until a U.S. Congressman thought to mention it.

Others have complained that this is a review of U.S. Internet law, not the world's; but on the other hand, U.S. Internet law has so much influence on everywhere else that the two are almost the same thing. If you're looking for information on other nations' Internet law, the story is mostly all about whether they will or will not follow the U.S. lead.

That's an especially interesting question in Canada right now, where the government started a consultation process asking citizens whether they wanted a DMCA, roughly 700 submissions were filed, and then 9-11 happened and most people stopped paying any attention. When my grandchilren ask me "Where were you when they took freedom away from the Net?", I don't want the answer to be, "Sitting on the couch watching the Afghan war coverage."

true dat

dated, but still interresting

The Canadian government is considering DMCA-type legislation; it's not clear yet whether they're going to implement it, but it is clear that the behind-the-scenes folks have a good understanding of why it would be a bad idea. The question, really, is whether the lawmakers will listen to their own experts. I have high hopes.

I maintain a links page relating to the "DMCA in Canada" issue. On that page are links to my own submission, at ~24000 words the longest one they received in their public comment process; also the government copyright-reform Web site, the Edifying Fellowship of Ook (arguably the most creative submission), etc. I'd urge anyone interested in Canadian copyright law to check these documents out.

The Canadian government is considering DMCA-type legislation; it's not clear yet whether they're going to implement it, but it is clear that the behind-the-scenes folks have a good understanding of why it would be a bad idea. The question, really, is whether the lawmakers will listen to their own experts. I have high hopes.

I maintain a links page relating to the "DMCA in Canada" issue. On that page are links to my own submission, at ~24000 words the longest one they received in their public comment process; also the government copyright-reform Web site, the Edifying Fellowship of Ook (arguably the most creative submission), etc. I'd urge anyone interested in Canadian copyright law to check these documents out.

Many of the issues here are discussed in a recent report:

M. Skala. "New Media Copyright Extensions Would Harm Canada", Aug 2001

It is a long read for the weak, but it clear and to the point as to why "laws" such as the DMCA is a bad idea, giving a short history of copyright and a summary of recent events in the world of IP/DRM. I believe it can help people focus their arguments.