DMCA Worldwide: Canada, New Zealand, USA

cdlu writes: "Citing the need for up-to-date digital copyright laws, the Canadian government is starting hearings into our own version of the US's DMCA. Do you still wonder why people protest at the G-8 and other such summits?" Meanwhile, New Zealand is also planning to reform its copyright laws to include DMCA-like restrictions, and in the USA, Congress is planning to double the number of FBI agents and Federal attorneys devoted to pursuing copyright cases.

Comments

Canada to Charge Tarrifs to ISP's

[alteridem]

It looks like Canada is going to start charging tarrifs to ISP's for transmissions of copyrighted materials such as songs. This was started in 95 by the Canadian version of the RIAA, SOCAN and it slipped quietly through. This is really scary that this stuff is going on with little public input. For more info, read CONSULTATION PAPER ON DIGITAL COPYRIGHT ISSUES and more specifically Liability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). For the lazy, here is an interesting bit from it;

In 1995, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) had filed a proposed tariff (Tariff 22) whereby ISPs were asked to pay royalties for the communication of the musical works in SOCAN's repertoire over digital networks such as the Internet. In its decision of October, 1999, the Board asserted its jurisdiction to certify such a tariff. The decision is currently under review by the Federal Court of Appeal.

Reason to be optimistic in Canada

[DeeKayWon]

In the first /. story about the Sklyarov situation, someone posted this link to an article by an Ottawa law professor. Here's a juicy exerpt:

The Canadian proposal acknowledges the need for protection against acts of circumvention, but suggests that the U.S. approach goes too far. It notes that prohibiting the mere distribution of circumvention devices is often unworkable, blocking legitimate activities and altering the copyright balance. It also points out that technical-measures legislation may create the need for a new positive obligation on copyright holders to provide consumers with access to their work under certain circumstances, so that encryption can't be used, for example, to thwart copyright exceptions such as "fair dealing" that users rely upon to make copies of small portions of a work.

So while it is important we get our comments in, it looks like the government already sees the real problems with the DMCA. So let's fire up our word processors and clinch the deal, shall we?

Extridition

[rneches]

Well, maybe the US government (and the poor fools commonly known as voters) will get a wakeup call about their own nation's DMCA when a US citizen gets extridited to or detained in New Zeland or Australia, like Jon Johanson and Dimitry Sklyarbov were in the US. The law, in any country, is wrong. Unfortunatly, it seems that the prominent victims of the DMCA have been forginers, and the US is known to be particularly callous towards forgin nationals (especially those from non-english speaking contries).

It really sucks that this would be the case. Let's just hope that the poster-boy US citizen who gets nailed by a forgin version of the DMCA is appealing enough that the press will run the story as front-page news.

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The world does move on...

[nick_davison]

"the Canadian government is starting hearings into our own version of the US's DMCA."

Much as we may hate the idea, copyright is a part of the way the world currently works. Take a look at the bottom of this page, notice the "The Rest(c) 1997-2001"? The existing laws were written before they had any idea of what computers would one day be capable of. Updating them to include [to the same degree of fairness] digital forms only makes sense. Otherwise you are left with unequal protection, depending on the media.

The problem with the DMCA is that it was slipped in by the copyright holders and is way too heavily in their favour (including ignoring various other constitutional concepts). The DMCA isn't bad for simply being an extension of copyright law - it is bad for being a biased extension.

All Canada is doing at the moment is starting hearings about their own version. The idea of hearings is that they give everyone the chance to speak up and prevent the kind of abuses that are in the DMCA. So, instead of complaining that it's happening - it will almost certainly happen whether you like the idea or not - start making your opinions heard; block the copyright holders from simply writing their own law; ensure fair use remains a concept; and produce a sensible version Americans can point their simple minded government towards as a good example.