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Canadian DMCA Proposal About To Die
An anonymous reader writes "Like the previous Bill C-60 before it, the proposed Bill C-61 that would bring DMCA-like laws to Canada is poised to die on the order table, never to receive a vote, as the current minority government falls. An election call is expected in days. Everybody expects that some form of these laws will be back yet again (third time's a charm?). There are too many interests pushing for change to let it go. But here's a chance for Canadians to influence politicians about it in an election campaign, and hopefully strike a better balance. And for those of you in the rest of the world who are laboring under a DMCA-like copyright law, let's hear your stories about why such laws are a good or bad idea, and if bad, how you would amend the law to make it tolerable. With the polls probably on Oct. 14th, Canadians will be looking for a few good ideas."
Okay, did anyone else read the title and think "Gauntlet"?
"Canadian DMCA... needs food!"
"Canadian DMCA... needs food, badly!"
"Canadian DMCA... your life force is running out!"
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Had the Conservatives been governing under a majority government, this bill would have passed long ago (plus we'd be even more involved militarily). Let's hope the situation stays identical for a long time.
our political system is setup in such a way that proposed bills get turfed if they're introduced too close to an election? There've been many good bills that have met the same fate because of elections.
Better ten good laws get turfed than one bad one get passed.
Just callin' it like I see it.
You sir, have obviously never created anything of value. Why else would you think one individuals hard work belongs to you after 14 years or failure to register with a centralized body for a non-trivial fee?
And you, sir, have evidently never invented anything useful.
I have 12 granted US Patents [all involve apparatus, none are for software or business methods], and a couple of pending applications. Some of these patents are actively exploited in products on the market, and I receive modest remuneration as a result. Of course, you are free to exploit any patented invention for your own use, provided it is not used commercially - royalties are only needed for commercial use.
Not only do you have to pay "non-trivial" filing, inspection, and [perhaps] grant fees to the US PTO, you must pay increasing renewal fees every four years to maintain a granted patent. You must also submit a locally adapted translated application and pay (usually even higher) fees in every other jurisdiction where you want your invention to be protected.
At most after 20 years from the first filing, the patent expires. None of mine have expired yet, but it won't be too long before the first one does. In fact, all of my existing patents will have expired before I retire. They are not "money for your life and your descendents' lives", even if they are used commercially for decades.
Revert the DMCA. Limit copyright to the lifetime of the individual creator, or to a reasonable period for companies. Restrict copyright to actual works (Mickey Mouse is trademarked and protected, but Walt Disney is dead, and "Steamboat Willy" should be open domain). I'm sorry that you, and I, and most of us will work 9-5 till we die, that doesn't mean a (arguably) creative genious like JK Rowling should have to start worrying about Sorceror's Stone knockoffs anytime soon.
Now, which benefits society more in the long term - a useful invention (on which further inventions may be built) or a recording of Prince or Madonna squawking?
If it's not exploited, a patent is often allowed to lapse after only 8 or 12 years (non-payment of maintenance fees). It expires after at most 20 years, no matter what.
I see no reason why copyrights should automatically be worldwide (patents are national), or last much longer than a patent. Even the lifetime of the author is the wrong term for copyright (author might be creative at 90 years old, or die in an accident, etc.), and would be inapplicable to corporations. A fixed maximum term of 20 years would be reasonable.
If a longer copyright term (such as 50 years) were adopted, then there should be an early expiry mechanism for copyright. For example, if a work has been in copyright for more than 12 years, then if 4 years pass without the work or a direct derivative being distributed, then it would lapse into the public domain. Note that works under GPL would not be weakened by this requirement, since they are being frequently distributed.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Why else would you think one individuals hard work belongs to you after 14 years or failure to register with a centralized body for a non-trivial fee? ... Just cause you're selfish and have no concept of the hard-work and effort people put into these products, and therefore don't understand the value of copyright law, doesn't mean copyright law is wrong.
We as a society, sir, never have rewarded people on the basis hard work and effort, nor is there ever any intention to do so. We reward people for supplying a saleable product or service for which there is a demand. The extent of the reward is determined by supply and demand.
Consider this example: a man moves a pile of rocks, then moves it back, every day for a year. No-one asked him to, he has no contract promising payment for moving the rocks. Do we reward him on the basis of his hard work? He has worked extremely hard! No, we don't reward him. If he had a lifelong dream to move rocks, he has fulfilled his dream, he's a success! If he did it in the expectation that someone should reward him, he's just a fool.
Nobody cares how hard the "individual creator" works, that's their problem. Introduce laws to reward hard work and you'll get a whole bunch of people doing "busy work" that's totally unproductive and undesirable and drains the economy. It'd be like having another government.
Here's the issue: copying is a natural right. It is the basis of all learning. We copy to learn to walk, we copy to learn to talk, we copy to learn to write, there is no endeavour you can embark on that does not depend on you first doing a massive amount of copying. Even our very life comes about from the copying of DNA, it is fundamental to our existence. Therefore, it is the obligation of the copyright proponents to justify their demand that people refrain from their natural right, not the obligation of the people to justify copying.
Well, here is the justification:
Without copyright (and with the existence of the internet) an unregulated free market operating solely on supply and demand does not facilitate the production of works as abundantly as we would like. The reason is that due to the infinitely copyable nature of the works, there are two extremes of supply only, (1) zero supply (or potential supply) for works not yet created and (2) unlimited supply for works that have been created. In the case of (1) the price for the production of one copy needed to provide incentive for the creator is too high for most potential buyers, greatly decreasing demand and therefore decreasing production of works. In the case of (2) the unlimited supply drops the price to near zero, greatly decreasing the incentive to supply and therefore decreasing production of works. But we want the works to be produced, so we can use (including copy) them.
The solution society (in the USA) came up with: we will temporarily forsake our natural right to copy, artificially creating a third intermediate phase in the supply of infinitely copyable works. (1a) temporary period in which the work has already been created, stimulating demand, but supply is limited, increasing the price and providing incentive for the creator. It is important to remember that the whole purpose for agreeing to this artificial limitation of supply is to achieve an abundance of infinitely copyable and usable works. So copyright is a social contract. You can find the terms of that contract in the US constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
So, you can see that "limited time" is a key part of the social contract. The agreement isn't "You produce works for us to buy, and we'll pay for them forever" it is "We'll temporarily refrain from copying so you can sell your work, you deliver that work to the public domain". Saying to me "Don't copy this work for now, your gr
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Orignal AC here;
Thing is we do have laws that cover file sharing, Our existing copyright laws already make distribution illegal (assuming your not authorized to of course). The problem US corporations have is that the Canadian system is substantially different from the US one in several ways.
The most prominent of these would be our Blank Media Levy, A portion of every sale on blank media like CD-R's is payed to the CRIA (our local version of the RIAA) This levy is widely held to cover any possible losses that companies might suffer from copying. This means as Canadians our fair use rights are a bit more ironclad, we are quite literally paying for them. Because of this blank media levy it's actually not even certain if pirating music is illegal or not, as we have in effect already paid for it (This has NOT been decided in court yet one way or another)
The next important difference is that we don't have a a DMCA like peice of legislation, meaning cracking DRM in Canada is also still in Legal Limbo, with no law saying its illegal to unlock your software the courts would tend to fall back on existing laws, and the logic of "You bought it its yours to do with as you please provided your not in violation of any laws" is pretty easy to follow. The aforementioned Blank Media Levy also makes format/time shifting a no brainier too, why pay a surcharge to a music industry on a product if you can't copy your music to it? So in Canada DRM is even more pointless as theres no law protecting it, which means companies can't try to lock you in to a certain product/vendor through tie ins and judicious use of DRM. And groups like the RIAA are pretty stupid about DRM they still think its going to be their saviour, and thanks to the DMCA in the US its almost working.
Finally, and in a more general way, Canadian consumer protection laws are more strict (that is to say in favor of the customer) than in the USA, may corporate practises that work in the USA don't work here. Most notably EULA's are not enforceable under Canadian law.
These factors are the death knell for the tactics that the BSA and RIAA and their ilk have been using in the states, and as the people trying desperately to hold onto an outdated business model thats bad (for them). A DMCA ish piece of legislation is nothing more than an industry trying to legislate it self a larger profit margin and we as Canadians neither need nor want it.
Again in case I wasen't clear Canada has copyright laws, and they cover fileshareing. What we don't have are the broken lobbyist bought laws that the USA suffers under, and we sure as fuck don't want em. And as a taxpaying citizen I think my government has spent enough of its time and my money on the issue. The recording industry continues to post record breaking multi-billion dollar profits, clearly they are not going under, time to focus our time and energy on more pressing concerns like oh say insuring we have enough energy to power the country in 5 years (we're a power hungry country, we need more damn power plants) or what we're going to do about a primary energy source other than oil. And of immediate concern is that the collapsing US dollar is basically killing our manufacturing industry, and were not just talking a few layoffs here, entire plants are closing down. American companies just can't afford to buy as much of our crap anymore between the sky high price of gas and a dollar at near parity.