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Canadian Government Says DRM Circumvention Not Related To Copyright
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist has followed up a recent
release of internal government talking points on copyright with the full, internal clause-by-clause analysis of Bill C-32. A new copyright bill is
expected as soon as this week and the government document confirms there is no defense to violations of the digital lock rules, noting 'a contravention of this prohibition is not an infringement of copyright and the defenses to
infringement of copyright are not defenses to these prohibitions.' The government's own words on the digital lock provisions confirm that they may be unconstitutional since they fall outside the boundaries of copyright."
Basically, if you break DRM even without violating copyright in the process you can still be held liable, and from this any defense based on copyright law (fair use, etc.) is not valid in such cases. On the flipside, several legal experts think that makes those provisions of the law less likely to stand up in court.
You are under violation of thinking about breaking copyright law!
...is that DRM represents an in perpetuum algorithmic representation of law that supercedes all haebeus corpus, or the belief of reasonable doubt. In order for DRM to be treated this way, DRM has to be a computer algorithm that is more correct about how to assess law than the justice system itself. Or at least, that's the consequence of this law.
FanFictionRecs.net
Protecting revenues from sale of SCTV episodes, eh!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Law protecting DRM proposed in canada. What company, based in Montreal, has the worst DRM of any other developer? Ubisoft. The always online DRM is so bad people who bought their games are breaking it. This is a law to protect the Ubisoft DRM, plain and simple.
if our politicians could at least write law so that it looks like it would stand up in court. I understand that there is a fair bit of stuff that isn't clear cut with the whole body of law considered that needs court time. But in instances like this it feels like the politicians are just giving into the lobbyists without even giving a second thought about the values the country that gave them their job was built on. It is rather sickening.
that's a very good point, almost entirely invalidated by the EULA of "you don't own the software, you've purchased access to it" if that didn't stand up in court then modifying the DRM wouldn't be illegal (hell, modifying the software wouldn't be illegal).
Don't get me wrong, i don't think it should be this way, but that's the way it is.
How have the constitutionally invalid provisions of the US DMCA not been ripped to shreds in the US courts?
For one thing, justice is expensive. Members of the public and charities acting in the public interest don't necessarily have the cash to hire competent attorneys with experience before the Supreme Court. For another, federal courts are slow.
In DRM, B and C are NOT the same person. B is the approved* media player equipment. C is the consumer.
The problem is that B is not a person, but rather a device that is the legal property of C. It makes no sense to grant rights to an inanimate object that are not also granted to the legal owner of that inanimate object. B and C should be, legally speaking, one and the same.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Hey what this says is circumventing DRM is a violation of a civil contract with the rights holder and not a violation of the copyright itself. That would mean you can only be held responsible FOR ACTUAL DAMAGES. It would be very hard if not impossible for anyone to establish any damage from an individual breaking DRM for fair use. It's the copyright laws that have the outrageous statutory damages.
Unfortunately, this is not unconstitutional at all, precisely because the Supreme Court has not yet declared it as such.
If you don't like it, please think carefully about the system you voted in.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Give artists/distributors the choice – their works can either be protected by copyright, or by DRM, but not both. If the DRM is effective then they won't need copyright protection. Plus it's illegal to break the lock. That said, if the lock is broken, the content is no longer protected and the public can do what they like with it (except the person that broke the lock – they're going to prison, if we can establish who they are...)
For another, you have to actually be tried under those provisions to challenge them in court.
While unpopular with the /. crowd, IP laws are a "contract" between society and creator. The creator gets rewarded with a temporary right to prohibit others from copying etc. After that period, the creative work enters the public domain. It should be blindingly obvious that of the IP laws, it is the copyright law that has become completely out of whack, given the insane duration of copyright.
With DRM it gets even worse: The creator (or usually the person who obtained the rights from the creator) doesn't intend to fulfill his end of the contract. DRM prevents a work from entering the public domain.
Bert
(patent attorney)
Anti-circumvention provisions being "bad law and bad policy" as Lawrence Lessig called them in his 2001 op-ed piece Jail Time in the Digital Age must be the reason why they get adopted the world over (Ayn Rand comes to mind). :-( It's a logical next step for him to have focused on corruption research.