Archived - Yu, Xiao

Dear Representatives:

In the subject of copyright, I would like to express my opinions on  the issue as a software developer, as a photographer and mostly as a  digital consumer. I write both commercial and open-source software for  cases where I hold all rights, cases where the employer holds all  rights and cases where I share my rights with open communities.

For one, I believe the government should actively engage the market in regulating all actors and acting as representative for consumers.  While not a legal expert, I believe that, at least in the field of  software development and telecommunications, proprietorship kills creativity as well as potential market for innovation. Organisations  that promote standardisation and industry co-operation should be  protected while infrastructure or protocol monopoly should be held to  competitions assisted to equal footings.

Also as a consumer, I would like to narrate an example in the video  game industry that is increasingly becoming the trend in our entire  technology marketplace. In the past, a consumer is expected to purchase a console and a game  and from this point on, he has purchased the rights to use the product  in whichever way he desires. I firmly believe that consumer freedom,  purchased with money, should be defended. Now, a consumer needs to  purchase an Xbox 360, for instance, then games, then the rights to use  their networking infrastructures for a limited time, then purchase  additional contents to fully unlock the gaming potentials, then trade  money for "Microsoft points" where the user then loses his leverage on  the monetary value of the contents to be purchased as is at the full  wit of the corporation, then realise that the points can only be  purchased in denominations of 1000 even if the consumer would ever  need 100, then realise that none of his original and surplus points  can be used because he is not in the same geographic location where he  first registered the machine.

Imagine a world where the consumer would not only be expected to pay  for the value of the product plus the profit margin at a supermarket,  he needs to also pay for the time spent in the market by the minute  and the rights to access the other half of the market. For the sake of  the example, the user has to trade in the money he wishes to spend  into Canadian Tire money in minimum transactions of 100$. Then be told  that the money he just traded is only good for the store in the next  city. This policy would rightfully be regarded as belligerent and  insulting. Yet, this is seemingly the trend in our tech world,  because, in the case of Microsoft Xbox, the company holds the  proprietary protocol of all games' networking capabilities and  provides middleware. If you wish to be in the Microsoft camp, there is  no possible competitions from hardware manufacturers, game developers  or internet service providers. While the recently revised C-61 bill  need not affect Microsoft or the gaming industry, the example  illustrates well the trend in our technology market.

I believe the corporations of today has already amassed enough power  to control how and when we can use the products we have already  purchased in the digital marketplace. To let this corporate power run  unchecked would, in my opinion, be a failing in our government's role  to represent a population powerless against corporations. Otherwise,  we would truly be limiting innovations from all to the benefit of  one's profit.

Discouraging the use of these supposed intellectual leverages to limit  innovations and competitions in order to amass profits would  definitely be in concert with the Canadian industry's commercial  interests and moral values.

Finally, I believe that allowing ISPs to collect, track, store our  online activities is a very serious offence against the individual  freedom of citizens an an intrusion of privacy, especially when left  in the hands of for profit corporations. Taxis doesn't record who  comes on and who gets off of a taxi, even if it could lead to the  resolution of serious crimes. Neither should ISPs since their business  is to provide infrastructure. Nothing else. When a corporation is  granted the rights to reach outside of its business sphere to conduct  activities that can even elude to the control or monitoring of  citizens, we are starting down a very dangerous slippery slope.

Rights to privacy and consumer protection cannot be compromised for  corporate profit. We have seen where the Canadian competitive edge can  get when things are left in corporate hands and Canada now has one of  the worst consumer market and infrastructures for internet access and  wireless communications for the developed world. Canadian consumers  pay many times more than their OECD counterparts for wireless data and  internet speed. Both of this affects me personally. Wireless data plan  costs are limiting the resources of my university sponsoring my  undergraduate research and limits my ability to develop open-source or  commercial software in Canada. Slow and irregular internet speed  blunts my competitive edge internationally when co-operating with  multinational development teams.

Regards,

Xiao Yu