Archived - Rowse, Mike

To whom this concerns,

As I have little time until the deadline (30 minutes), I will try to be as coherent and concise as I can.

How do Canada's copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?

The use of software patents internationally has affected open source developers in that there is always a lurking concern regarding litigation for patents that are often obvious in nature and used ubiquitously by open source and closed source developers alike. As well, the use of defensive patents are also a threat to innovation. I do not have the knowledge or experience to comment on how to improve laws in a way to protect companies, but remove the aforementioned problems.

Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time

I do not have the knowledge as how to best achieve this

What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?

What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?

What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

The above questions all respond to questions of economy and do not address questions of social justice or principle. Copyrights law do indeed serve both to protect individuals works (a form of social justice) and to foster innovation, however there are other considerations that should be considered:

1. Medical developments through private companies depend greatly upon public funding, furthermore medical developments are based upon a largely public medical education and a human history of medical discovery. Often private companies have profited at the expense of public health to some degree in Canada and to a greater degree in developing countries (read in particular HIV anti-retrovirals though many other medicines as well). Though the issue is greater in scope than Canadian domestic copyright law, Canada's commitments to humanitarian agreements as well as Canadian values suggest that we should orient our domestic copyright laws so as to encourage these goals, while still encouraging innovation and investment.
2. The patenting of genetic material and genetically modified plants in its current form has been destructive to food security, farmers in general and is often unreasonable in principle. Principally speaking the idea that a company can patent a genetic code that is either slightly modified or not modified at all is absurd, especially given that nearly all the material has been developed over millions of years. If anything (and a tenuous claim at best) the human genome and the DNA of other organisms if anything is the common inheritance of all humanity.
3. The artistic creations of individuals are not created in a vacuum. I have no doubt that we should try to encourage artists, musicians and other creative individuals to make a living from their creativity, but we must also remember that we are talking about culture, something that is uniquely human and necessary to be fully human, or in other words not only a commodity to be bought and sold. In the past, creative work eventually found its way into the public domain, now this is beginning to become less and less possible. I urge the reader of email to consider ways of harmonizing the need to provide a living for creative people, with importance of making sure that our common culture (in the widest pluralistic sense) is accessible to all and not always sold to us.

I hope that this consultation relates to patent law as well, otherwise much of this email has been off topic. Though many of the principles do apply to copyrights as well. I also encourage greater consultation in this manner (open and also through electronic means) in both an ongoing way for this domain and in others.

Thank you for providing this forum.

Best regards,
Mike Rowse