One of the biggest problems with Bill C-61 was that it put into place enormous restrictions on what users could do with their legally purchased materials (making it illegal to watch a DVD on a Linux machine for example). This went far beyond the scope of copyright and worse there was no provision for regular reviews of these restrictions and so no way to change them if they proved to retard innovation and creativity.

We don't need DRM or a Digital Millennium Copyright Act because Copyright holders only abuse these in the states sending DMCA take down messages to people with little proof and many of these are automated. If anything the corporation's doing this and other suspicious behavior should be investigated for surveillance and packet "sniffing" but they have money so why would they be investigated [particularly in America an even more money driven society]. Maintaining our current law would be very helpful to everyone and keep a firm balance between copyright holders and your average citizen who may download a song or two every month or two.

Sur la cote Englais, on discute les reductions des terms des droit d'auteur. Vie +50 ans est un tellment longe temps.

Si les droit d'auter sont en effiat pour seulment 40 ans, ce nes pas si important si les "droits" son resisrtent a l'epreuve du temps.

Les lois que le gouvernement du Canada érigent ne devrait pas essayer de résister à l'épreuve du temps. Les lois émises devraient tenir compte de la réalité actuelle. Il sera toujours possible d'actualiser les lois plus tard.

Personne ne peut prédire le future. Pourquoi est-ce que le gouvernement croit qu'il peut le faire ?

How do we create law that maintains our values despite inevitable introductions of new technology?

To answer that, we need to get to the fundamentals - what are our values? How does technology impact commerce and law?

Fundamentally, humans share a moral notion that we own the things we create. This is the basis for all copyright.

When mechanical printing became common, books were being copied by people other than the authour, resulting in moral outrage. But it isn't the act of copying itself that is morally objectionable. For the authour to be wronged the copier must do 2 things: make a copy and distribute either the copy or the original to a third person. Charging money for that distribution makes the act more heinous, but money doesn't have to change hands for it to be morally wrong.

Copyright was introduced because, given the technology of the time, the act of mechanical copying was a specific thing that could be regulated.

Today, the act of copying is a very ambiguous and hard-to-identify. To view a file, multiple copies of it must exist on the computer; many copies must often exist on intermediate servers when a file is transfered across a network.

Even without considering computers, there is some ambiguity in the definition of a "copy". If I hear a song played and memorize it, is that copying? If I then perform the song for friends, have I distributed it? If I perform the song for a paying audience is that then immoral? In my opinion, my ownership of the thoughts in my head trumps the creator's ownership of the creation.

I suggest that laws focusing on the act of copying will fail to stand the test of time, and distribution is where new legislation should focus. Therefore there should not be any anti-circumvention laws.

Increasingly innovation is a matter of building upon previous works. Very few new elements are discovered these days. This isn't to say that the originator shouldn't get credit and compensation for their efforts, but individuals rather than corporations are going to want to manipulate and build upon their works. Before, this was balanced by making works go into the public domain after a certain amount of time, but now the length of time before something goes into the public domain is ridiculous. Sixty years from now nobody is going to even remember the iPod, so waiting that long before allowing people to remix music is ridiculous.

No matter how much people get misty-eyed over the old days or get bitter over young people these days (if you ever think this, think about whether or not your parents said the same thing about you, and their parents about them) turnover in our culture is speeding up and the internet both spreads us out in terms of our tastes ("the long tail" phenomenon) and brings us together.

Copyright needs to favour the rights of the individual, but also balance that with the needs of society as a whole for new culture. Increasingly artists are choosing not to sign with big record labels because it is becoming more and more apparent that they are not the future of music. Yet, they blame copyright for their slipping profits. Since when has it been the responsibility of the government to maintain outdated and culturally irrelevant institutions through law? Time Warner is not a Historical Site.

The children that are growing up now never knowing what it's like to be without the internet are going to expect everything that is public to be remixable, instantly, without explicit permission. Copyright law should receive a review every two to three years to make sure it is still serving the public interest. Individuals, not corporate lobby groups, are the future. And, in fact, Canada isn't even as bad as many countries when it comes to illegal copying. The numbers presented by American interests have been picked apart again and again. Canadian people want to obey the law, so the law has to give them something they can live with.

The future is changing too fast to know where we're going to be in five years, but it's clear through the example we've been given from the Americans that DCMA-style crackdowns will not help. So we have to try and go in the other direction, with greater flexibility and less reliance on litigation and punishment. I have never met a person of my generation who hasn't broken copyright law at least once, more often than not unknowingly. This is not going to change, it's only going to become more pervasive, and copyright law needs to adjust to social norms as it was always always intended to and then continue adjusting.

It's impossible for any government to predict where technology will go with regards to file sharing, communications and digitization. Therefore, it behooves us to consider how we define copyright.

Copyright infringement is not a new thing, and it has led to some of the greatest cultural works created in the English language. If restritive copyright terms had existed in Elizabethan England, would Shakespeare's plays ever have been performed? Doubtful - they would have been considered "derivative works".

We define copyright currently as a system for protecting a creator's profit margin. We "insure" a content creator against loss of profit by saying nobody can duplicate or distribute the creator's work without their permission, and we use the courts to provide the "payout" for that insurance.

Frankly, the current definition seems adequate. I don't believe someone who downloads and watches a movie for free is "taking money" from the movie's creators, nor do I believe that piracy in and of itself translates directly into loss of profit for a creator. The SALE of pirated content is indeed a loss of profit to the creator: the CONSUMPTION of said content is not. By consuming pirated, culturally-relevant content, an individual is merely partaking of their own culture, which by definition must be available to all its members.

Some content creators would have us believe that their "intellectual property" (a misleading term) is somehow culturally inviolate and that non-commercial cultural transactions should somehow be regulated by the content creator. This is pure foolishness. "Watching a video" is a not a physical piece of property. The right to view culturally relevant material is inherent in the act of participating in one's culture. The current tack taken by some content "creators" (I use the word loosely - rights ownership does not necessarily mean an entity or person has created a work) seems to be geared to ensure that the disadvantaged have no right to view material that is part of their culture in a significant way.

The current system of copyright is more than adequate - content creators are protected against for-profit use of their culturally-relevant material. This system has already stood the test of time. If for-profit infringement can be proved, the creator is entitled to compensation. Attempting to adapt the system to deal with a nebulous and misleading concept like "intellectual property" will only result in a net loss to our society. The less freely available culturally-relevant material becomes, the less free our society and culture will become.

The push to change our copyright laws seems to stem more from the need of outdated and increasingly irrelevant "middle men" to make a hefty profit for no effort than from any need to protect real content. Protecting the putative "intellectual property rights" of these people and organizations should not be a reason for initiating copyright change. A mechanism already exists for them to pursue alleged copyright violations (the courts), and if it is not worth it to them to pursue the matter in the courts, then it would appear that the violation is not as offensive to them as they would have us believe.

"A law that cannot be enforced is no law at all."
"An unjust law is no law at all."

These two quotes are the basis of this discussion.

How can copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time? Any debate regarding changes to our copyright system need also consider how such laws can be enforced. Otherwise, they will not last.

Talk has circulated about holding ISPs responsible for illegal file-sharing practices. I ask, how? Deep-packet inspections? Sure, an ISP can find out what file types you are sending out, but that doesn't discriminate between legal file-sharing and illegal. They could go further, and actually intercept your transmissions, finding out what's in the files you're sending, but there are many flaws with this plan outside of the extreme breach of privacy.

Now that the ISP knows exactly what files you're sending, how do they determine whether it's fair-use, illegal, or has consent by the rights-holder? The only way I can see that happening is by the creation of a database of all copyrighted works, then sampling all internet traffic, and comparing files against the registry.

That would mean a lot of computing power on behalf of the ISP or authorized regulatory body, a very large and comprehensive database, as well as a registry for copyrighted works.

Some argue that websites that facilitate file-sharing should be held accountable. Well, same problem.

Do we ban file-sharing completely? That's unjust, and discriminates against the many legitimate uses such technologies facilitate.

Just go and sue everyone sharing a copyrighted file? Did they know? If no copyright information is attached, are they knowingly infringing upon a rightsholders interests? Again, that seems unjust.

Digital Rights Management? There are many examples of how such practices are more harmful and distainful to the legitimate consumer, and many companies have started to realize this and phase out such practices.

I'm all for going after the initial infringer. But how might this be facilitated? Watermarking is one option. Online sales might barcode every item, linking it to the registered consumer. Should the file turn up online, they need only go through the books to see who did it.

Perhaps take-down notices on file-sharing services. Most companies are quite happy to blacklist any file that a rights-holder identifies. Mind you that means some work on the rights-holders behalf.

What are your thoughts?

Perhaps we should give up policing post-purchase use of copyrighted materials? The current (and recently proposed) laws seem to target consumers. Lets focus on businesses!