Keeping everything legal "For Personal Use" is the answer here. I don't believe it is in the best interests of the population to have our already-stretched taxpayer dollars used to service the entertainment industry's financial interests.

People copy for personal use because they don't believe it is morally wrong. Of course arguing morality is pointless because it's subjective, but that is why it happens. No matter how hard the industry tries to tell us copying is wrong, people just don't buy into it.

Our laws should reflect the will of the people, not the will of a dinosaur industry with its army of lobbyists.

Just look at the state of things in the US; they have a system where even the innocent will pay to settle when the RIAA come knocking - because it's always cheaper than fighting against their infinite legal machine.

I have scanned most of the comments on this board; and have yet to see a comment that is for the direction this copyright reform seems to be taking.

I really do hope that the politicians actually read these comments and that all of this is not just lip service. - some of the comments on this board are incredibly insightful and thought out.

I personally would like to see 'in a perfect world' a central location on the internet to get all of my entertainment needs; be it TV shows, movies, music, etc.
It could be run by an arms length crown corporation, or private; it doesn't matter to me (but I am of the opinion that more outside revenue for the gov. means less taxes)
Artists could then get compensated properly, and alot of the 'evil' corporations could be held at bay - and media could be reasonably priced.

Anyways, I'm going on a tangent, but the bottom line is: make it easy to be legit and the majority of people will.
I have absolutely no problems paying money for my entertainment needs, but I hate feeling gouged for everything, and then treated like a criminal.
I also want to set up a home media centre. But am holding off at the moment as everything that is legal has 'do not record flags' and drm and other bs. It is really holding tech back.

Please politicians, listen to the people on this one, and do it properly. I am very tired of Canada never taking a lead in anything.
I understand you are under tremendous pressure from vested interests, but you represent us, not them.

Cheers.

"Nearly any creative work can be shown to be built upon the works of those who came before.
"?People still want to create the way they always have, but the industry of the last century, that has relied on copyright law to make its product seem different and 'original' freaks out about this ongoing content creation
"… people recognize that all works are created based on the works of others, and it's inherently silly to try"
Taken from "The Myth Of Original Creators," http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090629/0230145396.shtml

Canada's current copyright laws currently affect me very little. The levy on recordable media is barely noticeable, since I barely record anything onto a disc anymore.
In my opinion, existing laws should be modified very little. I do recognise the rights of the copyright holder; however the rights of the user must be preserved and not be allowed to sink to the dismal state that the U.S. has. The RIAA (and through logical extension the music companies), through the fact of having enough funds to do so, has become its own private police force, using the civil courts to terrorise citizens. Through out-of-court settlements, they extort money simply because a trial would be costly to defend against. The trials they have won have had outrageous awards in the millions for songs that are sold for dollars. They claim millions lost to piracy, but cannot verify that those who did pirate would have bought from them in the first place. All the while, they collect the lion's share of the profits and little goes to the artist.
Technology changes and they do not. They dig in their heels and indulge in a fantasy that since they have have always taken in great sums of money, they are entitled to keep on doing so. Rather than adapt, they influence politicians to subvert democracy, enacting laws that go against the will of the people, that benefit the wealthy and rob the rights of the common man.
Once again a fiefdom has arisen. They are the new lords over the serfs; they rule not through religious or military force, but by unadulterated avarice. Kings annointed by the Almighty dollar. We can never allow ourselves to sink into this state.
Laws that benefit the rights of the privileged few over the majority of the people are undemocratic and unjust. Sneaking laws through, destroying our rights behind closed doors, is a despicable, cowardly and repugnant ACTA… I mean act.
If lawmakers want to modernise laws, they should first start by coming into the twenty-first century and out of the twelfth.

I am a computer programmer by day and a consumer of media by night; while it may not be a colloquial definition, writing computer code is consider copyrightable literary work under the Copyright Act of Canada. Thus I am affected by copyright law on both the production, and end consumption sides.

The fact that some of the most frequently pirated software's legitimately sells for ten to one hundred times more than your average music CD or movie ticket leads many to believe that the software industry has taken a far greater hit then ether the music or movie industries.

As both a man whose primary income is derived from software and a lover of money it would be reasonable to think that I would be up in arms over the piracy to purchase ratio, so why aren't it? It has be very well established that the primary consumers of pirated software aren't the wealthy elite, they aren't your average well off milled class family, nor are the businesses; from the studies that I have read, the majority consumer of pirated software seem to be children, teenagers, and the mildly impoverished (at least enough not to afford a $1000 suite of software), none of whom possess the resources to obtain the software legitimately.

While their behavior is not excused by their inability to properly obtain the software, we must temper any proposed legislation and pro-ip measures with the knowledge that any fraction of piracy which we do eliminate will have a significantly diminished return. Moreover, I doubt that most children and teenagers have the mental wherewithal to appreciate how what they're doing is wrong, beyond simply being told by an authority figure that it is in fact wrong point blank. Again, the lack of mens rea doesn't excuse the behavior; however draconian copyright legislation would not help the situation at all.

Instead we need legislation that targets copyright violation for profit; while I may not care about the above mentioned cases I do seriously care about companies who use my software to profit without remunerating me. Furthermore, in such cases the foremost priority of any legislation should be the forced repayment of royalties and fees to the copyright holder; I am skeptical of incarcerations ability to solve the copyright challenges that we face.

Canada's copyright laws make it so that I can't afford to listen to emerging new Canadian artists, because I don't have money to buy CDs. I love music, I love the work that artists produce for us, but I can't afford to pay for it. While the obvious retort is 'if you can't pay for it, you can't have it', this is not fair when it comes to music, art, or anything whose value is subjective- music, art, and literature serve important roles by providing avenues for thought and discussion for all Canadians, regardless of income.

Copyright should defend the author's intellectual property from someone else wanting to profit from it, but personal use shouldn't be covered under this. The internet is an incredible tool towards equalizing access to information, media, and entertainment for all people regardless of income, and this should be encouraged. It is inconceivable that the government would want to tighten copyright laws (making it harder to get access to music and movies without paying) while at the same time cutting funding to Canada's public braodcaster- where are people with little disposable income supposed to get their art and entertainment from?

Musicians make very little money from the record companies (the companies that sue Americans for tens of thousands of dollars per 'infringement'); the bulk of their income comes from concerts. If their music is more accessible, more people hear it, so more people come to concerts? I'm not willing to drop $15 on an album I've never heard, but if I know I like a band I'm happy to spend $15 on a concert.

In my opinion, copyrights should solely mean that no one can change, modify, someone's creation and protect the original author against usurpation. This mean no one can take my song or my poem and claim it is his own creation, and no one can take parts of my song and make another song with it. It shoulkd be a law that protects the creator.

Actually, it is a law that only protect a privildged few to make money with it. When people share the creations (by any means, it has no importance which one), the companies complain that it hurts the creator while they are the one making money with the creator's works!

To illegalize the sharing of certain information is hypocrisy, and to implement control of that sharing is faschism.

That is my opinion, thank you for reading!

End them. Copyright is dead. And for good reason.

This isn't a question of what we should do. The digital revolution has destroyed any notion of commercial copyright. It is a foolish, and futile.

This is the worst internet forum setup I have ever seen. Did we pay some poet in Nunavut to code this instead of using the excellent off-the-shelf forum software currently available?

I sent the following in an email to the consultation before I found this forum. I'm reposing it here in case anyone wishes to comment on it.

--

I hope to make a formal submission later, but wanted to help get the conversation started.

In 2001 I made multiple submissions to the consultation that was made at that time, and have spent much of my volunteer in the 8 years since dedicated to trying to engage people in some pretty key aspects of what was discussed at that time.

My 2001 submission had a few key themes: http://www.flora.ca/copyright-2001.shtml

- "A new economy, or a new product for the old economy?"

The question is whether the proposals that much of the copyright consultations at that time, as well as those of today, are based on thinking that knowledge is a new product to be added to the old economy, or whether we are discussing something new. I believe that the zero marginal cost (to the producer) nature of knowledge expands the possibilities beyond those of tangible property, and much of the excitement around the new knowledge economy have been about the ways that knowledge is different than tangible goods.

Much of the policy that came out of the USA's 1995 National Information Infrastructure Task Force was focused in the opposite direction, which is what could be done to cripple modern technology in order to make knowledge more scarce -- more like tangible >$0 marginal
cost goods. The USA policy laundered these backward ideas through WIPO in 1996, and passed them within the USA via the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). There has been pressure from the USA for Canada to equally cripple its position within the emerging knowledge economy by adopting similar backward-facing policy.

I feel that the term "Intellectual Property" has blinded far too many people to the ways in which knowledge is nothing like tangible property. Many of the most effective solutions to problems we find in the new economy, including copyright infringement, come from recognising these differences. It has encouraged people to equate entirely unrelated concepts such as copyright infringement and "theft". I go into more details in an article on the Digital Copyright Canada website: http://www.digital-copyright.ca/Jefferson_Debate

- "The Three Rights"

The basis of much of the copyright conversation in Canada since we indicated interest in 1996 (interest! not obligation!) by signing the treaty has been the policy laundered WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT). These treaties radically expand the concepts within Canadian copyright to not only including "moral rights" and "mass-copying rights" (commercial uses of copyrighted works), but now to "access rights" where copyright holders are presumed to be able to control how, when, and with what specific brands of technological assistance audiences are able to access copyrighted material.

I strongly believe we should be going the opposite direction, mandating that copyright not be allowed to be abused to dictate to audiences any aspect of their own personal technology choices. I believe that any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen and not a third party.

To understand the nature of the attack on the rights of technology property owners we see from some "copyright" proposals, see: Protecting property rights in a digital world http://www.flora.ca/documents/digital-ownership.shtml

- Popular software business models

As a software author I discussed a few different business models utilised in software. It is important to realise that the Business Software Alliance (BSA, CAAST, etc) represents only a few firms utilising a specific business model. They do not represent the entire software sector. Their proposals are aimed more at harming competing business models than they are at reducing copyright infringement. The statistics they use to justify their proposals are critically flawed in that they do not accurately differentiate infringing software from software created and distributed using alternative business methods.

The invalidity of statistics that claimed to demonstrate "harm" for the major studio movie sector, the major recording labels (note: not the "music" industry), and the BSA members was shown with the recent recall of a "study" by the Conference Board of Canada. We need to move forward with a science based approach to this policy, not the science fiction brought forward by companies trying to protect themselves from new economy competition.

- Potential conflicts with other Public Policy

I discussed how many of the proposals made, such as those in the 1996 WIPO treaties, have implications far beyond copyright into areas such as competition law and existing trade agreements. This is above the conflicts with tangible property law already mentioned.

While 8 years have passed, it is my impression that the Canadian government is still stuck in the 1995 thinking that became the 1996 WIPO treaties. We should not be looking at technology owners as a threat and using anti-circumvention legislation to circumvent their technology property rights. We should not be introducing new concepts into copyright such as the undefinable "making available" right which simply makes clearing copyright related rights so expensive that only the old-economy style companies will be able to do so.

We should also not be giving old economy phone and cable companies further excuses to inspect and filter our communications by holding them liable for communications that they do not censor based on an unfounded accusation of a copyright infringement (the so-called "Notice and Take-Down" regime). We need to be moving forward to encouraging companies that want to offer proper Internet Services under the original innovative end-to-end design to eventually replace the phone and cable companies. Economic textbooks including "The Innovators Dilemma" explain well why phone and cable companies will be the least able to offer services which -- when they are configured correctly -- replace what was previously offered by phone and cable services.

Copyright needs to be clarified and simplified if it is to regulate the activities of private citizens. Rules which were created to only regulate commercial activities in a historical technological context cannot simply be carried forward (or made worse, as has thus far been proposed) and regulate non-commercial private activities. Modernising copyright should include rejecting the backward direction proposed in the 1996 WIPO treaties, and heading in a very different direction.

Russell McOrmond
http://www.flora.ca/

Il n'est pas utile de revoir les lois actuelles. Sauf pour préciser les droits des consommateurs qui ayant acheté une oeuvre en toute légalité ne devraient pas être soumis à des droits supplémentaires pour des copies à des fins personnelles. L'acquisition d'une oeuvre devrait garantir le droit d'en jouir en toute liberté. C'est-à -dire qu'il ne devrait pas y avoir de dispositions limitatives dans les oeuvres numériques qui ne permettent leur utilisation qu'avec des équipements et/ou systèmes d'exploitation désignés. Ā titre d'exemple, lorsque j'achète un DVD, je m'attends à pouvoir l'écouter sur n'importe quel équipement, incluant une plateforme ouverte Linux, ce qui n'est pas le cas à cause de la protection par codage et chiffrement dont les clés ne sont pas rendues disponibles pour les utilisateurs Linux. Pourtant, j'ai payé l'oeuvre le même prix que mon voisin, je ne vois pas pourquoi il faudrait en plus payer une taxe à Microsoft ou Apple pour pouvoir en jouir librement.

It's important to realize that the internet is the most dramatic change to the way we transmit information since the invention of the printing press. The internet was designed to move information indiscriminately, that is its sole purpose. The flow of information cannot be controlled without destroying this purpose. It's very important to keep this in mind when deciding on new copyright laws, because in essence we are asking ourselves if the internet as we know it now is worth keeping.

I would imagine the invention of the printing press posed a similar problem in its time. Many people relied on the business of hand written copies for their livelihood, which the printing press put in jeopardy. However we decided, as a society, that the benefits of the printing press outweighed the losses that came with it. Imagine how the world would look today had we decided against it to preserve the "old way" of doing things.

Of course the current dilemma with copyright laws is far more complex than this, but the principle is the same. Do we, as a society, value the free and open exchange of ideas and information provided by the internet? Are we willing to rethink our ideas on intellectual property and ownership of information to preserve this medium? Or will we decide to outlaw the printing press to preserve the status quo?

We CAN change our ideas on copyright. We CAN create a new system that works together with the internet, instead of against it. It won't come without a price; industries and business models will have to be changed, corporations too old or unwilling to adapt will falter, but new ventures will spring up in their place. This is a new age rife with opportunity, and the power to realize these opportunities rests on our willingness to leave the old ways behind. It is my hope that we find the courage to take this step, rather than cling to old ideas that are simply incompatible with the world we now find ourselves in.

The most effective type of copyright bill would be principles-based.

There are simply too many variables that exist in the digital world, and new ones that are created each day.

Example: if you have purchased media in x format, you may turn that media in x format into y format and z format. However, it would be illegal to obtain a superior format to x without purchasing a license for the version with superior quality.

While I don't like paying for a movie on DVD and Blu-Ray, it is ultimately up to the distributor to provide incentives to "upgrade" and it is ultimately up to the consumer to make a decision to buy it or not.

Given the current extortion methods of America's RIAA, and as a musician, I would not like Canada's RIAA equivalent (CRIA) to follow in the same manner. It discourages potential fans from buying my works if I am being represented by a lobbyist group similar to RIAA. There are even websites out there that track RIAA-free albums so people can decide to buy, or not buy an album due to its RIAA associativity.

There is no real guarantee safeguard against piracy. When a anti-piracy measure is developed, someone will figure a way to counter it. If my fans really enjoyed my works, they would support me at shows or by purchasing my music related merchandise such as t-shirts. It's difficult to see the RIAA actually taking their obscene amounts of money won from lawsuits being given to the artists they represent (who really see an extremely small cut, if any). It would still be nice to have laws that target large piracy groups who make profit off of pirated music, software, or movies, instead of a typical college student.

The way I see it, is that stopping large piracy groups will likely have more of an effect than fear inflicting methods of targeting several college students and young adults as a method of "making an example of". The latter method is a cruel and outdated medieval tactic in my mind.

Another issue I want to discuss, is in light of the recent RIAA cases, particularly the Thomas-Rasset case, where she is being fined approximately $2 million USD in damages. It should really come to a point where groups like the RIAA should have their limits. Piracy is similar to stealing, and is a crime that should not go unnoticed. But as a musician, I feel it is ridiculous and unfair for close to $80,000 in damages per song! (My numbers may be off, but the idea is there.) That amount is quite ridiculous, and the money should really go towards the artist (although hopefully it isn't that gruesomely high) and not so much towards their next lawyer fees, if RIAA and equivalents decide to still pursue individuals as such.

As both a producer and consumer I don't believe that I have conflicting views.

What is important is the ability of the consumer to make backups of all multimedia they have purchased.

Electronic media, hard drives, dvds, etc. all fail. It is not as if it is my fault if my hard drive crashes and all media is lost. Why do I need to buy my movies and songs again? Legal backups should be an intrinsic part of the copyright legislation.

There are 2 groups of discussions that apply to how copyrights affect me. As a consumer, and as a creator.

As a consumer I have the following Concerns:

1. A license for use is a license for use - and should be, regardless of the medium used. As a result, Consumers should be allowed to timeshift, backup, and transcode for transfer to electronic devices without penalty for personal use. There should be no limitations on how this is achieved. For instance, if the medium for which one's licensed material is stored should fail, the licensee should be legally allowed to acquire a copy of their licensed material, in lieu of a backup. this right to your purchased content should not be impeded by copy protection schemes, encryptions, or any other technology. If you bought a license, you should be able to use the product as you see fit, for private use.

2. Electronic distribution methods, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, should not be deemed a copyright infringement automatically. Bittorrent, for example, is a legitimate protocol that can be used to transfer all types of files - it is a legitimate delivery channel that can be used for illegitimate means. Don't outlaw bittorrent for that. Instead, outlaw the commercial (ie: pay-for-use) distribution of unlicensed copyrighted material.

3. Private, personal use needs clarification and needs to remain freely available to the public. Canada has been very proactive by trying to legitimize personal use by allowing levies on blank media. although it is unpopular to add taxes to blank media, especially for multimedia formats that can be used for data as well as media, it is the lesser of two evils for consumers.

Next, as a creator, there are several points that need to be clear:

1. Commercial use needs to see the artist compensated in a manner consistent with the copyright holder's wishes. These include public performance or display of said works, Distributing licensed material for profit, and unfair unlicensed reuse of material in a commercial venture. It's one thing to do a mashup - it's another thing to sell it without crediting and compensating the original creators.

2. Fair use needs to be clearly defined for both content creators and consumers. Educational use and political satire are already strong fair-use reasons, and allow artists to innovate on other people's works. Clarifying when people can make derivative works such as mashups, and defining when content needs or does not need license is going to be the tricky balancing act for creator/consumers. These liberties MUST remain available, and clarifying the guidelines in simple language, would definitely ensure people do not break copyight law by accident.

3. Educational use should give educators the freedom to teach their students, where limitations on the students' use of materials should be dictated as personal use of unlicensed material. Students may use the tools (ie: computer programs), read the photocopies, etc… but not be allowed to publish, perform, or use tools for commercial purposes, unless the student obtains a license to do so (ie: purchase the computer software in question).

4. With the taxation of media, the money distribution methods to content creators need to be revised so that artists get paid more directly by the government, as opposed to having the money filtered through a lobby group of some sorts. In the digital distribution age, Audio and video-only formats should have their proceeds go to those specific providers, but as a digital medium is usually a multimedia format where authors, programmers, painters, photographers, musicians and videographers all have equal chances of being stored on the same medium, Fair taxation and distribution becomes more difficult, and is where the levy falls apart. Lesser levy needs to be put on digital media that can be used for data purposes. More artists and less middlemen need to get a cut of the media tax.

I view myself as a typical consumer of movies, music and computer video games.

I agree that copyright laws must protect the producer of the material so that their intellectual property is protected. This will allow continued investment and create sustainable businss model to create wealth.

On the other hand, average consumers should not be sued for using or sharing copyrighted material they have purchased. Consumers must have "fair use" of the material for educational and personal uses.

How to balance these competing interests? I have two proposals:

1. Allow personal, non-commercial sharing of all copyrighted material. If I buy a CD or rent a DVD and make a copy and share the copy on the internet, as long as I do not gain from engaging in this activity in a monetary way, it should be allowed.
2. If this arrangement is too much for music artists, tv and movie studios to swallow, then I would support a VOLUNTARY fee, applied on an opt-in basis, charged by my ISP or internet provider. These fees would flow to the copyright holder. This fee would be a nominal fee and would be no where near the amounts being levied against plaintiffs in the US for sharing music online ($85,000 a song - ridiculous). A reasonable fee for unrestricted downloading would be 10 bucks a month, for example.

This copy would be portable as well - ipod, PC, car, the file would not have DRM so as to make it unusable but in certain specific circumstances. Copyright holders - remember the alternative is the status quo - free, and illegal, off the internet.