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Dear Sir:

I am writing to express my concern regarding potential changes to copyright law in Canada.

I believe that the status quo for copyright should be maintained, or that restrictions regarding copying material should be loosened.

Let's face facts: artists or writers of material are paid disproportionately for the work that they do. Since the dawn of the ability to record/copy material and distribute it, artist have earned far too much when compared to what they are actually producing. Marginal costs for the production of mass-produced copied material is tiny, yet copyright laws have allowed monopolies to be captured by the artists of this material for ridiculous amounts of time. Copyright need to be like patents — limited to 14 years or less. A reasonable amount of time in the Internet age is about 5 years.

Since the Internet has begun to change the way music is distributed (namely file sharing), artists have begun to change their product mix to include far more touring and live shows — this is the way it should be.

I am also concerned about proposals to restrict "fair use," particularly in terms of educational uses of copyrighted material- this would be a huge mistake that would profoundly affect students in a myriad of negative ways. Schools (particularly k-12 schools) have no where near enough resources currently. If they are required to pay exhorbitant licensing fees to copy a few pages of some books, this would take money away from other areas and negatively affect the education of students.

In summary, I believe that copyright law in Canada, as currently enforced, is perfect the way it is. Pressure by the United States to reform our copyright law needs to be ignored.

Greg Scruton