As a consumer, creator, student and hobbyist I felt obligated to respond to the governments call for a copyright consultation. It is essential that policy makers are aware of how important it is for citizens to be able to obtain and use works in a legitimate manner for many circumstances regardless of the medium. One of the most important aspects of copyright for me is the fair-dealing exemptions. The ability for Canadians to make non-commerical copies of works without the threat of lawsuits. Appropriation art is a good example of a grey area that would be deeply effected by a hard lined approach to copyright reform. The very nature of our digital culture relies on the ability to innovate and share. Myself and many others are innovating the next generation of ideas, simply by building upon pre-conceived works. Copyright can be used to stifle future innovation by giving draconian protections to rights holders, making it difficult for artists such as myself to utilize medias in a fair dealing legitimate manner. Bill C-61 would have been a radical change in policy that is impossible to enforce; specifically the anti-circumvention provisions (which mistakenly would have trumped everyones fair-dealing exemptions) and any form of ISP level graduated response. Canada should expand fair dealing to include instances such as parody. Furthermore fair dealing (non-commercial) exemptions should never be eroded by any current/future business models e.g. DRM, TPM's. As for the severely flawed argument for any extension of new levies, I would disagree on giving any of these lobby organizations a penny more. Any attempt at monitoring or preventing file sharing is ludicrous and will only degrade respect for the law. Any business crying over lost sales doesn't have a single credible piece of evidence to prove the current copyright legislation is the cause. Finally, many business's, groups and individuals have adopted open licensing standards such as Creative Commons or GNU/GPL. Anti-circumvention provisions or a non-neutral copyright law could prevent these communities from solving legitimate cross platform or security problems. I can also agree with any security professional who says all forms of DRM must not be protected as it could cause future problems with respect to simply using logic to break any piece of code anywhere on the internet (also a large privacy issue). In conclusion, I would rather the government stay off my: computer, dvd player, video games, cell phones, books, music and out of my business. Any restrictions on the ability to create will be largely ignored by myself and likely many others.

For a more in depth view of what I agree with see copyright submissions by Russel McOrmond policy coordinator of CLUE, Tucows.com, Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights, p2pnet.net, Cory Doctorow, Fair copyright for Canada's Professor Michael Geist.

Submissions I do not agree with: Graham Henderson CRIA, CMPDA, Danielle Parr of the Entertainment software association of Canada.

Consultation criticism:

This consultation could have been more transparent and should have opened the doors to everyone rather than a select few invite only meetings. I hope I was mistaken in assuming this submission as well as thousands more, will not be brought into consideration when considering future legislation. Apparently, Im also not able to submit my own art to the copyright consultation as a submission. I would suggest fixing it so in the near future people can express themselves however they please.

Grant Hutchinson

Lead Animator,
Modern Invasion,
NeverReturnMod