The apathy of Canadian gov't has gone on long enough w.r.t copyright enforcement. Even this panel is just a 'commission to do nothing' - a classic tactic by those who intend to do nothing but who want to look as if they are. Get off your butt and pass copyright law!

Bill C-61 Circumvents Property Rights

My political views are further right than the Conservative govt. This bill is a violation of the property rights of consumers. If I purchase something I own the right to do with it whatever I please (Imagine a vehicle with a lock on the hood to protect the interests of mechanics-???).

Perhaps the greatest oxymoron I have ever heard was the attempt to combine illegal and sharing.

Pierre Barras
Je suis éditeur de musique et je suis préoccupé par la protection du travail de nos artistes. Au même titre qu'un travailleur qui reçoit son salaire, l'artiste qui produit une oeuvre sur internet, doit-être reconnu et recevoir une rémunération pour son travail également.
Il ne faut pas confondre liberté d'accès à Internet et gratuité d'accès à tous les contenus.
Le gouvernement Canadien doit nous aider à trouver et mettre en place des outils efficaces pour contrôler l'exploitation des droits et les faire respecter.
Il est important de mettre en place une loi sur le droit d'auteur, qui assurera aux ayants droits des revenus quelque soit la plateforme d'accès utilisée par le consommateur.

Canadian farmers would have a hoot at this issue. Imagine a farmer that grows potatoes. The farmer then gives his potatoes almost for free to a big distributor. That distributor then re-sells the potatoes at a profit to stores. The stores sell the potatoes at a less significant profit to you. You bring the potatoes home… Then suddenly in the night, the distributor breaks into your house, steals back the potatoes, and re-sells them again to stores. Of course there is also the potato levy that compensates the distributor for potentially stolen potatoes too. Also the distributor collects the damages from prosecuted potato stealers too.
My question is how many times can the farmer(artist) and the consumer can be screwed over by the distributor. In a digital age, the distributor brings no value to the equation. Imagine a job where you only work one day and then take the rest of your life off. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. That is the danger of a copyright model of that completely favours the distributor. The artist is out their busting their butt, while the distributor is relaxing collecting usage fees from draconian DRM, damages awarded, and levies. Why in Canada we are letting the distributor write the law? Should all foxes be allowed to run the hen house? I think the digital age has made this business model irrelevant. These companies are using all of their wealth and power to justify their absurd existence. Get rid of them. Create a government run distribution collective that charges the artist the actual digital distribution cost on each work sold (this includes music, videos, book and any form of media). If we do decide to get hitched to our miserly distributor, I would expect that big media will be at the forefront issues like increased minimum wage, increased protection for labour, and fair-trade (not free trade) deals with other countries so the consumer will be able to afford DRM, damages and levies they propose.

Il faut que le gouvernement canadien nous aide à trouver et à mettre en place des outils efficaces pour contrôler l'exploitation des droits, pour les faire respecter; les fournisseurs d'accès Internet devront faire partie de la solution comme tous les autres maillons de la chaîne.

I'll bet most of the commenters on this forum are using a MS Windows computer to access this site. Since this is about copyright, I'd ask if any of you have read your EndUserLicenseAgreement before using your Windows or Mac machines. There's not much point in having "Rights" as a Nation if your populace is signing away those very rights at every turn.
Did you know that in software there is something called the GPL, a software license that explicitly insists on maintaining your right to use, copy and re-distribute the software. Very high quality too.
Have any of you who upload files, which you've agreed not to, which you know you're not allowed to, ever considered the possibility of a copyright/license that expressly permits you to copy your song or video to any of your consoles, iPods, MP3 players etc, so long as it's for your personal use? That's a law for the digital era. Pirates will always board ships and high-jack them. Illegally uploading music and movies has absolutely nothing to do with piracy. If you buy copyrighted music/films, don't complain when the owner of the copyright sues you for doing what you agreed not to.
PS. I'm hereby officially applying for a patent on "the door". You'll all have to pay me royalties whenever open or closing a door or passing through a doorway. - (That includes sliding doors).
Oh yeah, don't forget, those excuses your using
PPS. I've also been copyrighting/patenting your rivers and streams so you'll have to pay me if you want to use the hydro generated by them.

Rights to privacy and consumer protection cannot be compromised for corporate profit. We have seen where the Canadian competitive edge can get when things are left in corporate hands and Canada now has one of the worst consumer market and infrastructures for internet access and wireless communications for the developed world. Canadian consumers pay many times more than their OECD counterparts for wireless data and internet speed. Both of this affects me personally. Wireless data plan costs are limiting the resources of my university sponsoring my undergraduate research and limits my ability to develop open-source or commercial software in Canada. Slow and irregular internet speed blunts my competitive edge internationally when co-operating with multinational development teams.

For one, I believe the government should actively engage the market in regulating all actors and acting as representative for consumers. While not a legal expert, I believe that, at least in the field of software development and telecommunications, proprietorship kills creativity as well as potential market for innovation. Organisations that promote standardisation and industry co-operation should be protected while infrastructure or protocol monopoly should be held to competitions assisted to equal footings.

Also as a consumer, I would like to narrate an example in the video game industry that is increasingly becoming the trend in our entire technology marketplace.
In the past, a consumer is expected to purchase a console and a game and from this point on, he has purchased the rights to use the product in whichever way he desires. I firmly believe that consumer freedom, purchased with money, should be defended. Now, a consumer needs to purchase an Xbox 360, for instance, then games, then the rights to use their networking infrastructures for a limited time, then purchase additional contents to fully unlock the gaming potentials, then trade money for "Microsoft points" where the user then loses his leverage on the monetary value of the contents to be purchased as is at the full wit of the corporation, then realise that the points can only be purchased in denominations of 1000 even if the consumer would ever need 100, then realise that none of his original and surplus points can be used because he is not in the same geographic location where he first registered the machine.

Imagine a world where the consumer would not only be expected to pay for the value of the product plus the profit margin at a supermarket, he needs to also pay for the time spent in the market by the minute and the rights to access the other half of the market. For the sake of the example, the user has to trade in the money he wishes to spend into Canadian Tire money in minimum transactions of 100$. Then be told that the money he just traded is only good for the store in the next city. This policy would rightfully be regarded as belligerent and insulting. Yet, this is seemingly the trend in our tech world, because, in the case of Microsoft Xbox, the company holds the proprietary protocol of all games' networking capabilities and provides middleware. If you wish to be in the Microsoft camp, there is no possible competitions from hardware manufacturers, game developers or internet service providers. While the recently revised C-61 bill need not affect Microsoft or the gaming industry, the example illustrates well the trend in our technology market.

I believe the corporations of today has already amassed enough power to control how and when we can use the products we have already purchased in the digital marketplace. To let this corporate power run unchecked would, in my opinion, be a failing in our government's role to represent a population powerless against corporations. Otherwise, we would truly be limiting innovations from all to the benefit of one's profit.

Discouraging the use of these supposed intellectual leverages to limit innovations and competitions in order to amass profits would definitely be in concert with the Canadian industry's commercial interests and moral values.

Finally, I believe that allowing ISPs to collect, track, store our online activities is a very serious offence against the individual freedom of citizens an an intrusion of privacy, especially when left in the hands of for profit corporations. Taxis doesn't record who comes on and who gets off of a taxi, even if it could lead to the resolution of serious crimes. Neither should ISPs since their business is to provide infrastructure. Nothing else. When a corporation is granted the rights to reach outside of its business sphere to conduct activities that can even elude to the control or monitoring of citizens, we are starting down a very dangerous slippery slope.

Comme d'habitude,ont veut nous faire travailler pour rien,un retour aux annees 60.Ont pourait mettre un frais d'usage comme les cassettes vierges.Esperant une solution equitable et honnete.Merci de votre support.

Over and over studies show that p2p file sharers spend more money on media than everyone else -- they are the core consumers of media. Here's the latest:

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-content-stealers-spend-a-ton-on-media-2009-8

The view that "illegal" (isn't that what we're trying to determine here?) downloading is an opportunity cost to media companies is simply false. It cannot be proven that those who downloaded a song, movie, etc, would have paid for it. I certainly would not, and in fact, without "piracy", I would probably be less interested in media in general, go see less movies, buy less music, etc.. So why is this idea given credence?

The recording industry doesn't know whats good for them, and they should be ignored in Canada, similar to how consumers have been wholly ignored in the USA.

Il est tout a fait normal que les auteurs, les compositeurs et les interprètes touchent une redevance sur l'utilisation de leur musique ou leurs oeuvres. Il faut absolument trouver un moyen, malgré les progrès de la technologie, de prélever des sommes afin de pouvoir les leur distribuer, afin que ces derniers puissent continuer à gagner leur vie et embellir celle de tout le monde.

Je crois que nous ne pourrons pas empêcher la technologie de transformer notre monde! Il faut simplement trouver des solutions pour que les auteurs trouvent leur compte! Et il y en a, suffit d'avoir le courage de les mettre en application! Ça fait parti de l'évolution!

The governments job should first and foremost be to serve the populous. Bill C-61, however, puts large corporations way ahead on the list of priorities.

Adopting the American model for copywright law is simply foolish. People are being sued for millions of dollars for downloading an albums worth of songs (http://vivirlatino.com/2009/06/19/court-sticks-mom-of-4-with-2-million-dollar-fine.php).

Instead of following in the footsteps of the Americans let us, for once, be a leader and develop a real copyright law for the true digital age. One that maintains the privacy of the people at it's forefront.

En lisant quelques commentaires, je peux constater que la situation sur le droit d'auteur au Canada a dégénéré depuis quelques années, principalement à cause d'internet.

Le Ipod par exemple est une invention merveilleuse qui nous permet d'écouter des milliers de morceaux de musique créés par des groupes et compositeurs différents.

Le vol de propriété intellectuelle qui vient avec est beaucoup plus laid.

Il est temps d'agir pour modifier les lois sur le droit d'auteur de façon permanente, afin d'y inclure une solution à toutes les nouvelles technologies qui pourraient être inventées dans le futur.

Je crois que c'est dans cette optique, une optique durable, que les lois devraient être modifiées.

Pour le moment, notre société accepte largement le téléchargement illégal de musique sur internet. Ça tue les artistes émergeants.

Le travail des artistes et des auteurs compositeurs devient de plus en plus difficile car ils se font de plus en plus voler de plusieurs façons différentes.

En tant que pays industrialisé et prospère, le Canada devrait être en mesure de montrer l'exemple aux autres.

Vincent Robillard
Étudiant en composition

prévisualiser:
J'ai dû mettre de côté ma carrière d'auteur-compositeur et interprète à cause du manque de revenus. Si on veut du sang neuf en culture, il faut, en plus d'investir des sommes d'argent dans le domaine, protéger les droits des créateurs. On n'a qu'à prendre modèle sur la France à ce sujet.
Il est plus question ici de mauvaise foi et de facilité, malheureusement.

Any law that regulates the sharing of your life -experience with your fellow is, by its very nature, anti-social.

Copyright laws NEED to be reformed to protect Citizens from media-corporations and a clear distinction needs to be made regarding the difference between the citizens of our land and what media/industry likes to call consumers. We are none of us "consumers", - we are the citizens of this land.
"Artists" works have had more than enough protection since copyright was first introduced by Queen Victoria to protect authors of books. The real intent of changing copyright in Canada is the removal of the citizens liberties, and the enhanced protection of non-citizen corporations. Don't be fooled by any of this "public-consultation" process. This body isn't here to look after citizens, - only to represent vested corporate interests.

For copyright law to be just and relevant it needs to limit its persecutions to those businesses which make money from another creator's works without prior agreement, not on those who wish to further develop on the original work's merits through research and sharing. In the same way that chefs cannot copyright a recipe, it is unmanageable to expect society bow to artists wishing to copyright words, sounds or other elements of an idea. Copyright law should be modernised to include greater emphasis on collective culture: New uses for art and ideas that do not profit monetarily from its use.

I want to buy songs and movies, not plastic disks.

When I purchase a copyrighted work, I should be entitled to do whatever I must to continue enjoying it. This should include keeping multiple copies in any formats I choose.

I accept that any unlicensed distribution must be forbidden, but as digital formats change more and more quickly, copyright law must protect a consumer's right to copy content from obsolete formats to modern ones.

Otherwise, my media purchase will really be only a lease.