I agree they are not 1-1 , surely though some weighting for each type of media can be worked out, no?

his idea is better then a law which makes everyone a potential criminal if they have a virus (unbeknownst to them) that shares one file.

I for one will always endeavor to "stand on the shoulders of giants" especially to hope to catch a glimpse of the collective progress made by our species

In regards to "intent" I think Queen Anne trusted advisors got it right the first time on Copyright
when was that 1704?

14 years and renewable till death

Copyright has now become a weapon in the hands of multinationals and the darling of the paid for lobbyists
curring favour and favours from those elected to represent us

My fervent hope is that this public consultation
is exactly that...and not some forgone conclusion already bought and paid for yet not rubber stamped

14 years renewable is no burden on the creator
to do a bit of paperwork

My fear is that with a public who has really very little interest or usable knowledge on the subject of Copyright, Patents, Trademarks and especially
the fabricated and twiste catch all phrase pushed by WIPO and the media this "intellectual property" malarkey

Is that we are all just paving over the parking lot of human
progress...right Ms Mitchell

"they wont know what they got till its gone"

Of course Canada could simply move into the future
and simply recall the whole notion and abolish instead of reformmmm...(tm) Preston Manning
and revisit the whole dang shooting match say 25 years from now ..when the Industry dinosaurs are back firmly in the tar pits of doom and this current crop of
paid for hacks are retired..

the following blatantly snipped from elsewhere on the interwebs
--------------------

Abolishing patent and copyright law sounds radical, but two economists at Washington University in St. Louis say it's an idea whose time has come. Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine see innovation as a key to reviving the economy. They believe the current patent/copyright system discourages and prevents inventions from entering the marketplace. The two professors have published their views in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, from Cambridge University Press.

"From a public policy view, we'd ideally like to eliminate patent and copyright laws altogether," says Levine, John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics. "There's plenty of protection for inventors and plenty of protection and opportunities to make money for creators. It's not that we see this as some sort of charitable act that people are going to invent and create things without earning money. Evidence shows very strongly there are lots of ways to make money without patents and copyright."

Levine and Boldrin point to students being sued for 'pirating' music on the internet and AIDS patients in Africa dying because they cannot afford expensive drugs produced by patent holders as examples of the failure of the current system. Boldrin, the Joseph Gibson Hoyt Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences and Chair of the economics department says, "Intellectual property is in fact an intellectual monopoly that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps."

The authors argue that license fees, regulations and patents are now so misused that they drive up the cost of creation and slow down the rate of diffusion of new ideas. Levine explains, "Most patents are not acquired by innovators hoping to protect their innovations from competitors in order to get a short term edge over the rest of the market. Most patents are obtained by large corporations who have built portfolios of patents for defense purposes, to prevent other people from suing them over patent violations."

Boldrin and Levine promote a drastic reform of the patent system in their book. They propose the law should be restored to match the intent of the U.S. Constitution which states: Congress may "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writing and discoveries."

They call on Congress to reverse the burden of the proof on patent seekers by granting patents only to those capable of proving that:

"¢ their invention has social value

"¢ a patent is not likely to block even more valuable innovations

"¢ the innovation would not be cost-effective absent a patent

The authors acknowledge that such drastic reform is unlikely and outline an incremental approach for Congress to gradually reduce the scope of patents, regulation and licensing.

Nevertheless, their call for changing the system is urgent. The economists compare intellectual monopoly (patents) to medieval trade monopolies which were proven to be economically detrimental. They write, "For centuries, the cause of economic progress has identified with that of free trade. In the decades to come, sustaining economic progress will depend, more and more, on our ability to progressively reduce and eventually eliminate intellectual monopoly."

--------------

auxonic wrote: "copyright laws were not created so some large copyright holder can extort millions out of Canadians for multiple lifetimes."

No, they were made so that there would be a financial incentive to creating or inventing works, knowing that they would be protected by law rather than ripped off by others.

Copyright largely protects material used for entertainment. No-one is "extorting millions" from Canadians. If you don't want to pay for other people's music and books, don't read/listen to them. You don't have a right to them - they're other people's property.

I agree with P M. Protect authors' rights from the mindset that anything you see on the internet should be yours free and clear. THIS IS WRONG.

Only the person that paid for the item should be using it. Any transferring of commercial art and other digital work should be prevented, unless given express consent of the author of the work or his representatives.

If you didn't pay for it, you should not have any right to use it unless the author has declared it public domain.

I don't think they are saying that anyting on the internet should be free and clear, what they are saying is that for comercial use it should be prosecuted.

If you release your video to youtube or some video internet site then that is now in the public domain. If you agents release that video or music to a radio station then that is public domain. Sorry I am not a lawyer so what I consider public domain is for personal non-commercial use.

If you want to prevent people from recording from the radio or internet stations and sharing it among friends then your business model is out of date.

Well.. There is a clear difference between a couple of kids posting a video on YouTube or me posting a funny video of my cat and me posting some of my commercial work to attract new customers and clients..

There has to be a middleground somewhere that covers all.

I do know this.. Now that I know that people pushing for copyright changes are just doing it to get artistic work for free, I have removed all images larger than 400 pixel on the long side from any sites I post on and have watermarked even those.

I have to thank this site and this effort for reminding me how underhanded some people can be. (not you cndcitizen) :)

I think rakey is that you are mistaking the internet for what it is. It's a public medium, not a private one.
When you put content on the internet, it is equivalent to putting content on a bulletin board on the street corner for anybody to see and do what they please with it.
You want the internet to be something else, a medium to store your creations safely, but it is not the case.
The question is, should we change the internet from something that is free to something that is censured and regulated for the sake of being able to advertise and sell goods on it.

You are wrong. For storage I have 3 terabytes of hard disk space in removable disks full of my images.

I put my work on the internet to attract customers and clients worldwide. I do post post it for everyone to claim as their own.

I am not saying you do this but there are those who do it.

I also am not advocating censorship. Censorship is about limiting the free speech of individuals or groups.

The wish to protect my creative works from being distributed illegally is not censorship. Free speech is your own mouth, your own work. Not taking mine and making it your own without paying for it.

Sorry for the typo. That should read, "I do NOT post post it for everyone to claim as their own."

Well, I agree that no one should be entitled to claim your pictures as their own. But that's the same as hoping that my car won't get stolen if I leave the keys in the ignition and the door open.

That's my point. Legislation won't make the internet a safe place. You've got to "lock" your own webpage. I'm not here to lay claims to what is moral or not, just what issues the copyright act should tackle.

The laws should be there to allow you the author or copyright owner recourse if something goes amiss.

For example if someone starts using an image you produced to make a profit either as advertising or even the sale of that image, you should have recourse.

Now that said and here is were the morality of the situation comes into play. As a private user of the internet, I come across your picture on a public web site. I like the picture and I copy it to my computer.

If I'm willing to continue to enjoy just that copy that you put into the public domain as advertising should I be allowed to use it as a desktop wallpaper or even to print it out and put it on my wall?

From a logical standpoint I think yes. You have provided a copy of your original picture in a copyable, editable, printable format.

The simple fact that you have made that copy of your copyrighted material available to the public in that fashion should make it's use in it's current form public domain. As long as I do not go out and profit from your image, you should have no recourse due to your providing it to the public.

My wife is a photographer and she places he images on the internet, any image she places she reduces the quality and she watermarks it in some form or fashion, she is fully aware that there are people out there that may attempt to use her images for profit. But she also takes into consideration the fact that there are people that may just want to enjoy her images, and for any image she posts she makes the call to allow that type of use. She does provide an option for anyone willing, to make full digital or print copies of her work available for a fee, she allows her work to be used to make profit as long as the profiteer provides her compensation and she is confident that the current copyright laws protect her in these cases.

Any more restriction in these cases is like trying to stop people from looking at the flowers you planted in your front yard at the edge of a public road.

You have recourse, you could plant those same flowers in your back yard, or erect a fence to hide them from the outside. but to leave them out in the open, and complain that people are looking at them is ludicrous.

Now flowers do not provide a copyable format, not without invasion of privacy and theft. but if I was able to make a copy of your flowers without stealing them, then you would have had to place them out knowing that that option was there.

You have the final say regarding your images, poems, music, literary works, movies and flowers. If you do not want to allow ANY use of them other then those you get paid for you need to take a long look at the formats by which you provide them to the public. Maybe just maybe the internet is not for you.

Correct.

I have to agree whole-heartedly about the Crown Copyright. I feel embarrassed that the US is releasing information in a free (libre) format, but Canada is not. Everything the government produces should be licensed under something similar to the Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution license allowing both personal and commercial use.
We are all paying for these 'works' (for lack of a better word) and we should all be able to use them as we see fit.

Crown copyright is different however from access to information, in that eliminating it will not impact the ability of users to obtain records and information from governments (which is a separate issue). Copyright allows control of the reproduction and modification of the work itself, not the use of the information contained in it. And the fair dealing exceptions in the existing Act already permit copying for news reporting, private study or research and criticism or review.

Crown copyright does serve a useful purpose in the commercial context by allowing the redistribution of revenue from those who use government materials for profit to other services provided to the broader taxpayer base.

And how about Crown copyright as it relates to our own laws?

As you may be are aware Crown copyright stems from the government's position that they have a mandate to "protect" Her Majesty's information and that there is a cost incurred in drafting legislation and other material "“ in the bureaucrats actually drafting legislation...which they attempt to collect from varoius fees etc. Crown copyright is redolent with royalty and authority.

The idea that statutes or judicial decisions can "belong" to somebody, even to governments, is abhorrent in a democratic state. In the context of Crown copyright, who is the Crown, if not the people?. Crown copyright flies in the face of principles behind the federal Access to Information Act.

In 1985, a parliamentary committee recommended the concept of Crown copyright be wiped from the books. But, the committee's recommendation has been thwarted by obstruction from a few government departments over what can only be perceived as narrow territorial, if not self-serving reasons.

Crown copyright, is no longer relevant in today's society, and therefore must be abolished.

P_M, so you spend 2 years writting a book and have it published. How long should you get the royalties...after a couple of years you wouldn't be selling many copies unless you were one of the top 10 authors and they release a book every 6 months anyway.

Most books have a shelf life of a couple years at best and getting paid for 50+ years after your death for 2 years of work is crazy....sorry don't agree with you.

I wrote a software app that was patented and got paid for it...less then two years later someone took a my work and made a extention then patented the result even though it was based on all my IP. They inproved on what I had released and now their are 4 seperate patents referencing my original work. I think the same thing should apply for copyright...if you release something you have limited time for revenue rocognition...that will keep the book/music shelves with relevent or good works, not just something that is marketed to death for 2 months then dies to be marketed 5 years from then.

So, if you wish your work to be used that way, that should be YOUR choice to make.

Don't force YOUR beliefs on the rest of us.

Copyright should allow the author and its agent or agents to decide how long they decide to keep a work in the commercial arena.

Again, if Canadian copyright does not protect artists, then I fear we are entering the Mad Max of the digital age where people will go to any length to protect what is theirs.

I hope the Canadian government can see this and protect artists' wishes rather than allowing those who just want internet freebies to win.

Ok So I pose the question to you, how long should your IP be allowed for commercial use after you release it to the public, what I mean is once it hits TV, radio, internet, it will be copied and distributed. We are not talking about personal use but comercial use. Once your product is no longer artificially commercially available then it is no longer relevent except to history.

I already stated 10-20 years is a more realistic number. I do agree that 50 years is too long but 2-4 years is ridiculously short.

Ok 10-20 years I have no problem with...I just picked 2-5 years for common sake.

If we had 10-20 year commecial copyright law then that is fine.

Guest

Just to clarify Rakey, do you mean 10-20 years total, or 10-20 years after the death of the artist?

I put some more thought into it and consulted with some photographer peers and most of us came to the conclusion that 7-10 (I had initially said 10-20) years after the death of the artist/author is a more appropriate period than 50+ years.

We balanced the period based on the need for our families to both accept their loss and for them to have the possibility of earning a residual income (for those families whose benefactor had commercial saleability) while adapting to a new lifestyle after their loss.

Everyone I spoke to agreed that 50+ years is too long and only stifles not only access to the work for study but also is too long a period to wait for it to be celebrated by not allowing it into public domain sooner.

A short term after an artist's death does seem more reasonable to me (incidentally, to put my own art into the equation, I'm a writer/actor/filmmaker/radio perfomer, so what I do could fit a few categories).

I'm personally more inclined towards fixed terms independent of the artist's lifespan, for example 75 years total (this was, incidentally, the length of copyright for corporately produced work in the US until the Sonny Bono extension brought it to 95 years).

The reasons I'd suggest using a fixed year term like this have to do with the vaguaries associated with an artist's lifespan. If a young artist produces a magnificent and popular work, then dies suddenly, is it fair that her young family won't have long to profit from it? Similarly what if an artist lives a really long time? 100 years? More? It's possible within our lifetimes that people may live substantially longer than they do now. If there are healthy artists running around later this century who did their most culturally valuable work over a century ago, is that fair to young artists who see more and more works as potentially never being available to them? Also, what if an artist disappears, and no one knows if he 's dead? I realize that these are all hypotheticals, but I don't think they're too far off base.

As stated elsewhere, my real preference would be for a shorter term with a series of possible extensions up to a set limit. Say an initial term of 25 years, followed by extensions every 10 years, up to, say 75-95 years (this allows for corporate copyrights to last as long as they currently do, provided they're valuable).

In the early days of the US copyright law (which has inspired much of the current regime around the world), the terms were 14 years with an allowed extension of another 14 years. In later years this was extended to 28 + 28.

The current term for copyright in Canada is the artist's life + 50 years. Making our system compatible with the EUs through WIPO would mean extending that to life + 70 years, so the momentum right now is in the other direction.

Most artist's would agree to let their work be included in textbooks so it could be studied for free. I have no problem with that. But I wouldn't want someone like google coming along and giving away my IP while making money from advertising beside it and growing their brand value without paying for use. This is a company that makes billions of dollars not a school.

Sorry, don't agree with this.
You're trying to compare apples to oranges.
Yes, they are both creative 'fruits', but they are not on the same tree!!

Also, unlike the often lineal aspect of commercial evolution, literary works (fiction or non) can experience resurgent fluctuating popularity.

To extend the metaphor, both fruits 'grow' in different 'climates'.

2-5 year of copyright protection is a sure way to kill the spirit and creativity of any artist who expects to be remunerated for his or her hard work. It is ludicrous!

I expect my work to be in MY domain and I expect copyright to protect what is mine, on my behalf at least until 10 years after I have died.

Why? Because while I live, my family is being supported by money earned from sales of my work. Since MY family still has to eat after I pass, my work should continue to pay their bills if my family chooses to keep my work in the commercial arena.

Other families may choose to donate an artists' collection to the public after death.

It should depend on the individual's wishes and copyright law should respect and protect the wishes of the author both pre and post-mortem.

"2-5 year of copyright protection is a sure way to kill the spirit and creativity of any artist"

You sound more like a lawyer then an artist to me.

If you really were a stuggling artist you could not afford to defend yourself and prosecute people who DID steal your pictures, irregardless of the law. Only corporations with massive war chests for suing infringers want the type of laws that "rakey" is pushing for.

"Rakey" is not a real person but a paid corporate scab who wants to open the door for devastating lawsuits to anyone who shares a single song or photo!

A "struggling photographer" gets nothing from stricter copyright laws. He'd have to hire a lawyer for $500/hr for hundreds of hours to find out who used his photo. Sound like something a struggling artist can afford? No.

A struggling artist would use the internet to get their name out there, then make paying contacts.

I know hundreds of photographers, not personally but by the art they sell on sites like istockphoto and similar sites. there's no rampant theft of photography. The small watermarked versions that get the artist's name out there are virtually useless except maybe for personal use.

Just for the record, irregardless isn't a word.

The law applies to everyone equally. You're recognizing a disparity between an artists and corporations access to the law but seem unconcerned about how artists don't seem to have access to justice.

Your postion assumes real artists aren't aware of laws. No one can make a living from their work without a degree of professional competency. I would define an artist as someone who makes a living from creating things.

A struggling photographer doesn't need to hire a lawyer if the law is on his side. People represent themselves in small claims court all the time. If an individual used an image without permission, the photographer can ask them to stop. But if a company was using an artists work to sell products, the artist should be paid for their work.

Support a family after your death for 10 year...I think that is going out on a very thin limb for creative works. Sorry they are not worth that much. My suggestion to you is to buy personal insurance with the proceeds of your creative work sales or invest in a retirenment fund like the rest of the world.

The only people that would benifit from unrealistic copyright times are the corporations that can't get personal insurance for death...

If you want to be compensated inappropriately for a couple hours of work for taking a picture or creating a song then I would find another job as lifetime copyrights and royalties are a thing of the past based on general consensus...

Plan ahead for your retirement and buy life insurance, thinking you are going to be paid for a couple hours of work forever and which will support your family is just plain crazy...

Is there any other job that offers the same compensation? In any other industry you are paid once for the work you do, and saving up for either retirement or your family's well being after you pass is entirely your responsibility. What makes content creation any different?

P_M "I would never allow anything I wrote to be published in a country that had such negligible copyright protection."

Then realistically it would be distributed electronically since it was not available to the public in that country. Sorry times change and being paid for life for a single work just doesn't work anymore.

cndcitizen wrote: "Sorry times change and being paid for life for a single work just doesn't work anymore"

It works fine for me; the only thing that has changed is that there seem to be more people who feel entitled to steal in order to get entertainment for free, and technology has made it easier for them.

Share, not steal.

cndcitizen wrote: "Share, not steal."

Sharing is stealing when it is done without the owner's permission, and when it takes money out of the pocket of the creator & owner.

Not true. I lend a book to a friend who reads it and wants a copy for themselves for their library...they go out and buy it. Thereby increasing sales through sharing. Please see this study that rebuts the propaganda that the media companies are trying to shill..now project it onto book and DVD sales.

"In this paper, we analyze whether file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music. While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry and in Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files. We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays. Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period."

Link to complete article:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2007/11/the-true-cost-o.html

cndcitizen wrote: "Not true. I lend a book to a friend who reads it and wants a copy for themselves for their library"

Not the same thing. If you lend a book, you no longer have it. If you "share" a digital file, you're making a copy and still have the original. In effect, you're making yourself a publisher without the permission of the author. There is no incentive for the recipient to buy a copy because they don't have to give the "shared" copy back to you. That's stealing from the author if their work is protected by copyright.

P_M I would disagree and and the statistics actually show it. If I share an item, if the recipient likes what they see, read, hear then they will purchase it for their collection...no one keeps gigs of data on their hard drives as they want their own copies...

If they don't like it they didn't finish reading it or they didn't like it then you are still not out of a sale of you property because they would not have bought it anyway....sorry.

Some books are not worth anyting to some people even if they are on the oprah top 10 list and I have a shelf full of them that I would never recomend to friends....

Any hard drive can carry more e-books than anyone could read in a lifetime. With digital products, there's no difference between the copy and the original, so I don't see how keeping copies is discouraged because "no one keeps gigs of data on their hard drives as they want their own copies" - they'd still have their own copy on their HD.

Book fans would not keep crap on HD's, they go out and purchase the media to have and to add to their library...

And yes technically you could probably put a couple thousand e-books on a harddrive, but I doubt many readers would. I could be wrong as I might be a dino that likes the physical media even though I have purchased audio versions of some books to listen to in the car or plane.

Not much of a fan of e-books though.

Digitalization is the main new issue affecting copyright - ebooks aren't a huge market now, but in ten years they may be. The sharing issue really only affects digital books, since no-one objects to someone sharing a printed book (or selling it).

I completely understand, digitizing books is going to be the new beachhead.

The question I would raise from your point:
"The sharing issue really only affects digital books, since no-one objects to someone sharing a printed book (or selling it)."

Is why should it be any different between sharing or selling your book that you have purchased?