There need to be more than just two Town Hall discussions on copyright. That the Toronto venue filled within two days of being announced is a strong indicator that Canadian citizens want to be involved in these consultations. Limiting participation to 300 people at only two venues is NOT the open discussion that Canadians expect. At the very least, there should be Town Hall meetings in the capital city of each province, and the larger population centres. I suggest:

Vancouver,British Columbia | 611869
Calgary,Alberta | 968460
Ottawa,Ontario | 874433
Edmonton,Alberta | 822319
Hamilton,Ontario | 653638
Quebec City,Quebec | 645623
Winnipeg,Manitoba | 632063
Kitchener,Ontario | 409112

(If there's a way to communicate with the people responsible for these consultations please let me know, and post it prominently on this Web site)

There is no reason for consumers to illegally obtain copies of copyrighted works. The excuse so many are giving--that it is their right to do so-- is really appalling and extremely self-serving. It is also hypocritical. There is the argument that because the new technology allows file transfer it should be free because it can be is made. No one offers, using the same logic, that free access to everyone's financial accounts is also possible with the new technology and funds in these accounts are as easily transferred to the possession of others with the new technology.
Nor have I read-- when the justification for taking for free what one wants is that the companies artists may be in contract with are undeserving of what they are investing in to promote-- no, not once have I read how that outraged artist defending consumer has mailed or electronically transfered a payment to the artist 'abused by corporations'… and now abused by consumers as well.
Depriving artists of the rights over how their creations are used and of making a livelihood does not contribute to expanding the national culture.
We Canadians drink and eat as frequently as we listen to music or read-- but no one is asking the government to change laws banning stores being locked at night-- a good thing too, as this sampling of responses indicates most of us would go clean the shelves of the products we now believe we have "a right" to possess and own for free.

It is time to remove the term "copy" from the rights discussion. If we were starting from a greenfield today without the history of copyright we would never consider putting the control point at the copy level. In the digital age copying is necessary to consume the media content. It's copied from disk to memory, from memory to screen from device to device. Attempts to update copyright laws have skirted around this issue by using vague terms like "fair use" but have not addressed the reality that it's no longer relevant. The consumer requires the right to make copies for their own personal use.

When copyright was originally created it was not possible to manage all the points of sale but the cost of copying made it the correct control point (at the time). If we started today with the same goals it would make sense to put the point of control at the point of sale. The right should be the right to sell for profit from the creative work. If we were starting from a clean slate I'm convinced that is where the rights would end.

If we take into account the history of copyright we can no longer stop at just the right to profit. We now need to include the right to distribute. This is still not a manageable control point but the right holder needs legal recognition that no other party can distribute the content without their permission.

I believe the above two rights are how the courts have ruled on the existing copyright laws so this isn't radical thinking.

The rights are also not practically manageable today. They are too long and measuring for the time the creator dies just complicates this. The recent example of Amazon selling copies of 1984 from a publisher that didn't have the rights is an example of this. It should be easy for a company to identify who the rights holder is but it's practically impossible today.

The existing copyright laws were extended because of the less the 1% of creative work that is still making profit after 10 years. Companies like Disney and bands like the Beatles do not need the laws modified to protect their profits but that is what has happened.

I personally believe that the right to distribute should be limited to 10 years from the point of creation and the right to profit from should be limited to 20 years. My logic for extending the right to profit beyond the distribution right is because of derivative works such as movies being made from books.

My background is in software development, and as a person that has been in this industry for over half of my life now, I've evolved some fairly strong opinions on the matter. Instead of boring you with a 5000 or more words monologue on everything that I think, however (as people who know me can testify, I could probably do that), I shall highlight what I think are some key issues that are of strong concern to me.

First of all, I think that future copyright should explicitly exempt all private copying from copyright infringement, much as the current copyright system in Canada explicitly exempts private copying of sound recordings from infringement. My reason for this is that I believe it simplifies copyright law, rather than making special cases for one particular type of work, and there is a levy placed on blank media that supposedly covers this, the size of storage notwithstanding, the media could just as easily contain a copy of any other form of copyrighted work anyways. There seems to me to be little point in differentiating between them when they are stored digitally because in the end, all they are is just 1's and 0's… and are indiscernible from each other at that level anyways.

I further think that transmitting, sharing, giving, renting, leasing, lending, or in any other way distributing a copy of a copyrighted work to others, or even merely offering to do any of these, should void (irrevocably) any private copying exemption they might have otherwise had on that copy. Whether or not this makes them guilty of copyright infringement depends entirely on simply whether or not the copy was authorized by the copyright holder in the first place (for purposes other than personal use). I believe that the text of the copyright act needs to be explicit in this matter so that there can be no ambiguity in this regard. Again, I think that this simplifies the copyright act because it makes it clear that lending copyrighted works to other people is always perfectly legal when the works being lent out were original works that were authorized by the copyright holder. Further, the presence of photocopies in libraries would also be acceptable, since the libraries are not creating copies of their material for anybody else… they are merely providing facilities for people to create copies for their own private use, which in turn, could be exempt from infringement. Taken to the extreme, one might imagine a scenario where a facility situated within a library permits people to photocopy entire books for themselves… I think, however, that the real-world demand for this sort of thing would probably be low as the total costs to a person who might do this is liable to be significantly more than the cost of the book itself. Conversely, however, making a copyrighted file on one's home computer publicly available would not be legal unless the person was authorized by the copyright holder to have made a non-personal use copy, because the copy that resides on one's computer, after all, is *NOT* the original copy that was authorized by the copyright holder.

Back to the subject of copyright, however, I further do not think that anyone who creates a copy of a copyrighted work from one that was supposed to be for the private use of another person should themselves be permitted to claim any private use exemption on the newer copy. Again, I think that the text of the copyright act should be explicit on this matter to avoid ambiguity.

The above proposals would explicitly authorize any private copying of a copyrighted work, while simultaneously making it clear that any so-called claims of private use must not show any evidence to the contrary.

Finally, and in my opinion most importantly of all, I most heartily believe that any future changes to the copyright act should categorically *NOT* criminalize efforts made to bypass copy protection that may be placed by the copyright holder unless those efforts are made with the intent of OTHERWISE committing copyright infringement. Such a provision would still be compatible with the WIPO treaty, and would have the upshot that people who may be using alternative technologies that currently enjoy whatever measure of interoperability its users find amenable would not suddenly find themselves effectively excommunicated from digital society without resorting to breaking the law. To pass a law that outlaws any and all unauthorized copy protection circumvention without regard to the intent of the copier is overwhelming biased towards currently popular technologies only, even without explicitly mentioning them, and implicitly limits the directions that future technologies might take.

I want to focus on just one statement for my discussion.

"Canadian copyright law needs to be updated to give Canadian creators and consumers the tools they need to engage with confidence in the digital marketplace."

I believe that this statement has in it all that we need moving forward. What worries me is that we will go too far at the request of industry lobby groups. The point of updating copyright laws is to give creators confidence. We want to encourage creators. So let's do that.

The tools:
1. 20 years of protection. This is an enormous amount of time to generate a profit. It then allows derivitive works that create new and interesting content and digital libraries of older content such that the culture generated by that content is preserved for future generations to enjoy.

2. While it has just as many potential privacy concerns, a digital fingerprint on digital content tying it to the purchaser would make it trivial to trace pirated material back to the entity that illegally distributed it, while not preventing that consumers from making copies for personal use such as backups and device shifting.

The industry constantly tells us that DRM is there to prevent illegal reproduction of their works. But what are they really asking for? What DRM really does is "fix" a bunch of problems facing the industry today. And that is new technology. Every time new technology arrives, the industry loses a bit of control over their product, when and where and how it can be used. What DRM does is give the content owner ultimate control over all aspects of their content. While this is not necessarily true of the current technology, say DVDs, consider future technologies in an always connected world: Is that movie you bought going to be broadcast on CBC tonight? With DRM the owner could block access to the movie today so that they can protect the ad revenue they will get by ensuring the only way you watch it is on CBC instead. Want to listen to that new album on the go? DRM technologoies could detect that you are no longer in your house and that could be an extra charge. That sounds ridiculous, but with DRM they have all the right in the world to do just that.

DRM also stifles the free market. Consumers have very little they can do as it is. At best, we can speak with our wallets and give our business to someone we feel respects us as consumers. With DRM we essentially lose that right. Let's use a hypothetical example: You buy an oPod. You love it and the convenience that oSongs affords you and purchase all your new music there and even some old music since it's so convenient. Over time you spend thousands of dollars building your library. Then the quality of the products coming from Orange start to degrade to the point where you feel you have to do something about it. But when you consider going to the product from Tangerine, you find all your oSongs are locked to an oPod. It makes more economic sense to shut up and put up then to repurchase all that content again. Consumers would lose their voice.

So what is DRM about? DRM is asking the government to take away all rights from the consumer and give it to the producer. It's not the government's job to create revenue streams through new laws. Nor should the government be giving unlimited rights to one group over another. The government's purpose is to have as little intervention as possible while ensuring that creative individuals can be remunerated for their efforts.

As a student in the New Media Arts program at Ryerson University I have discovered that an over abundance of copyright protection rather than protecting artists is actually stifling cultural capitol. We have moved past a society where experiences and concepts can be commodified, we can't go back and we are better for it.

S.41, Copyright Act: 163 Â­words, versus S.31, Bill C­61: 4,311 Â­words. That's not "an amendment".