Protect Information Technology Property Rights

The following is text taken from a petition to parliament. While the context was copyright, it indirectly calls upon governments to modernise other related policies such as privacy and competition policy as well.

Petition is at: Petition to protect Information Technology property rights

To the House of Commons in Parliament Assembled

We, the undersigned Canadians or residents of Canada draw attention of the House to the following:

• THAT technical protection measures (TPMs), as implemented by some copyright holders, can violate end users privacy rights, prevent consumers from enjoying content on devices and software of their independent choice, and circumvent or compromise the security of their computers, including rendering them vulnerable to attack, as was the case in the well publicized Sony–BMG RootKit fiasco.
• THAT TPMs can be applied to both content and devices, and thus the copyright holder and the owner of the device have rights that must be respected;
• THAT while copyright holders own rights on the protected work, private citizens usually own the devices used to access those works;
• THAT TPMs can be abused to harm the interest of the copyright holder and/or the device owner;
• THAT numerous Canadian organizations have opposed the legal protection of TPMs applied by copyright holders or manufacturers to devices, including (but not limited to) the Canadian privacy community, Digital Security Coalition, Canadian Music Creators Coalition, Appropriation Art, Canadian Federation of Students, Canadian Library Association, Canadian Art Museum Directors' Organization, and several thousand Canadians who signed the Petition for Users' Rights.
• THAT existing Canadian legislation, such as the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, prohibits the condition of the supply of a product or service on a person waiving their rights;
• THAT the Canadian Competition Act section 77 regulates against exclusive dealing and tied selling;

THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon Parliament to prohibit the application of a technical protection measure to a device without the informed consent of the owner of the device, and to prohibit the conditioning of the supply of content to the purchase or use of a device which has a technical measure applied to it. We further call upon Parliament to recognise the right of citizens to personally control their own communication devices, and to choose software based on their own personal criteria.