ARCHIVED — Harris July 24

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Harris

COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS

SUBMISSIONS RECEIVED REGARDING THE CONSULTATION PAPERS

Documents received have been posted in the official language in which they were submitted. All are posted as received by the departments, however all address information has been removed.

Submission from Sandy Harris received on July 24, 2001 11:49 PM via e-mail

Subject: A first comment

I will likely comment in more detail after reading your papers more carefully, but a few things leap out of the page at first glance:

You suggest a new version of the Act should:

prevent the circumvention of technologies used to protect copyright material

However, the only act I know of that currently attempts to do that is the US DMCA, a flawed piece of legislation if there ever was one. I am completely horrified at the notion that anything similar might be enacted here.

Please look at the details of the DVD CCA case: http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/

In particular, the amicus curie briefs such as:

The ACM (Assoc. for Computing Machinery, the oldest and most prestigious professional association in the field) Law Committee: http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/MPAA_DVD_cases/20010126_ny_acmlc_amicus.html

A group of top computer science people: http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/MPAA_DVD_cases/20010126_ny_progacad_amicus.html

Any Canadian act must protect fair use, not give arbitrary privileges to copyright holders. For example, circumventing copy protection to get an excerpt to quote in a review must clearly be legal, since such quotes have been legitimate fair use as long as there's been copyright law.>/P>

Also, it must protect free speech, in particular open discussion of flaws in cryptographic systems, including those used for copy protection.

I have a T-shirt with the DeCSS code on it. The DVD vendors are suing the T-shirt vendor because the shirt has code on it:
http://www.copyleft.net/images/p1.gif
I do not want to see any Canadian law that would allow such a suit.

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