ARCHIVED — Trottier July 25

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 Tom A. Trottier received on July 25, 2001 3:44 AM via e-mail

Objet : Comments on new Copyright legislation in Canada

Tom Trottier,. 2001 July 25

1. Internet Broadcast Distribution Undertakings (IBDUs) should be permitted to rebroadcast radio or TV signals within Canada subject to the same terms as earlier BDUs. The law should remain technology neutral, though being updated to cover new possibilities, whoever uses the new technology.

2. I find it alarming that the Annex of A Framework for Copyright Reform
( http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp01101e.html ) has no mention of fair dealing rights or exceptions for education or research. Has it been written by the public service, or by the industry ? Or is it not an issue, since the government has decided that such uses will be maintained and expanded. If so, where is this firmly described?

The Annex covers only issues of property rights. It is a biased and incomplete treatment of the issues and should be revised. The main issue should be: how do we promote the Core Principles of the "CONSULTATION PAPER ON DIGITAL COPYRIGHT ISSUES"

The purpose of copyright, like patents, should be to encourage creators by rewarding them for making their creations accessible. Their creations should remain accessible and not be lost as technologies change.

If information is encrypted, the owner of the physical medium (e.g. CD, DVD, ...) should have the same rights as paper owners, namely,
     - to copy info to avoid the results of physical damage, especially since new media is more fragile.
     -to excerpt or use material for educational or research purposes Programs or tools to assist these purposes should not be outlawed. Educational and research institutions should have the right to demand these tools from the publisher to further their objectives.

"It would be ironic if the principal role that copyright came to serve in digital networked environments was to protect encrypted works against decryption (that is, ensuring that copyrighted works cannot be read rather than, as has been its traditional function, to promote the dissemination of knowledge). Any effort to decrypt a digital work would necessarily require intermediate copying of the encrypted version. Such copying would arguably be beyond the decryption privilege established in the U.S. in the Sega v. Accolade case{HYPERLINK "samuelson.html" \l "fn36"}[37] and would certainly be beyond the decompilation privilege established in the European directive on computer software protection.{HYPERLINK "samuelson.html" \l "fn37"}[38] " (from Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh Law School in http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/equipes/technologie/conferences/ae/sa muelson.html )

Encryption will result in the total loss of some information as technologies become obsolete. Certainly, businesses have the quarter's bottom line as their goal and are much less interested in whether someone 50 years from now can see what they made. But governments do have that goal. Our schools teach and research history, not our businesses.

If material is encrypted, it should be treated as a Trade Secret, not as copyrightable material. At the very least, we should not apply article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty or Article 18 of the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty to educators and researchers and their suppliers.

3. The government should consider "subject rights," when a person is the subject of a photograph, database, or other record, digital or not. Such a subject should be able to
     -know of the record
     -correct mistakes
     -delete distortions to which she has not consented

It may prove, in the coming information age, that protecting bit patterns from copying is essentially impractical. In that case, Canada should consider other means of compensating our poets, our directors, our musicians.

When collecting the fare costs more than providing the service, we should find other financing methods.

(address, phone number, and e-mail address removed)