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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 Sebastian Ip received on July 28, 2001 9:13 PM via e-mail
Subject: About a Canadian DMCA
Dear Gov. Of Canada
I feel that there is no reason at all for Canada to even concider a change to copyright law to deal with the so call "Digital Media" of today.
Copyright laws currently have no problems dealing with material being distributed on the Internet. The so call DMCA in the USA have caused nothing be problems for the freedom of speech and so far has not promoted but restricted the development of technology.
Take the recent case of the Russian programmer who was arrested for giving a speech about the weakness in Adobe's e-book solutions. There the reasons to arrest the programmer was because he help create a "circumvention device". I see no problem with a circumvention device. The device does not cause any financial lost by itself to the owner because of illegal copies of e-books being made. The said program can allow copies of books to be made and thus results in lost sell. But the problems is not in the creation of a circumvention device but in the technically incompetent solution that Adobe created. Companies should not be able to build a business based on hiding behind a law.
The truth is that the USA's DMCA is a questionable law as to who's right does it protect. It does not protect the rights of the majority instead it protect the bottom lines of a few rich powerful companies. Those with the funds to press with legal action against so call offenders.
So far the technology broom has flavored the USA more then Canada for whatever reasons. The current field of most growth is understandablely information security. Those firms in the US now dealing with security will with the DMCA have many problems dealing with cryptography because the DMCA outlaw such devices. Why should we follow suit with the US when we can present our best "welcome" to such firms? What better place for them to practice their business then a free open country? We should not prevent them from coming to us because corporate greed in the USA is pushing them out?
Concider the other major issue with the DMCA. The case of the group of researcher who were invited by the RIAA to attempt to break their audio protection technology. They achieved their goals of removing all the attempts of the RIAA's technology to prevent copying of audio material. When they attempted to publish their research they were threaten with legal action because under the DMCA's terms they had created a circumvention device. With the much published "brain drain" of our best scientific minds to the USA why should we even remotely concider changing our laws so that our copyright laws are just as unreasonable as the US's?
The simple can clear fact is the idea that technology designed to protech copyrighted material should need to be protected by law seems to be a easy way out for technology companies. Just as breaking someone's door lock without entering is just vandalism breaking someone's encryption method is not stealing. In fact you are doing customers of this technology a service by publicly showing the flaw in the technology. You are not violating any rights of the company that created the technology. The company has a responsibility to provide it's paying customers working technology not legal solutions they can get that from a law firm.
By the same lines of thinking one should think if we were to adopt similar laws for digital copyrights as the DMCA we should try to use our laws to protect ourselves from anything. We should not train our air force pilots to fight we should train them to serve crease and decease letters to anti-aircraft gunners during their peace keeping missions! For truly that makes perfect sense.
As Canadians do we not believe that our country is the standard of freedom in the world? Do we not promote the achievement of our scholars? Why then do we want to do anything that can remotely cause harm to our believes?
Yours
Sebastian Ip
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