ARCHIVED — Russell

COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS

SUBMISSIONS RECEIVED REGARDING THE CONSULTATION PAPERS

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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.

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Submission from Alexander Russell received on July 28, 2001 11:32 PM via e-mail

Subject: copyright

Copyright in the Digital Age

Please not follow the United States lead and change Canadian copyright laws that drastically change the balance of rights in the favour of large corporations.

Currently if I buy a book I can read it anywhere, lend it to people, I can sell it, I can read it 20 years from now. If I buy an encrypted ebook, or other digital work, the only way I have to ensure that I can read what I bought 20 years from now is to decrypt it and copy it a widely supported digital format. I should be allowed to do this to protect my fair use rights to the 'book' I have bought. I may have different players in my car and home, or different parts of my home. I should be able to copy a legally purchased work onto different formats to make it portable.

Tools and research that are used to decrypt digital works have many legitimate uses. For hearing or vision impaired people the only way to read an encrypted digital work is to decrypt it an run through a specialized reader that either reads the work out-loud or displays it on special large screens.

Regional encoding of digital works does nothing to prevent copyright violations. It is just a tool to enable large corporations to gouge their customers, and cause artificial scarcity in some regions. Often a regionally encoded work will not be available in one's own region making it necessary to bypass the regional code to view a legally acquired work. Regional encoding should be banned.

Large scale pirates do not decrypt digital works, or otherwise concern themselves with access controls. Large scale commercial pirates simply make bit for bit digital copies. Only individual consumers wishing to play a legally purchased digital work on more than one type of player hardware require bypassing access controls. This by passing of access controls for personal use should be legal.

Copyright laws should be changed to force the disclosure of how to decrypt, or otherwise remove access controls from, digital works after the copyright has elapsed.

Any new protections enacted should only be applied to large scale commercial pirating of copyrighted works.

Clean room reverse engineering should be a legal activity. It allows legitimate research for both commercial and academic reasons.

I support copyright laws that help authors receive fair payment for their works, but I do not wish to see the law changed in a way that hinders normal peoples access to legally purchased digital works. I do not support any extension to the time that copyright protects works. I do not support prohibiting tampering with access controls. I do not support granting any new or extra rights to copyright holders that take away long held rights to fair use.

ISP's (Internet service Providers) should be considered common carriers. They should no more have responsibility for the data transmitted over their networks than do the phone companies. Data residing on the ISP's own servers, not the hard-drives of their customers, is the only data they should be responsible for, and then only after a legitimate authority has instructed them that there is an issue that needs to be resolved. ISP's should not have to police any of the data being placed on public servers, or data transmitted over their networks.

Software patents should be abolished. Most software patents I have read could be 'discovered' by any competent programmer with a few minutes thought. I have read software patents for techniques that I independently discovered as a teenage programmer. I have never seen any development in software deserving of patent protection.

Alex Russell
(Address removed)