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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 Bill Gray received on September 08, 2001 1:26 AM via e-mail
Subject: Canadian copyright reform
To Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate and other concerned agencies:
I have recently heard about the extreme intellectual property provisions of the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI).
From what I understand, these provisions are based upon the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). As a Canadian citizen and computer engineer living in the United States, I was extremely dismayed, but not surprised at this act's passing, as it serves the largely American corporate copyright interests at the expense of individual rights. I expect this sort of emphasis on profits over freedom in the United States, but have always lauded and defended Canada's position as a beacon of individual freedoms to which the rest of the world (especially the United States) should look for guidance.
The legality of the DMCA is currently being challenged but has already caused grave concern amongst computer scientists and computer security researchers the world over. The threat of prosecution in the US has been shown to be very real with the recent arrest of a Russian programmer. The CPDCI provisions, just like the DMCA, would give far too much power to the publishers at the expense of the rights of individuals.
The amendments to the Canadian Copyright Act to ban, with few or no exceptions, software that bypasses copy prevention technologies is in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms' guarantee of freedom of speech, as well as similar guarantees in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is due to the many lawful uses of such software tools, such as fair use, reverse engineering, research and many others.
I stronly urge you to maintain Canada's position as a beacon to the world of individuals' rights and remove the controversial and anti-freedom aspects of the CPDCI language. The DMCA is an international embarassement for the United States, and I would be ashamed if the same flaws were in turn forced upon our fellow citizens.
Sincerely,
William Gray
[Address removed]
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