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Copyright Reform Process
SUBMISSIONS RECEIVED REGARDING THE CONSULTATION PAPERS
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Submission from Peter Wilhelm received on September 8, 2001 08:38 AM via e-mail
Subject: Comments - Government of Canada Copyright Reform
Comments - Government of Canada Copyright Reform
c/o Intellectual Property Policy Directorate
Industry Canada
235 Queen Street
5th Floor West
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H5 Canada
fax: (613) 941-8151
copyright-droitdauteur@ic.gc.ca (text, HTML, WordPerfect and MSWord
formats accepted)
To Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate and other concerned agencies:
Dear Sirs
I write to express my most grave concern regarding the extreme
intellectual property provisions of the Consultation Paper on
Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI).
These measures, based on the hideous, unconstitutional US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), give far too much power to publishers, at the expense of and destruction of indivdiuals' rights. The DMCA itself is already under legal challenge in the US, has gravely chilled scientists' and computer security researchers' freedom of expression around the world for fear of being prosecuted in the US, and resulted in the arrest of a Russian programmer. The CPDCI provisions, which serve no one but (largely American) corporate copyright interests, and not the interests of the people, are just as overbroad as those of the DMCA. As well as providing no protection against copywright infringment!! If any thing DMCA increases the probability of infringment!!
These provisions would amend the Canadian Copyright Act to ban, with few or no exceptions, software and other tools that allow copy prevention technologies to be bypassed. This would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee of freedom of speech, and similar guarantees in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since such tools are necessary to exercise lawful uses, including fair use, reverse engineering, computer security research and many others.
I urge you to remove these controversial and anti-freedom provisions from the CPDCI language. The DMCA is already an international debacle, and embarrassment ! Its flaws should not be imported and forced on Canadians. Making Canada look like a pack of ignorant fools serving the oppressive corporate interests!
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Dr Peter Wilhelm
[Address removed]
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