ARCHIVED — Robinson, Alastair
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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 Alastair M. Robinson received on September 8, 2001 12:12 PM via e-mail
Subject: Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI)
Dear Sirs,
I write to express my alarm regarding the extreme intellectual property provisions of the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI).
While I have no direct connection with Canada, I consider myself to be an interested party because I am part of the Open Source software movement, and have seen the problems created by the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), on which the CPCDI measures are based.
The DMCA has caused a great deal of concern, not only in America, but worldwide, as corporations and media bodies have sought to supress software (DeCSS – largely mis-reported: this is *not* a piracy tool, but part of the chain of tools required for *viewing* DVD movies), information (Ed Felton's paper describing shortcomings of the SDMI Watermark schemes), and even to imprison the authors of inconvenient software (Dmitry Sklyarov, Advanced eBook Processor).
These incidents have made the US a considerably less attractive place to hold security conferences – with many academics advocating a boycott – and have raised serious constitutional issues which have yet to be resolved.
I sincerely believe that, like the DCMA, the provisions within the CPDCI would give publishers far too much control over their publications, and seriously erode consumers' fair use rights.
I truly hope that the draconian measures the US are currently suffering will not spread to Canada or beyond.
Sincerely,
––Alastair M. Robinson
[E-mail address removed]
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