ARCHIVED — Ryan McGuigan
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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 Ryan McGuigan received on September 9, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: DMCA
To Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate and other concerned agencies:
As a citizen of the United States, the first country to adopt legislation such as the DMCA, I am writing to you today to plead with you to not adopt similar legislation in Canada.
This type of legislation gives far too much power to publishers, at the expense of indivdiuals' rights and freedom of speach. The DMCA is already under legal challenge in the US, has gravely chilled scientists' and computer security researchers' freedom of speach around the world for fear of being prosecuted in the US, and resulted in the arrest of a Russian programmer. Russia has publicly warned it's own citizens in the computer industry of the dangers of traveling to the U.S., the irony of which is absolutely incredible. The proposed CPDCI provisions, which serve no one but (largely American) corporate copyright interests, are just as overbroad as those of the DMCA.
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 stop such draconian copyright measures from becoming law in Canada, as it will hurt the general public and in the long run it will be devastating to the progress of science and technology in Canada. The DMCA is already an international debacle. Its flaws should not be imported and forced on Canadians.
On a more personal level, I am hoping that Canada remains a country that I would consider relocating to in response to further anti-freedom U.S. legislation. It would certainly be convenient for me to stay on the same continent as the rest of my family, but if that is not possible I will be forced overseas to continue in my profession.
Sincerely,
Ryan McGuigan
(Address removed)
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