ARCHIVED — Seth Arnold
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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 received on September 10, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Consulation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues
To the People of Canada:I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am a programmer, working on security research projects. I take great pride in my programs, and even see them as a form of speech, much like authors view their novels, and poets their poems.
It shocked me to discover that I am not allowed to write all software that I might wish to write. My government censors me. There are certain classes of software that I am forbidden to write -- specifically, the class of software that would allow me to exercise my "fair use" rights of the Berne Copyright Convention.
Note that the Consulation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues would similarly restrict the rights of Canadians -- there will be certain classes of software that Canadian's just could not write. Canadian citizens who write software to defeat encryption schemes in order to exercise their "fair use" rights would also be censored.
The saddest part of the whole mess is that my rights were removed so that the "entertainment industry" could "protect" their content by using extremely poor encryption! In the recent Adobe eBooks matter, some of the encryption technology was known to Julius Ceasar. The average mathematics undergraduate can break this class of 'encryption' in an hour's work.
Some of the other encryption techniques were similarly poor, their cryptanalysis being freely available in books written nearly 50 years ago.
So, rather than punishing the companies supplying horrible encryption products, claiming "unbreakable", we are punishing the Free Market forces that demonstrate that such companies are lying through their teeth.
I cannot fathom any set of circumstances where this is beneficial to society.
Please, do not make the same mistake the United States made. We make plenty of mistakes, so take the chances to learn from us...
Thank you.
Seth Arnold
(address removed)
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