ARCHIVED — Jean-Francois Poirier

COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS

SUBMISSIONS RECEIVED REGARDING THE CONSULTATION PAPERS

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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.

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Submission from Jean-Francois Poirier received on September 8, 2001 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 write to express my grave concern regarding the extreme intellectual property provisions of the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI).

Canada has never been a country based on excessive control. It always been seen as leaning towards basic human rights and protection of the individual. Although copyright law has been put in place initially to defend the rights of the works owners, the proposed provisions would put in place such drastic and restrictive measures upon end consumers (and thus individuals expected to support work owners) as to violate their basic right to freedom of expression. Furthermore, these measures, which are conceived with an industry in mind (and the not the artists from which it profits) would hinder real artists outside the industry circle in their attempts to exert their freedom of speech.

I do not believe in repressive measures to deal with any complex situations. I believe that alternatives and deep reforms that take into account new situations as well as human factors always lead to better results, less expenditures, and better social behavior.

As much as I do not condone piracy, i believe that piracy exists because of fundamentals flaws in the current system dealing with copyrighted works.

The provisions under evaluation 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. Also, such measures would give a much exaggerated control to publishers over consumers' rights. One only has to look at the current DVD zoning fiasco to get the idea.

I urge the Canadian government to follow in the trail it always has, which is based on recognition of the human individual, of his responsibilites and intelligence and to remove these DCMA-influenced, extreme and unacceptable provisions. The DCMA is already challenged in the USA and has already shown its fundamentally ugly flaws.

Canadians don't need American capitalism tainting their laws and identities.

Sincerely,

Jean-Francois Poirier
(address removed)