ARCHIVED — David Bauer
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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 David Bauer received on September 11, 2001via e-mail
Subject: CPDCI mistake
To Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate and other concerned agencies:
I write to express my concern regarding the extreme intellectual property provisions of the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI). When I first heard of this move to a total restricted society, I first thought that we as a society are more intelligent than that and it would never happen here. I am sorry to say that obviously I was wrong. Once again, the Canadian government is bowing to outside pressures without any interest in what is best for its citizens. When the Canadian government bows to corporate wishes instead of the wishes of the people, this is when I wish I had pride remaining for my country. Through mismanagement and misguided actions, the country once looked upon with envie by most of the world, Canada has become a follower of US doctrine unable to stand for itself or anything of worth. When the country is too weak to stand on its own, it garners the pity of the world. I, for one, do not like to be pitied.
These measures, based on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), give far too much power to publishers, at the expense 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, 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 remove these controversial and anti-freedom provisions from the CPDCI language.
The DMCA is already an international debacle. Its flaws should not be imported and forced on Canadians.
Sincerely,
David Bauer
(Address removed)
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