ARCHIVED — Gord Wait

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 Gord Wait received on September 13, 2001 via e-mail

Subject: Comments - Government of Canada Copyright Reform

To whom it may concern:

I am writing (emailing) to express my concern as a Canadian Citizen over the proposals being considered for the reform of the Canadian Copyright Laws, as documented in the CONSULTATION PAPER ON DIGITAL COPYRIGHT ISSUES June 22, 2001 on the website http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp01099e.html

I completely agree that copyright laws need to exist to protect those who wish to receive the benefit of their efforts.

What I totally disagree is the legistative measures being considered in the to deter the tampering or circumvention of techological and rights management or other similar technologies.

While these measures on the surface seem to be well intentioned, I believe they will have the negative effect of allowing uncivilized or even potentially illegal activity being undertaken by authors of such technologies without knowledge and/or desire of the intended victims, and make it a crime to investigate and disable potentially harmful technology.

For example, these changes may make it a crime to try to disable intrusive software on personal computers, since the manufacturers of such software could claim copyright violation if an individual were to try to reverse engineer said software in an investigation.

Said intrusive software could include viruses, and or privacy violating "snoopware" as only a couple of examples.

It would not be satisfactory to me if the government opted to keep these measures but give an escape clause to only police or other official persons. Why?

Two reasons,

1) For a simple pratical matter: software/multimedia technology is at an infancy and growing in number and complexity day by day. There are not enough skilled people or budgets in these services to handle the tasks at hand, never mind taking on the investigation of potentially dangerous technologies.

2)Also, consider my opinion that the Canadian Government has been inadequate at making technological decisions without full public consultations on new multimedia technologies.

The fiasco of the entirely pointless "V-CHIP" ought to be proof enough, and the "guilty of piracy so we'll fine you instantly" blank tape and CDROM tax is another example of this disturbing trend.

The extremely short window of opportunity provided to comment on this copyright issue leads me to believe that the Canadian Government will once again decide and implement law reform based on input from a small but extremely biased group of corporations, without due consideration to the unfair and dangerous restrictions it puts on law abiding citizens.

Yes, by all means use laws to prosecute copyright violators, but nail the perpetrators, not the rest of us.

Please consider extending the timetable of the public consultation to allow interested parties more time to participate in a discussion.

Thank You

Gord Wait
(Address removed)