ARCHIVED — Dean Pokotylo
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Copyright Reform Process
Submission 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 Dean Pokotylo received on September 11, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI) & US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
2001-09-11To Whom it may Concern at 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).
These measures, based on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), give far too much power to publishers, at the expense of individuals' 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 over broad 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 dealing, reverse engineering, computer security research and many others.
In effect, if you read the scope of the law and it's implications. You will discover that the DMCA in effects bans or outlaws public libraries, school text books (unless school boards are willing to purchase a new text book every year for each student for each course. The same law makes it illegal to share any type of book (this implies that parents or tutors can not read nor glance at text book to help or aid a student to understand or learn what he/she is having trouble with).The same law makes the vendor not responsible for their product (you can not read the licensing agreement unless you buy the product, if the product is falsely advertised with over specifications or entirely false claims, or the product doesn't work at all... the company is not responsible for it's product, the consumer is responsible for believing the advertised claims). The same law also implies that any company has the rights at their own agenda to modify, cancel, revoke, or charge more for the product (even if it has been purchased outright) at anytime it chooses too with no warning what so ever.
I also don't appreciate the limited and extremely short time frame that has been given to this unfair and totally ridiculous law.
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,
Dean Pokotylo
(address removed)
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