ARCHIVED — David Baerg
Archived Content
Information identified as archived on the Web is for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It has not been altered or updated after the date of archiving. Web pages that are archived on the Web are not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards. As per the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada, you can request alternate formats on the "Contact Us" page.
Copiright 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 David Baerg received on September 11, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues
To Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate and other concerned agencies:I am concerned with the intellectual property provisions of the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI) which I can only call extreme.
Using the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as a basis for our own laws is just plain wrong. The DMCA is currently under legal challenge in the US and has been described by many people, experts included, as removing the rights of individuals' while giving an unprecedented amount of power to publishers.
The DMCA has led to scientists' and computer security researchers' restricting or stopping their work for fear of being prosecuted in the US, a country which claims to hold freedom of expression near and dear (I believe code is expression and should not be restricted). In fact the DMCA has resulted in the arrest of a Russian programmer for DMCA violations. Even the company who he supposedly harmed (Adobe) called for his release.
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 dealing, 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 Baerg
(address removed)
- Date modified:
