ARCHIVED — Rhoda Baker
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COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS
SUBMISSIONS RECEIVED REGARDING THE CONSULTATION PAPERS
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Submission from Rhoda Baker received on September 11, 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 am writing to voice my concerns about the intellectual property provisions of the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI). I feel the provisions are too extreme.
The provisions are similar to those in the US Digital Milenium Copyright Act (DMCA) which are too broad and give far to much power to copyright holders at the expense of the fair use rights of individuals. It should also be noted that the DMCA is currently facing legal challenge in the US. It severely limits scientists' and computer security researchers freedom of expression around the world because they fear being prosecuted in the US like that Russian programmer Dmitry Skylarov. The CPDCI provisions mainly protect American corporate copyright interests with no benefit to individuals and are also too broad, like those of the DMCA.
These provisions would change the Canadian Copyright Act and effectively ban, with little or no exception, software and other tools that allow copy prevention technologies to be bypassed, regardless of whether such tools would normally have had perfectly legitimate uses. Such uses as, for example, fair dealing, reverse engineering, computer security research etc. It violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee of freedom of speech and similar guarantees in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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,
Rhoda Baker
(address removed)
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