ARCHIVED — Neil Curtis
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COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS
SUBMISSIONS RECEIVED REGARDING THE CONSULTATION PAPERS
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Submission from Neil Curtis received on September 14, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Canadian copyright reform
September 14, 2001To Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate and other concerned agencies:
I wish to express my grave concern over the copyright and intellectual property measures in the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPDCI).
These measures, which are based on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), give too much power over copyright issues to corporations at the expense of the individual's rights. This power has been abused in the United States, with the arrest of the Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, and the threats of lawsuits against scientists wanting to speak for academic purposes.
The provisions in the CPDCI would extend the Copyright Act to ban any such act, using software or other tools, to bypass copyright protection schemes. This violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee of freedom of speech, as well as prohibits the individual to exercise lawful uses, such as fair use, computer security research, and many others.
I also feel that proposed legislation similar to the CPDCI should be made more public, as it has wide reaching effects for all citizens of this country. The DMCA in the United States was passed very quietly under corporate pressure, and the general public found out only after it became law. The CPDCI is not widely known about outside the technology sector, or even in this sector. Even if the intent of this legislation is not to remove the individual's rights, it can be applied beyond the scope of which it is intended, and the people should be made aware of this before it is too late.
As a Canadian citizen and an aspiring computer scientist, I urge you to remove the controversial and anti-freedom provisions from the CPDCI. I feel a future where corporations wield this amount of power over the individual to be very chilling indeed. The DMCA in the United States has already drawn international criticism for its flaws. Please do not enforce these on Canadians as well.
Sincerely,
Neil Curtis
(address removed)
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