ARCHIVED — Aden Seaman
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COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS
SUBMISSIONS 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 Aden Seaman received on September 15, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Comments on Canadian Copyright Reform
Hello,
I am writing to express my concern over the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues.
The changes to Canadian copyright laws which are proposed give far too much power to corporations while further limiting the rights of individuals. Changes which ban the circumvention of copy-prevention technologies are completely unacceptable. They impact lawful, useful, and widely-enjoyed activities such as the fair-use of digital information, and reverse-engineering of software and schemes for academic, security, and business purposes. Furthermore, the changes violate the right to free speech as guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
To see the bad aspects of such changes, one has only to consider the egregious Digital Millenium Copyright Act which was imposed on the citizens of the United States. These laws have dealt a serious blow to freedom of speech in the States, and have turned scientists, programmers, and citizens into criminals.
One of the things which I am especially proud of in being Canadian is the freedom we citizens have. A set of laws such as those proposed in the C.P.D.C.I. will only give corporations the power to further exploit people and silence their speech, while enlarging their already massive bank accounts. Innocent people of Canada will be imprisoned for years for simply exercising freedoms they have always enjoyed. Their speech and expression will be muted. People will be further marginalised as "consumers" while the corporations treat them as resources to be exploited.
I have observed time and time again how the U.S. and other countries have implemented laws and made decisions which benefit the country's corporations, while further limiting the freedom of its citizens. All of those times I have felt proud to live in Canada, where such a mentality is less pervasive. I consider many of the social constructs and decisions of the U.S. to be anti-examples for the rest of the world. The D.M.C.A. is a perfect example of this. Each new law of this type is a blow to the citizens of that country. Corporations are continually given new legal methods to extort people and the environment while raking in more money than ever, and citizens are losing the legal methods to fight back. Under these laws liberty-seeking people are sentenced to years in jail with incredible fines; their freedoms removed, and their money taken. These are people who have hurt no one and have damaged nothing. No government should allow their citizens to be treated this way, let alone pass laws which facilitate their repression. The Canadian government must not repeat the mistakes made in the States.
I believe the duty of any government is to protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens, and provide an environment in which people can live and pursue happiness. I think the Canadian government is far ahead of most other governments in the world in providing for this. We have a health-care system that is the envy of the world, our education and social-benefit systems exceed those of the U.S., and we enjoy many liberties.
Digital technology and the Internet have afforded people an incredible ability to communicate with a speed and clarity never before seen. They have broken-down information boundaries that have previously stood in people's ways, and have given people access to vast amounts of diverse and freely-flowing information. For such powerful and beneficial things to be hampered by the greed of a money-hungry minority would be a terrible travesty.
If this reform process is used for anything, it should be to augment the rights and powers of Canadian citizens.
I ask you to consider what I have written, and I hope that my message strikes a chord with its readers. I ask you to guard the rights of Canadian citizens, and to put the freedoms and lives of your fellow humans before anything else.
Please do not allow these changes to occur.
Sincerely,
Aden Seaman
(Address removed)
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