ARCHIVED — Brett Delmage
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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 Brett Delmage received on September 15, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Comments on CPCDI
2001 September 14
Comments
Government of Canada Copyright Reform
c/o Intellectual Property Policy Directorate
Industry Canada
To: Industry Canada the Department of Canadian Heritage the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate other concerned agencies
I am a software engineer who has been employed continuously in Canadian telecommunications industry in the Ottawa area for 20 years. I am also a hobbyist who works with and modifies existing (legitimately licensed) software to better support electronic communications for non-profit associations and community networking. I am a former director of the National Capital FreeNet Inc. and have been a licensed amateur radio operator since 1977. I currently hold top secret security clearance.
In my capacity as a software professional and technical / software supporter of computer-based community networking tools, I would like to express serious concerns 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 unreasonable power to publishers, at the expense of indivdiuals' rights. They stifle Canadians' ability to innovate and interoperate.
Here are but two examples of legitimate, everyday work that would likely be prohibited by the proposed provisions:
- the ability to play any of the many DVDs which I have purchased and legally own, on any of my linux-based computers for which there was no commercial DVD player software available.
- the ability to translate (Adobe Acrobat) PDF files on the City of Ottawa web site that describe *public* City Council business, into ordinary plain ASCII text, so that residents with low end computers that are incapable of running graphical programs (e.g. MS Windows) can read these public documents.
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 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. I believe that 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 use, reverse engineering, computer security research and many others.
Please remove these controversial and anti-freedom provisions from the CPDCI language. The DMCA is already proven to be flawed. We don't need to repeate the mistake in Canada, putting at risk our economic competitiveness, or giving unnecessary power to the US software industry.
Please keep me informed about the status and progress of these proposals. I would appreciate a confirmation of receipt of this response.
yours sincerely,
Brett Delmage
(Address removed)
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