ARCHIVED — Lorne Salter.
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Submission from Lorne Salter received on September 24, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Another pending bad piece of legislation from US
I predict this will find its way into the FTAA negotiations similar to what happened with the US Digital Millenium copyright law. Another reason to nip it in the bud by rejecting the ideas in Consultation
Paper on Digital Copyright Issues and Consultation Paper on the Application of the Copyright Act's Compulsory Retransmission Licence to the Internet. I also urge the Dept of industry and Canadian Heritage to extend the comment period on the proposals - everybody is preoccupied with the tragedy, and major changes in our legal traditions should not be allowed to go forward while the public is dealing with this tragedy.
Thank you very much.
Lorne Salter MA Criminology (U of Toronto)
(Address removed)
Again - I highly recommend www.eff.org which is supported by major thinkers, stakeholders, and companies in the high tech arena for clear balanced information.
the draft Hollings/Stephens copyright legislation, "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA), principally authored by the Walt Disney corporation. This bill, would force virtually all consumer electronics to include mandatory "digital rights management" (DRM) copy-prevention and use-control mechanims to "protect" all digital content (whether copyrighted or not), and essentially destroy completely the public's already endangered fair use rights, first sale doctrine, and public domain rights. The SSSCA represents an outright assault against this balanced view of copyright. Under the SSSCA, Congress would abdicate its responsibility to protect the public's interest in copyright, leaving content owners to dictate terms to technology companies behind closed doors. The public would be left with no voice in this process, and with crippled technologies that permit only the uses that Hollywood has the unilateral ability to control. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), University professors and visiting foreign programmers are already being legally threatened by the music industry and even criminally prosecuted at the behest of software companies for what always has been and should legal activities such as research and making proprietary formats more accessible. The DMCA was a major step backwards for both the public side of the copyright bargain and the rights of scientists and researchers to study and report on computer security. Hollywood forces are now hoping that this "DMCA 2" will reach even further, creating a direct federal mandate that DRM systems be included in every technology that interacts with digital content. Please do not let this happen. I urge you to vote AGAINST SSSCA when introduced. The pendulum has already swung too far away from the public interest.
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