ARCHIVED — Ian Timshel
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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 Ian Timshel received on September 12, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: US Digital Millennium Copyright Act
To Industry Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate and other concerned agencies:I write to express my grave concern regarding the extreme intellectual property provisions of the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI).
There are new models for business and culture evolving that need and want to be leading the way in the years to come. The DMCA is not the way to to allow new avenues for the digital age to progress.
These measures, based on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), give far too much power to publishers, at the expense of individuals' rights. 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 CPCDI provisions, which serve no one but (largely American) corporate copyright interests, are just as overbroad as those of the DMCA.
These measures propose to give too much control to too few people. We need to remain encouraging to all who are learning and helping develop the path ahead.
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. 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.
I strongly disagree with the breaches of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This stance is very "old" thinking and will serve to make divisions where they are not needed and counter productive. There needs to be a bigger vision than the copyright laws that have come before.
Please take the time to create a document that will continue to encourage and nurish a vibrant imaginative culture of software and digital developments that are careful to retain the freedoms we all need to feel like "Big Brother" isn't inevidible. I want a world for my kids that is less like facism and more like a democracy.
I urge you to remove these controversial and anti-freedom provisions from the CPCDI language. The DMCA is already an international debacle. Its flaws should not be imported and forced on Canadians.
Respectfully,
Ian Timshel
(Address removed)
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