ARCHIVED — Stefanos Kiakas
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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 Stefanos Kiakas received on September 15, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Copyright Reform Process
(Address removed)
Comments - Government of Canada Copyright Reform
c/o Intellectual Property Policy Directorate
Industry Canada
235 Queen Street
5th Floor West
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0H5
I am writing to you today to express my concerns with respect to the proposed changes to the Copyright Act, specifically the prohibition of devices that circumvent any technological measures used to protect copyrighted material.
An enactment of such a law would give copyright owners unprecendented power to create laws, limit individual freedoms, limit inovation, and increase costs. It would destroy the notion of copyright.
Even though technological measures used to protect copyrighted material do not prevent coping they are being advocated by copyright holders. The same arguments have been made in the past by copyright holders with respect to video cassette recorders. Yet if we examine the results, video rentals and video sales are a major revenue stream for copyright holders.
Such a law would limit basic individual freedoms. It would make the possesion of a tool illegal whether or not there was a legitimate use for such a tool. Yet a tool by itself cannot break any laws, it cannot act or reason. We know firearms can be used to take life yet we do not prohibit them. We do not jail people or companies that make or sell them since we recognize they are tools and, if used lawfully, may exist in a free and democratic society. If we outlaw devices that circumvent technological measures used to protect copyrighted material what value do we place on human life? What type of "kafkaesque" society are we building when a song or movie is worth more than a human life?
Such a law would also limit our freedom of expression. After all what is software but ideas and mathematics whether expresed in words or code. Would a piece of paper with the algorithm or an email with instructions in plain English describing how to circumvent such measures be considered a prohibited device? How about a compiler that converted the plain English instructions into a program to circumvent such measures? How about computers which executed these instructions?
Would copy protection schemes include defective products? Copyright holders are releasing CDs which contain manufacturing defects as a form of copy protection. The theory behind this type of copy protection is to use the CD player's error correction abilities to compensate for the false data, but since computers depend on the digital data they fail to read the defective CD. Therefore if such a defective CD is accidentaly scratched it will start to skip since the error correction mechanism will no longer be able to compensate for the additional errors. This reason alone should be enough to see why a law prohibiting circumvention devices is a bad idea.
A law prohibiting devices that circumvent any technological measures used to protect copyrighted material will also encourage the creation of cartels with the ability to create new laws to govern how copyrighted works are used. They will define what is legal and what is illegal with liscensing agreements irespective of the laws passed by the parliment of Canada.
There is already an example of this type of cartel, the DVD industry. The cartel dictates, by liscensing agreements, the features and functionality provided by a DVD players. Imagine buying a book in Europe and not being allowed to read it in Canada. Would we accept such a law? Yet this is what the DVD cartel has done. If you buy a DVD in Europe you cannot play it on your DVD player in Canada! Did any one in parliment enact such a law?
Inovation is limited when the cartels established by such a law refuse to support certain technologies. The DVD cartel once again provides such an example. There is no support for DVD players by the DVD manufactures for any of the open source operating systems (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) People who wish to use these technologies and view DVDs must circumvent the technological measures used to protect the content on the DVDs. These people have legally purchased the DVD's and are therefore exercising their "fair use" rights.
Such a law would allow companies to sell devices that do not work, modern day "snake oil". Since it would be illegal to describe or create a product which demonstrates such weaknesses. How could anyone be sure they were getting what they were buying? A good protection system is not easy to defeat and therefore does not require a law banning such devices. If we are serious about e-commerce and the Internet we must have an open discussion with respect to the technologies used to secure our data and the limitations of these technologies. If we are serious about the security of our communications infrastucture we must encourage people to publish weaknesses so they will be corrected. It is the only way to secure our future.
As the technology improves and digital rights management are tied to biometric measurements, like finger prints and retinal scans, libraries will cease to exist. The only way libraries would be able to continue to function is if they could circumvent these measures. An anti circumvention law would also insure that libraries would have to repurchase works when the technologies used ceased to be supported by their manufactures. The limitations described above are not acceptable in a free and democratic society. Once a person has acquired the legal right to use the copy righted content the provider should not be able to dictate how the content is used or enjoyed as long as the copyright is not violated. If the copyright is violated then our existing laws may be used to deal with the offenders as has been shown in the case of Napster and others.
As a society we recognize that artistic works enrich our lives therefore we created copyright laws to reward authors and to encourage the creation of such artistic works. But these laws were not created to give ownership of our culture to any one entity. Nor were they created to allow the creator to dictate how a book may be read or what television set may be used to view a show.
Therefore I urge you to omit the prohibition of devices that circumvent any technological measures on content protection in the revisions of the CopyrightAct.
Sincerely,
Stefanos Kiakas
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