ARCHIVED — A Chris Bruner

COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS

REPY COMMENTS

---

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.

---

Reply comment from Chris Bruner received on October 01 2001 via e-mail

Subject: reply comment http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp00292e.html

This message is in reply to IBM Canada's statement, but also in reply to virtually every Large Corperation that submitted a comment.

It's interesting to note a few historical things.

1) The music Industry is almost a monopoly.
2) The DMCA in the US was pushed through by the music industry to protect their business.
3) The music industry was thriving before the DMCA was introduced largely due to the influence of Napster (a music sharing program).
4) Now that Napster is no longer a major player, the music industry has become stagnent. (As predicted by users of Napster).
5) Copyright was originially introduced to protect the people producing material.
6) Copyright now is primarily used to protect Large Copyright holders (Corperations) from losing control of purchased material.
7) Copyright Laws diminish the freedom to use other peoples material, which reduces the amount of innovation available on other material.

As Ashley George puts it:
"Even so, I submit that any law should never reinforce technological measures for preventing copyright infringement. The shackling of information can only be detrimental to our society. It is better to punish infringing parties individually than to punish everyone by imposing physical barriers and filters upon the flow of information. Since infringing parties already infringe by definition, only users will be seriously affected. Companies will feel encouraged to add cumbersome technological measures and casual legitimate users will suffer. The law should be enough of a deterrent without enforcing tedious physical barriers encouraging strict information monopolies and anticompetitive behaviour. "

Or as Christian Charette puts it:
"While intellectual property and the ability to profit by them should be protected by copyright laws, these should always come AFTER the freedom of the individual. It is a dark day indeed when corporate rights overtakes individual private rights."

With these things in mind, I would like to recommend that the Canadian government use the natural law of supply and demand instead of imposing un-natural copyright law. Don't forget copyright has only been around for a couple of hundred years. It's a fairly new concept. Romans had nothing of the sort, neither did any culture prior to the printing press.

Here's an example: If a Music CD doesn't sell for $25, it may be because it is priced too high. If people can get it for free, then the price should come down to compete. Music CD's cost very little to produce, so if the music industry wants to gouge the consumer, then the music industry is going to suffer from "music pirates" (or ordinary people as I like to call them). Free music increased sales for the music industry. This is because it increased the awareness of people of different music that is available. This prompted people to buy CD's, How can that be bad? For example I bought my first CD in over 13 years after hearing songs on Napster.

The DMCA is a totally misguided piece of legislation, intended only to help big business to the determent of the consumer. In reality it helped neither. We should not increase restrictions to copyright as the US did, but instead reduce the restrictions. Reduce the time period that copyright can be held for.

This is a chance for Canada to take a stand and say "WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM THE US --- WE WILL NOT BE BULLIED BY CORPERATE INTERESTS!"