ARCHIVÉE — B Patrick Chapman (En anglais seulement)

PROCESSUS DE RÉFORME DU DROIT D'AUTEUR

SUGGESTIONS REÇUES RELATIVEMENT AUX DOCUMENTS DE CONSULTATION

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Les documents reçus seront affichés dans la langue officielle dans laquelle ils auront été soumis. Toutes les suggestions sont affichées comme elles ont été reçues par les ministères; toutefois, toutes les informations sur les adresses ont été enlevées.

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Suggestion de B Patrick Chapman reçue le 15 septembre 2001 par courriel

Objet :

1) I am concerned with the legislative measures are needed to deter the circumvention of technological measures that are used by rights holders to protect their rights; legislative measures are needed to deter tampering with rights management information;

Given question 4 under legal support of technological rights

"4. Are there non-copyright issues, e.g. privacy, that need to be taken into account when addressing technological measures?"

There are several non-copyright issues that need to be taken into account when addressing technological measures

Platform independent access to encoded information:

At present in there is a single dominant operating system on personal computers and the prodcution of programs for the decoding of information (viewing or playing) is primarily for those programs. Not all personal computers use this operating system however freedom to experiment with encryption has allowed third parities to produce players and views for other operating systems. Legal Protection of Technological Measures must not limit artificially the range of devices the work can be played or view on or this will lead to potential abuses. For example it would be possible for a content produce who own both a movie studio and produced consumer electronics to limit distribution only to their electronics and use the legal protection of their copyright protection to prohibit others from making their player compatible with the format.

Legal Protection of Technological Measures have already been used in other juistritions to selectively supress software which is used to view work even though other software exits which can convert the content of the encrypted work and nothing prevents the encrypted work from being copied in encrypted form and resold to people with a legal decoder

Protection from format changes

Consumers must have the right, one the rights have been purchased to a certain work, have the ablity to transfer that work to a new distrubtion format should that new format become a starndard.

Access of independent producers to encryption techniques.

It has been stated that in your consultants report that

"The government is committed to establishing a framework that will facilitate the use of the digital environment for Canadians to communicate with each other and with the world. In so doing, the values that define our society should continue to be upheld"

and

"The proposals should promote a vibrant and competitive electronic commerce in Canada. Another important factor relates to policy choices on issues that are being addressed for the first time. Canada?s copyright policy is an important tool for promoting the competitiveness of Canadian businesses doing business electronically and should especially promote those industries that represent Canada's greatest opportunities. Any policy the government pursues should foster the conditions that will put Canadian players on a competitive footing with their counterparts abroad. In this respect, the departments acknowledge that in addition to the copyright sectors themselves, Canada's Internet intermediary sector is particularly affected by our policy choices."

On of the revolutions of the internet is to allow communcation between individulals. The digital age has also lowered the entry cost for producing and dirtributing original works. I have distriubted my writing to over a hundred people and created audio recordings of my works on Compact Disc for friends.

The stackholders in copyright have increased dramatically and it is imparative that all of them right down to the individual be given equal rights technological protections of their work. This means that if a collection of large movie studios or recording companies where to produce a technological standard for protecting copyright, smaller companies and even individual must have the ability to use that same technology and if access is not given then it must be legal for them to research the encryption techniques.

Consumer Protection

In other juristrution the Legal Protection of Technological Measures have been used to suppress reports that called into doublt the effectiveness of their product. For a company that produces an encrption technique to protect written work a researcher would be prohibited from investigating to determine if that encryption method were effective or prohibited from reporting on it even if he did investigate. Alternatively a group investigateing the effectiveness of web blocking software would have to break the law to decrypt a list of web sites to demonstrate the software was ineffective or biased.

I am sorry I do not have time to write more but this week has been eventful

B Patrick Chapman
(Adresse enlevée)

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