Copyright Disaster Looming In Canada

As many of you know, I've kept an eye on Copyright since back in 2001-2002 when I spent most of a year in the process of objecting to the Canadian Copyright Blank Music Levy being placed on ever more devices with ever higher fees.

One of the people I've read fairly religiously since that time is Michael Geist, a lawyer specializing in Copyright in Canada. Most recently he and Russell McOrmond (digital-copyright.ca) have spent quite a bit of time on the upcoming Canadian Copyright bill which appears to have all of the defects of the US DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) and none of the good pieces; a draconian and backward step for Canadian participation in the digital world in any sense.

Both they and many others are imploring Canadians - you, me, your friends, everyone - to contact their MP and complain about both the proposed act itself (and its consequences to us) and about the "fast-track" methods being pushed to pass it.

What it all comes down to is whether it makes sense to "ratify" the fact that Canada signed the 1996 WIPO treaty, even though that treaty was drafted before the concepts that the Internet have brought to us were even conceived, let alone every-day life to most of the world. The "big business" publishers of books, music and movies are behind the push for this legislation - pushing because the technologies of the new century have effectively made their business model obsolete; that of a scarcity of reproduction facilities.

Signing a treaty means the unelected bureaucracy agrees with it at the time. Ratifying a treaty means that the democratically elected officials (your MP) agree that the treaty fits within the bounds of the laws that make sense in the country at the time or ratification.

In this case there is a tremendous amount of water under the bridge since the treaty was drafted/signed. Even in 1996, the Internet was shaking the world in terms of questions about the applicability of Copyright; to pages offered freely by persons with web servers, and regarding materials inadvertently made available by poor systems administration or ignorant users allowing their whole computer to be "shared" with the world because their operating system of choice didn't have any security built into it.

Today it is inconceivable to most of us that we might need to get explicit permission from a web publisher to even look at their pages - something the new law appears to make necessary because it ignores the concept (that the US Copyright regime has had for many years) of "Fair Use" in allowing the private individual reasonable use of copyright materials in the context of using them to understand and enjoy the materials.

Most web sites don't even have a copyright notice - let alone a "license" (see mine at the bottom of my blog site as an example of what will become necessary, not just a luxury).

The new law will not allow you to make a copy of your vinyl recorded music onto your MP3 player, even though you pay a Blank Media Levy in compensation for exactly that right. Instead, you'll get an opportunity to get onto a committee to discuss changes to the BML at some point in the future to redress this inequity!

You won't be able to capture bits of video and share them to YouTube from your TV, or even copy and share the video your friend took of you and sent to you! Only your friend will be able to do this unless they give you explicit license for each individual copy!

The Canadian "Government" (and I use the word loosely because, remember, it is a MINORITY!) is going to try to shove one of the most restrictive pieces of legislation conceivable in this digital world onto us with little, if any debate.

If you do nothing else to contact your government this year, do this:

Contact your MP - by phone at their office, and by mail to them in Ottawa (no stamp necessary!)

E-mail is not as good as snail-mail or phone.

A sample letter has been put together on the Digital-copyright web site. If you can't come up with something else, please use this as a guide (available in English and French)

My letter is HERE

Links:
Michale Geist - http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php
Digital Copyright - http://www.digital-copyright.ca/
sample letter - http://www.digital-copyright.ca/letters
WIPO definition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Organization