p2pnet.net news:- When Canadian MPs open their mail, they’ll getting a little something from Darryl Moore, a man who’s had his fill of powerful corporations which dictate what music you can listen to, or what books you can read.

Because along with petitions, fulsome missives from entertainment cartel lobbyists, and so on, there’ll be a purpose-made DVD.

Canadians, and others, interested in the copyright battle being waged by the corporate entertainment cartels against their own customers, will remember the Captain Copyright farce which ultimately led to a resounding and embarrassing defeat for Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the organised music cartel. And that being so, they’ll also recall Moore’s (below) Private Infringer.

“I’m just a lowly engineer who mostly spends his time being frustrated by patents in my work, but I take out my frustrations on copyrights in my spare time,” he told p2pnet at the time.

Now Moore is back, and this time he’s sending Canadian Members of Parliament copies of his special homemade DVD entitled Death by Copyright in which he probes the hidden costs of restrictive and long term copyright laws.

He’s also launched a DBC site, although he candidly admits, “I have removed some material from this site which I am afraid will cause me to be sued out of existence, despite the fact that none of my subject material can cause either financial harm or damage any reputations.

“Copyright law gives some people the right to restrict what authors and artists can create, and what I can distribute.” He also states:

“You probably thought that copyright law protected artists. It does sometimes. More and more however, it threatens artists’ free expression, and everybody’s free speech. Copyright is good to a point, however we are already well beyond that point and big corporations and governments with vested interests in controlling knowledge and culture are trying to take us even further. Don’t believe me? Come view this site and see for yourself.”

We asked Moore what prompted him to create the CD and site. “I just know that intellectual monopolies have gotten ridiculously out of hand, and wanted to do something,” he said, going on:

Trademarks and patents are just as badly messed up as copyright. I do think that overreach of copyright is a concept that lay people can be made to understand much more so than patents, because in order to see how stupid a patent is, generally requires a bit of specialized knowledge. There is no such knowledge requirement for copyrights, so the likelyhood that people might grab this issue and press it is that much greater. That is why I put this together. Hopefully our law makers can see this DVD and realize the real problems with our copyright laws, rather than the less significant or non-existent ones the media companies are pushing.

Maybe I’ll spend the next couple of years and build a catalogue of stupid patents and trademarks as well, but it’ll be a lot harder to explain them to lay people.

On the site, “Did you ever think you would live in a world where there would be illegal knowledge and culture?” – Moore asks, going on:

Where powerful corporations could dictate what music you could listen to or what books you could read? Where those same unaccountable corporations could dictate what kind of art could be produced in the first place? It might surprise you to learn that you are already living in such a world.

New computer technologies now give incredible creative technical powers to every individual; but those same individuals still lack the legal powers to actually use them as they would like. As a result, the volume of illegal art is increasing at an exponential rate.

With technology making the act of creation constantly easier, and the courts and law makers granting ever more protection to the creations of the past, we now stand at a crossroads. Do we relax our laws to allow as much freedom as possible for people to exercise their creative inspirations, or do we legally and technologically lock down artwork so that people cannot make any use of past creations without the express consent of (and probably payment to) the intellectual monopoly owners of the past?

Unfortunately, we are currently doing the latter, and both artists directly, and society as a whole indirectly, will pay a huge price.

This DVD-ROM is intended to illustrate the harm that is a direct result of strict intellectual monopoly laws, and to warn politicians and the public about the serious negative consequences for society resulting from the current global trend to make these laws even stricter.

As this DVD is designed to be an educational tool, I hope that it falls under some sort of copyright exemption in Canada’s concept of fair dealings. Unfortunately I am not a lawyer, copyright law is extremely complicated and the concept of ‘fair dealing’ is not well defined in statute, requiring a lot of case law to interpret properly. Therefore, it is entirely possible that the RCMP might be banging down my door in the not too distant future for having distributed this DVD. C’est la vie. It is disappointing that ratification of an 11-year old international agreement (which has been shown to contain significant flaws) to satisfy multinational corporations, has a higher priority than the simplification of copyright laws which (is desperately needed and) would help every citizen of this country.

And here’s he had to say, in his letter to the MPs:

Dear Honourable Member of Parliament,

The enclosed DVD-ROM is a collection of various kinds of art. The common thread that ties them all together is that they, their owners, and/or the artists who created them, have all suffered as a result of the unintended consequences of overly broad and inflexible copyright laws.

Most of the material on this DVD cannot be acquired through legitimate channels. Sadly, it is illegal. This DVD includes books, films, music, illustrations and much more, and it has been painstakingly acquired over the last couple of years in an attempt to catalogue some of the social cost of copyright laws. This is art and free expression which has been suppressed, despite the fact that no measurable damage could be claimed from its dissemination. A great many of these examples are Canadian.

I am not calling for anything as radical as revoking copyright. I respect copyright, when copyright respects me. I am trying to demonstrate that there are real consequences for society and for artists when copyright laws focus too greatly on rights holders and not enough on creators and users.

Until recently, the creators’ interests were closely aligned with the corporate interests (rights holders) that promoted them. With our new computer technologies, creativity and distribution is becoming much easier for all individuals. As a result, creators’ interests are now much more in line with the end users. Our copyright laws need to reflect this.

As Parliament is about to, once again, consider changes to the Copyright Act, I urge you to review this DVD and consider the consequences.

At a time when we should be empowering individuals to use the new creative powers technology is giving them, the agenda of the big media companies is driving governments around the world in the opposite direction.

He also has a second letter, which went to non-MPs:

The enclosed DVD-ROM and letter have been sent to all 308 Members of Parliament.

This DVD contains a significant amount of art and expression which has been declared illegal by courts or other means around the world. Much of the material is Canadian in origin.

These are examples of what we as a society stand to lose when the people and organizations who hold monopoly rights over intellectual goods of the past are given too much power in determining what new intellectual goods may be created in the future.

Parliament is about to introduce new copyright reforms which will help middle men distributors maintain and expand their monopolies at the expense of future artists and users alike.

I hope this DVD will help to raise awareness of both MPs and the news media, who to date have been getting the bulk of their (mis)information from the very one sided and self interested media distribution industries.

If you have questions about this DVD please feel free to contact me.

“PS,” he says in an email to p2pnet, “your DVD is already in the mail,” so definitely stay tuned ;p

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Captain Copyright – Captain Copyright: SuperHero, June 2, 2006
Private Infringer – Capt Copyright vs Pvt Infringer, June 5, 2006
DBC site – Exploring the hidden costs of overly restrictive and long term copyright laws, June, 2007
Deep Links – More Ludicrous Marketing Claims About P2P Filtering, April 9, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 9:10 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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