Canada’s very own DMCA
p2pnet.net news:- Just as parliamentarians voted to break for the summer, the Industry Committee (member list here) issued its report on counterfeiting and piracy, unambiguously titled Counterfeiting and Piracy are Theft.
The report and its recommendations are stunning as they represent the most lopsided copyright related report since Sam Bulte chaired the Canadian Heritage Committee.
The Committee acknowledges that the statistical evidence is “at best, very crude estimates”, so it chose to adopt a 1998 OECD study that places global counterfeiting at US$600 billion (never mind that the OECD has just released a report setting the number at one-third that figure).
While no one supports counterfeiting, the Committee’s zeal to address the issue is striking, even going beyond the roadmap from the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network. In particular, the report makes the following recommendations:
- ratify the WIPO Internet treaties (seemingly because the U.S. has placed us on the Special 301 list)
- increase damages and penalties under the Copyright Act
- create a new offence for the distribution of pirated works
- create a new offence for the manufacture or distribution of circumvention devices for commercial gain
- create new administrative penalties for the importation of counterfeit and pirated goods
- create a new criminal offence for manufacturing, reproducing, importing, distributing, and selling counterfeit goods
- strengthen civil remedies for counterfeiting and piracy infringement
- increase the resources allocated to the RCMP and Justice to counter counterfeiting and piracy
- prioritize RCMP and Justice copyright enforcement
- encourage prosecutors to seek more significant penalties for counterfeiting and piracy violations, including imprisonment
- create a new IP Crime Task Force
- new border measures, data sharing, and the creation of an IP registry
- The government will be required to respond to this report in the fall.
While it may not accept all the recommendations, this report dramatically escalates the pressure for one-sided copyright reforms that mirror DMCA-style laws.
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
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!
June 21st, 2007 at 1:28 pm
They forgot some details. The crime of:
- licencing public domain works and works that are not owned by the licensor.
- licencing works that are not even identified (example: songs to radio stations).
- using works commercially without any kind of licenses from the copyright owner.
- not paying proper royalties to copyright owner.
Maybe it’s because the named crimes are committed by the lobbyists who are pushing the “crime” law?
.
as is done y the performance rights organizations.
- The crime of licencing unamed songs as is done by through