p2pnet news | Politics:- CBC’s Search Engine, a weekly radio program on Internet issues, has become must-listen radio on the unfolding Canadian copyright law reform initiative.

Thursday’s program (MP3 version) featured an interview with George Barker, the Australian economist who criticized the Industry Canada P2P study, that focused on Barker’s views and his links to the CRIA.

The CRIA’s Graham Henderson refused to appear on the program.

The program has now requested an interview with Industry Minister Jim Prentice to discuss the forthcoming copyright bill and asked listeners to post their own questions.

In a matter of hours, the site had acquired more than 50 questions.
Add yours here and stay tuned to see whether Prentice appears on the program.

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.]

Below is one of the questions, posted by James Cooper >>>

In general, there has been a lot of contempt among the public for the DMCA used in the United States, mainly because of concerns that it prevents copying that would normally be allowed under fair use, but is illegal because it requires breaking protection schemes protected by the DMCA in order to be accomplished. How will the upcoming copyright law address this common case?

There have been several recent cases brought to light where material protected by DRM was no longer accessible to customers because the retailer stopped providing the services required for the DRM to function. What safeguards will be put in place to ensure that customers who buy DRM-protected works will always have access to them? Will a clause be included in the law that DRM can be removed if it is no longer being supported?

Many studies have recently shown that current copyright terms are too lengthy, including showing that the terms are much longer than is needed to ensure the owner has time to reap value from their works and that this decreases the overall value to society. Will the lengths of these copyright terms be reduced, and if so, by how much?

In many cases, DRM has caused problems for retailers and customers because the extreme measures used by the software can interfere with the devices it is used on, resulting in temporary or even permanent malfunctions. All retailers currently have disclaimers against any responsibility for this and many refuse to give refunds on works that are unusable by the customer because of the DRM protections involved. Will safeguards be put in place to allow customers recourse if DRM prevents them from using their purchases for their intended purposes? Will DRM producers be held liable for purposeful or expected damages caused by their protection schemes?

Past DRM protection schemes have been ineffectual against mass copyright infringement, but have had large negative impacts on legitimate customers in usability and increased costs. Why is a new law being put in place to protect DRM if its costs outweight its benefits?

Copyright and fair use are defined in terms of the end to which a material is used (e.g. for education, parody, or critique) and not in how it is distributed (e.g. borrowed, rented, or copied). How are DRM protections, which enforce restrictions on copying, supposed to enforce a law which is based on how materials are used? How can they determine if copying or modifying content is being used for education, parody, or critique?

Recently we’ve seen an explosion of amateur content based on more famous, copyrighted works. Such new works are often referred to as “mashups”. These new works often add a lot of value to existing works and have a lot of value in and of themselves. However, existing copyright can often be interpreted to disallow such amalgamations of existing works. It’s widely viewed that increased copyright laws and DRM protections will diminish the ability to make “mashups”. If these works provide a lot of new value while not detracting greatly from (and often adding to) the value of the works used in them, shouldn’t these be allowed according to the spirit of existing copyright laws and fair use? Will new copyright laws discourage or even make illegal these types of derivative works?

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 7:16 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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