Canadian copyright law white paper
p2pnet news Freedom:- | Politics:- Canadian consumer advocates have released a joint open letter to Canadian ministers responsible for Canadian copyright policy.
“We are concerned that proposals to change Canada’s copyright laws do not represent the interests of Canadian consumers,” says the group.
“These proposed changes remove many rights that consumers have traditionally enjoyed and fail to address obvious changes that would benefit consumers and creators. What we want are laws that >>>
(1) do no harm to Canadians;
(2) are based on reality, not rhetoric; and
(3) serve Canadians.
The coalition comprises >>>
Union des consommateurs, Option consommateurs, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), the Consumers Council of Canada, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and Online Rights Canada.
They state the indications are Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are, “preparing to introduce legislation that will significantly alter the contours of Canada’s copyright laws,” going on >>>
Industry Minister Jim Prentice has promised that the bill will represent the interests of consumers.
Astonishingly, he has not consulted with a single consumer group to determine how to do this.
CIPPIC counsel David Fewer says the government has consulted extensively with American government trade representatives and entertainment industry lobbyists, continuing:
“Copyright consultations would have provided an excellent opportunity to identify ways that our copyright laws could advance Canadian interests.
“Instead, we are likely to see a bill that panders to foreign interests at the expense of Canadian consumers.”
This is, “all the more startling given the broad consensus that has emerged among consumer groups, business groups such as the Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright, and creator groups such as the Canadian Music Creators Coalition (CMCC) and the Documentary Organisation of Canada (DOC),” he says.
Below is the coalition’s open letter in full (click here for the .pdf) >>>
CANADIAN COPYRIGHT LAW:
A Consumer White Paper
Executive Summary
Introduction
We are a coalition of consumer advocates. We have come together to advocate for copyright laws that serve the interests of Canada and of Canadians.
Copyright law is designed to balance the interests of creators with the interests of the public. Copyright grants creators exclusive rights in their works as a reward for creativity that also serves as an incentive for the creation of new works. These rights are not absolute, but limited in nature, scope and time. These limits are essential to copyright’s greater design, for it is at the limits of copyright owners’ rights that important consumer interests come into play.
From a consumer’s perspective, copyright’s current balance is far from perfect. In fact, many consumer dealings with copyrighted content - ordinary dealings, like copying digital music onto a portable device, or using the digital video recorders sold by cable companies - technically infringe copyright. In these and many other cases, the law is simply out of step with reality.
Simple, uncontroversial amendments to the Copyright Act can fix many of these failings.
Unfortunately, copyright policy makers are not focusing on consumer interests. Instead, recent proposals to amend the Copyright Act focus on expanding rights holder’s interests at Canadian consumer’s expense. We call on Canada’s law-makers to accommodate consumer interests in any revision to the Copyright Act currently under consideration. Additionally, we call on lawmakers to revise the Copyright Act to address important consumer concerns that are not yet under consideration at all.
Anti-Circumvention Laws
Canadian lawmaker’s push to bring Canada into line with the WIPO Internet Treaties could have very serious consequences for Canadian consumers. We believe that there is no reason to add anti-circumvention protection to Canadian copyright law. We believe this for several reasons:
1. No justification. The case had not been made that Canada needs anti-circumvention legislation. In fact, Canadian cultural industries are flourishing in the absence of anticircumvention legislation.
2. Redundant. Anti-circumvention legislation is redundant: copyright law already provides penalties for copyright infringement and there is no need for a second layer of protection that penalizes substantially the same behaviour as copyright;
3. DRM does not work. Technological tools like DRM do not work. Corporations invest millions of dollars into developing DRM systems that are broken within hours or days of being released.
4. Technological threats. Anti-circumvention laws do not improve on copyright law’s existing disincentives to infringe copyright. Anti-circumvention laws do, however, threaten other values that are important to consumers, such as competitive markets, privacy, and security. The U.S. anti-circumvention law (known as the DMCA) serves as a stark example of this and is a failure.
5. Anti-circumvention laws are government intervention. Our markets don’t need government intervention. Government should instead take a neutral stance, working to ensure a level competitive playing field that benefits consumers rather than privileging particular business models.
If Canadian lawmakers choose to legislate anti-circumvention laws, they must take great care to minimize the negative impact those laws will have on Canadians. We believe that any Canadian anti-circumvention law must respect the following conditions:
1. No new “access” right. Laws should tie circumvention liability to an intent to infringe copyright; Canadians should not be liable for accessing content and should enjoy an unfettered right to do so.
2. Non-infringing circumvention. Consumers should be allowed to circumvent technological measures, like DRM, providing that their access to the underlying content does not infringe copyright.
3. Legal tools, devices and services. Anti-circumvention legislation should not prevent people from developing, selling and using tools, devices and services for circumventing technological measures for legal reasons.
4. Protect legitimate expectations. Laws should preserve rights and expectations that consumers have under copyright, such as the right to make copies and backups of works that they own.
5. Protect privacy. Anti-circumvention laws should not protect technologies that do not respect privacy rights. Consumers should retain the right to enjoy works privately and access to content must not be conditional on the surrender of consumer privacy.
6. Do not protect spyware. Removing unwanted and illegal technology such as spyware should not be a violation of anti-circumvention laws.
7. Protect the public domain. It should always be legal to circumvent DRM in order to access works that are no longer protected by copyright and exist in the public domain.
8. Prohibit misuse. Any Canadian anti-circumvention law should be balanced by the creation of specific competitive protections for Canadians and the creation of liability for “copyright misuse.”
Copyright Reform
In addition to the threat posed by anti-circumvention laws, here are many facets of copyright law that run counter to the interests of Canadian consumers and do not reflect the realities of the Canadian marketplace. Canada needs to bring current copyright law into step with the waysconsumers use copyrighted materials. Here are our recommendations:
1. Clarify the legality of time, space, and format shifting. Copyright laws that outlaw these practices threaten consumers and are out of step with today’s marketplace and with reasonable consumer practices.
2. Fix fair dealing. Expand fair dealing rights to include other uses of content like parody, digital sampling and other transformative uses. Subsume the requirement to provide the source and author when a work is used for purposes of criticism, review, or news summary into the general fairness analysis.
3. Legalize back-ups. Protect consumers’ right to protect their investments by making back-up copies of legal, purchased content.
4. Protect the public domain. Reduce copyright terms, or keep them to the minimum needed to meet Canada’s international obligations.
5. Rationalize statutory damages. Require plaintiffs to prove damages against consumers, public institutions, museums, libraries, archives, schools, colleges and universities. Restrict the application of statutory damages to cases of commercial infringement, where they are warranted and actually serve the public interest.
6. Abolish crown copyright. The public should enjoy free and unrestricted access to works produced with public funds.
7. Consumer commissioned photographs. Copyright ownership of commissioned photographs should stay in consumers’ hands. Doing otherwise frustrates consumers’ legitimate expectations.
8. Protect copyright and consumers against unfair terms. Restrict rights holders’ ability to undermine copyright’s public policy objectives through the use of contractual terms that limit consumers’ rights, including the ability to undertake security, interoperability and reverse engineering research, to make reasonable use of content (time-shifting, space-shifting), to make private copies for personal use, and to re-sell content.
9. Preserve consumers’ digital rights. The Copyright Act affords rights-holders only limited rights. It has never been an infringement of copyright law for a consumer to simply read a book, or to listen to music in the privacy of one’s own home. By the same token, ephemeral electronic copies, or “RAM copies”, should be treated the same way.
10. Monetize P2P. Efforts to shut down peer to peer networks have failed. We should find ways to transform P2P networks into legitimate music distribution and compensation vehicles to benefit Canadian music creators and their fans. It is time the Canadian government showed some leadership and undertook active study of this option.
Conclusion
We are concerned that proposals to change Canada’s copyright laws do not represent the interests of Canadian consumers. These proposed changes remove many rights that consumers have traditionally enjoyed and fail to address obvious changes that would benefit consumers and creators.
We are advocating on behalf of consumers for laws that do three things:
1. Do No Harm. Changes to Canada’s copyright laws must be guided by this principle. We must not enact changes that harm consumer welfare and threaten education, freedom of expression, privacy and security. We do not want laws that harm small business, stifle innovation, or that cost Canadians millions of dollars.
2. Laws Based on Reality, Not Rhetoric. The Canadian government must consult experts on education, security, privacy, small business, and consumer groups before enacting legislation. Our copyright laws should be based on the facts, not on rhetoric.
3. Canadian Law Must Serve Canadians. Statistics Canada reports that our copyright royalty deficit - the amount of royalties generated by Canadians abroad compared with royalties earned by foreign performers in Canada - has grown dramatically in recent years. For every $1 earned by Canadian performers outside the country, $5 flows out of the country. Proposals for longer and stronger copyright will increase the flow of dollars out of Canada, rather than foster Canadian creativity. It is important that we address this trade imbalance and focus on the needs of Canadian creators and consumers rather than the self-interested demands of a limited group of rights holders.
Where changes to copyright laws are needed, Canada must adopt laws that serve Canadian interests first. Pressure from American interests and proposals must be rejected.
Canadian Copyright Law
Introduction: How Copyright Affects Consumers
Copyright is designed to balance the interests of creators with the interests of the public. Copyright grants creators exclusive rights in their work as a reward for creativity that also serves as an incentive for the creation of new works. These rights are not absolute, but limited in scope and time. These limits are essential to copyright’s greater design, for it is at the limits of copyright owners’ rights that important consumer interests come into play.
This balance is far from perfect. In fact, many consumer dealings with copyrighted content - ordinary dealings, like copying your music onto your iPod, or using the digital video recorder that your cable company sold you - technically infringe copyright. In these and many other cases, the law is simply out of step with reality. Simple, uncontroversial amendments to the
Copyright Act can fix many of these omissions.
However, our politicians are not even considering amending the law in this way. Instead, the Canadian government is considering expanding the scope and reach of Canada’s copyright laws in ways that disrupt consumers’ legitimate interests in their enjoyment of and access to the content that they have purchased.
Canadians deserve reasonable copyright laws that accommodate their legitimate interests. We call on Canada’s law-makers to:
(1) accommodate consumer interests in any revision to the Copyright Act currently under consideration; and
(2) revise the Copyright Act to address important consumer concerns that are not yet under consideration at all.
Part I) Anti-Circumvention Laws Shouldn’t Circumvent the Consumer
Canadian lawmakers are considering changing Canadian copyright law to bring them into compliance with the World International Property Organisation (WIPO) Internet treaties.
Canadian legislators are under tremendous foreign pressure to ratify these treaties. However, it is far from clear that implementing these treaties are in Canadian consumers’ best interests.
The WIPO Internet treaties oblige Canada, among other things, to create legal protections for technological measures, like DRM systems, that protect digital content. These technological tools, and the laws that protect them, have the potential to seriously disadvantage Canadian consumers.
A) The Truth About Anti-Circumvention Legislation
There is no need to add anti-circumvention protection to Canadian copyright law. We say this for several reasons:
(1) the case had not been made that Canada needs anti-circumvention legislation;
(2) anti-circumvention legislation is redundant: copyright law already provides penalties for copyright infringement and there is no need for a second layer of protection that penalizes substantially the same behaviour as copyright;
(3) technological tools like DRM do not work;
(4) anti-circumvention legislation does not work; and
(5) our markets don’t need government intervention.
1. No Case for Anti-Circumvention Laws
Those seeking to change the law need to show that the marketplace is failing in some way and that a change in the law can correct this problem. Supporters of anti-circumvention laws in Canada have failed to do this. Anti-circumvention laws do nothing to improve the marketplace. In fact, Canadian cultural industries are flourishing in the absence of anti-circumvention legislation.
2. Copyright Law Already Penalizes Copyright Infringement
Copyright law already provides penalties for infringing copyright. If someone circumvents technological measures, and accesses material in a way that infringes copyright, copyright law offers copyright owners a remedy. Groups that want anti-circumvention laws need to demonstrate why they need a second layer of legal protection. They have not done so, and they have not proven that the benefit that they will get from anti-circumvention legislation will outweigh the harm it does to the public.
3. DRM Doesn’t Work
Technological measures like DRM systems cannot effectively protect content because they are fundamentally flawed, and circumventing them is trivial. Corporations invest millions of dollars into developing DRM systems that are broken within hours or days of being released.
4. Anti-Circumvention Legislation Doesn’t Work
Anti-circumvention laws are justified as an incentive necessary for investment in digital content distribution models and as necessary to combat digital copyright infringement. However, in practice, neither of these claims holds water.
The United States crafted its anti-circumvention laws - the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA - in 1998. In the decade since enactment, the DMCA has created many problems - anticompetitive abuses, stifling criticism, repressing security research, undermining security, etc. - but it has not encouraged any additional investment in digital distribution models. Anticircumvention law proponents cannot credibly point to a single market that has emerged because of anti-circumvention laws. Canadians enjoy virtually all of the same digital services that Americans enjoy.
Similarly, the DMCA has had no impact on copyright infringement levels. After a decade under the DMCA, infringement of movies over file-sharing networks in the US is at an all-time high. Infringement levels do not significantly differ between Canada and the United States.
We conclude that anti-circumvention laws provide no measurable improvement to copyright’s existing incentives to roll out new digital distribution models, and similarly do not improve on copyright law’s existing disincentives to infringe. Anti-circumvention laws do, however, threaten other values that are important to consumers, such as competitive markets, privacy, and security - a point that we will return to shortly.
5. Our Markets Don’t Need Government Intervention
In imposing anti-circumvention laws on Canadian consumers, the government would intervene directly in the marketplace in favour of certain copyright owners. Anti-circumvention laws protect technology, not content, and in so doing privilege business models that rely on that technology - including those involving technological measures and all of their inherent competitive, security, and privacy risks. Government should instead take a neutral stance, working to ensure a level competitive playing field that benefits consumers rather than privileging particular business models. The copyright system should be neutral, should encourage many channels for bringing content to market, and should discourage the formation of distribution bottlenecks that result in destructive concentrations of ownership.
B) If We Must Have Anti-Circumvention Legislation
If Canadian lawmakers choose to legislate anti-circumvention laws, they must take great care to minimize the negative impact those laws will have on Canadians. Canada should learn from the mistakes of nations who have already implemented anti-circumvention laws and avoid repeating their mistakes. Any Canadian anti-circumvention law must:
(1) tie circumvention liability to an intent to infringe copyright;
(2) allow circumvention of Technological Measures for legal purposes;
(3) allow the sale of circumvention devices and services;
(4) preserve rights and expectations that consumers have under copyright law;
(5) protect consumer privacy;
(6) discourage illegal activity;
(7) avoid locking away material that is in the public domain; and
(8) protect consumers against IP misuse.
1. Liability for Circumvention with Intent to Infringe
Anti-circumvention laws come in two flavours: those that regulate access to content, and those that regulate dealings with content. The WIPO Internet Treaties speak to the latter, not the former. Any Canadian anti-circumvention law should do the same: consumers should only be liable for circumventing technological measures when their intent is to infringe copyright.
We say this for three reasons: first, anti-circumvention laws that favour technologies that regulate access to content effectively create a new access right that copyright owners do not currently enjoy under the Copyright Act.
Second, an access right like this seriously tips the balance, inherent in copyright law, towards the interests of copyright owners (not creators), by effectively eviscerating essential rights of users, consumers, libraries, archives, museums, researchers, educational institutions, and the perceptually disabled. Undermining these user rights undermines copyright itself.
Third, adoption of an access right - one that goes beyond the requirements of the WIPO Internet treaties - is a policy choice: no international treaty or trade agreement requires Canada to adopt such a right. If we go this route, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
2. Circumvention for Legal Purpose
Consumers enjoy certain rights to use content without infringing copyright. The presence of technological measures doesn’t change that, and neither should anti-circumvention laws. Consumers must be able to circumvent technological measures, like DRM, providing that their access to the underlying content does not infringe copyright. These consumer rights fulfil important public policy goals, preserving consumer welfare, free speech, and innovation. The use of technological measures already threatens these values. Anti-circumvention laws shouldn’t statutorily undermine them as well.
3. No Legislation Against Devices and Services
Around the world, even under the most restrictive anti-circumvention regimes, users enjoy certain exceptions to liability for circumvention of technological measures. However, prohibitions on selling the tools, devices and services that permit circumvention frustrate these exceptions. Anti-circumvention legislation should not prevent people from developing, selling and using tools, devices and services for circumventing technological measures for legal reasons.
Anti-circumvention laws must be narrowly targeted to prevent behaviour that infringes copyright. These laws should not be so broad that they undermine innovation. Devices like PVRs (Personal Video Recorders), iPods, and the services that permit them to function, enhance consumer welfare and the vibrancy of the digital entertainment marketplace. Their developers should not have to run the risk of being found liable for violating anti-circumvention laws.
4. Preserve Rights and Expectations that Consumers have under Copyright
Consumers expect that they will be able to deal with their digital content in certain important ways. For example, consumers expect that they will be able to make software back-ups, rip a new CD they’ve purchased to play it in an iPod, and quote passages from a book in a review.
Copyright law protects some of these dealings; others are simply expectations derived from common practices. Anti-circumvention laws potentially undermine consumers’ legitimate expectation that they will continue to enjoy these rights.
a. Consumers Stripped of Legitimate Rights and Expectations
Excessive anti-circumvention laws have the potential to harm consumers by stripping them of these rights and frustrating these legitimate expectations:
(1) consumer electronics will cost more and have fewer functions;
(2) consumers will not be allowed to transfer legal, paid-for content to devices of theirchoice;
(3) it will be illegal for consumers to backup their legal, paid-for content to protect their investments against accidental destruction or erasure; and
(4) it will be illegal for consumers to convert legal, paid-for content to formats that will function on new devices.
b. Less Choice and Fewer Rights
Anti-circumvention laws don’t enforce copyright. They enforce the contractual terms imposed by a content distributor. These terms reflect the distributor’s private interest, and don’t necessarily
reflect copyright’s public policy objectives. By privileging these private terms, anticircumvention laws lend the power of the state, and all of the remedies available in the Copyright Act, to these imposed terms. These terms can prohibit activities like criticism and research, activities that serve important public interests. In some cases consumers may not even be allowed to re-sell or give away the music or videos that they already own. Ultimately, consumers will enjoy less choice in the marketplace.
c. Copyright Law Exceptions
Since anti-circumvention laws privilege access to content, tipping the balance of copyright in favour of private interests, they must incorporate certain exceptions to liability. Those exceptions should mirror every exception that currently exists in the Copyright Act. These exceptions are important; they further crucial public policies, including consumer welfare, innovation, freedom of speech, and security. Specific exceptions to liability for circumvention should include:
(1) access for people with disabilities;
(2) benefits for educational institutions;
(3) benefits for libraries, archives and museums;
(4) reverse engineering;
(5) incidental inclusion;
(6) ephemeral recordings;
(7) private copies of musical sound recordings;
(8) back-ups of computer programs; and
(9) fair dealing.
Two of these exceptions merit specific discussion:
Private use of Music - Anti-circumvention legislation must also allow consumers to continue to copy music for private use. In exchange for this right Canadians pay a levy on blank CDs and DVDs. The money Canadians pay for their right to copy music for private use goes to rightsholders. If anti-circumvention laws make it illegal to copy music creators and consumers will be hurt and, copying will continue, and Canadian artists will see an important revenue stream disappear.
Backup Copies of Software - Consumers must be able to make back up copies of their software, even if that software is protected by technological measures. Back-ups protect consumers’ investment in content. Outlawing back-ups only frustrates consumers’ legitimate expectations.
5. Protect Consumer Privacy
Many technological measures, like DRM systems, make access to content conditional on consumers’ surrendering their privacy. This practice is invasive and has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property. These systems target consumers’ personal information and personal habits. Justice Lebel of the Supreme Court of Canada identifies this type of information as “core biographical information”. Anti-circumvention laws should not protect technologies that do not respect these privacy rights:
- consumers should retain the right to enjoy works privately;
- access to content must not be conditional on the surrender of consumer privacy; and
- circumvention, in order to protect privacy rights, should be permitted.
6. Illegal Activity
DRM and other technological measures are like spyware in that they are technologies that consumers potentially do not want. Consumers deserve notice of the presence of technological measures and must consent to their use. Anti-circumvention laws should not protect content distributors that do not meet these requirements. Removal of unwanted and illegal technology should not be a violation of anti-circumvention laws.
7. The Public Domain
Technological protection measures may potentially eliminate public access to content that is in the public domain. Anti-circumvention laws offer content distributors a way to circumvent the bargain inherent in copyright’s grant of exclusive but limited rights. Copyright in every work, from the banal to the sublime, expires. All work eventually joins the common heritage that is the public domain. It should always be legal to circumvent in order to access works that are no longer protected by copyright.
8. Protect Consumers Against IP Misuse
Technological measures like DRM have been shown to pose anti-competitive threats to consumers. Similarly, anti-circumvention laws have been misused in other jurisdictions. Any Canadian anti-circumvention law should be balanced by the creation of specific competitive protections for Canadians and the creation of liability for “copyright misuse.”
Part 2) Rational Copyright Laws
There are many facets of copyright law that run counter to the interests of Canadian consumers and do not reflect the realities of the Canadian marketplace. Canada needs to bring current copyright law into step with the ways consumers use copyrighted materials.
There are several changes we can make to existing copyright law that will significantly benefit Canadian consumers:
(1) clarify the legality of time, space, and format shifting;
(2) expand fair dealing rights;
(3) expand back-up rights;
(4) minimize the term of protection;
(5) eliminate statutory damages for consumer copyright infringement;
(6) eliminate crown copyright;
(7) ensure continued consumer ownership of commissioned photographs;
(8) balance the impacts of private ordering;
(9) clarify that ephemeral digital copies do not infringe copyright; and
(10) monetize P2P.
1. Clarify Legality of Time, Space, and Format shifting
Common consumer practices frequently result in “technical” copyright violations. Time shifting (the recording of a broadcast for enjoyment later), space shifting (copying content for use on a device other than the one for which it was originally intended), and format shifting (the copying of information from one form of storage to another) are all technically violations of the Copyright Act.
These violations can have a very real effect on consumers and are not at all in line with theexpectations of Canadians. It has been legal to time shift in the U.S. for over 20 years. VCRs and PVRs are sold openly on the Canadian market for this very purpose. Yet, inexplicably, Canadians do not enjoy a clear exception from liability for using a VCR.
Space shifting occurs when a consumer moves content on one type of format to another. For example, someone who takes their old Betamax videotapes and copies them to VHS has space shifted. Doing this is a violation of copyright law in Canada, despite the fact that this is a common and reasonable practice among consumers.
Finally, anyone who has ever copied a VHS tape onto a blank DVD so they could watch it on their player, has format shifted, and has arguably also violated the law.
Copyright of this kind threatens consumers. It is out of step with reasonable consumer practices and is never litigated by even the most grasping of copyright owners. It is long past the time for Canada to legalize these practices.
2. Expand Fair Dealing Rights
Many countries, including Canada, have exceptions for the use of content in ways that are fair but that, but for the exception, infringe copyright. In Canada, this right is known as “fair dealing” and it permits dealing with copyright protected content for the purposes of research, private study, criticism, review or news reporting.
Fair dealing does not plainly apply to reverse engineering, time, space or format shifting, or transformative uses such as satire or parody, appropriation art, or digital sampling. All of these practices are at the core of the public polices that the Copyright Act is supposed to further.
Parody, appropriation art, digital sampling and other forms of transformative use of content are also expressive practices that embody the essence of the values enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Copyright should permit these creative practices that benefit all Canadians. Three simple reforms would address this short-coming.
First, the current law denies the defense to any dealing that does not fit within an enumerated category, no matter how fair. Amending the provision to read, “fair dealing for purposes including”, rather than “for the purposes of”, would accommodate those practices.
Second, while we view the current categorization approach as too restrictive, the categories do offer certainty. Accordingly, the categories of dealings expressly identified as falling within the defense should be expanded to include other identifiable categories such as parody.
Third, Parliament should do away with the Act’s requirement to provide the source and author (where given in the source) in the case of fair dealings for the purposes of criticism, review, or news summary. These provisions prove particularly challenging for creative, transformative uses such as parody to meet. This is a well-intentioned but needless effort to introduce attribution rights into the fair dealing analysis. No court should rule against use of content that is “fair” simply because it fails to cite the source and author of the work in question.
3. Expand Back-Up Rights
Consumers enjoy the right to make back-up copies of software, but not of other content like music and movies. Consumers spend a lot of money of digital content and media can be fragile: DVDs and CDs scratch and hard drives fail. Consumers should enjoy the right to protect their investments by making back-up copies of legal, purchased content.
4. Minimize the Term of Protection
Do not forget: copyright is a monopoly, and, like all monopolies, imposes costs on society. Those costs should be minimized. Academic studies demonstrate that the term of protection for copyright already far exceeds anything economically justifiable. Copyright terms should be reduced or kept to the minimum needed to meet our international obligations.
5. Eliminate Statutory Damages for Consumer Copyright Infringement
The minimum penalty for copyright infringement in Canada is wildly out of step with the real world costs of infringement. The rights holder has the option of requiring anyone found liable for infringement to pay statutory damages, ranging from $500.00 to $20,000.00 per violation.
Statutory damages are awarded at the rights-holder’s option, irrespective of any actual damages suffered or proven by the rights-holder. If you were found liable by a judge for photocopying an article from a newspaper and distributing it to fifty friends and colleagues, your minimum damages would be $25,000. Considering that daily newspapers cost about a dollar each, this minimum damages award is completely out of step with the actual cost of infringement.
We see this phenomenon at work in the United States. Rights holders are using the threat of enormous statutory damages to extort settlements in file-sharing lawsuits, despite the fact that these rights holders have failed to prove that file-sharing is responsible for any economic harm to their businesses.
Statutory damages should be eliminated for instances of infringement by consumers, public institutions, museums, libraries, archives, schools, colleges and universities. Plaintiffs should be required to prove damages. The role of statutory damages should be restricted to those cases where they will have the greatest effect: cases of commercial copyright infringement.
6. Elimination of Crown Copyright
A surprising aspect of Canadian copyright law is that the government has granted itself exclusive rights in works it produces. This is called “crown copyright”. Content paid by and produced for the benefit of Canadians should be freely available to Canadians. Crown copyright should be abolished, and works produced with public funds should be made freely available to the public without any restrictions.
7. Consumer Ownership of Commissioned Photographs
Copyright ownership of commissioned photographs should stay in the hands of consumers. This is the normal practice in the industry today. Consumers own copyright in their commissioned wedding and baby photos. Anything else is an affront to consumers and does nothing more than frustrate their legitimate expectations. The government should resist calls to trample consumers’ rights in their own photographs.
8. Balance the Impacts of Private Ordering
Increasingly, copyright owners license the use of content to consumers through contracts such as end user license agreements (EULAs). The EULA dictates the terms of use to the consumer; the terms are not negotiated in any meaningful sense. TPMs provide copyright owners with the ability to enforce the terms of these contracts. The end result is that consumers are often unable to use lawfully purchased content in ways that are expected. In some cases, consumers are even denied rights granted to them under the Copyright Act.
With the proliferation of restrictive contracts for the use of content, private interests are essentially able to re-write the rules of copyright in their own favour - a process that has been referred to as the “private ordering” of copyright. This can be an unfair process that is biased in the favour of copyright owners. Consumers have little if any ability to bargain for better terms of use. In this way, “private ordering” can replace copyright’s balancing of the interests of users and rights holders - a balance set by law-makers accountable to the Canadian public - with an allocation of rights that reflects the private interests of the rights-holder, who is not accountable to anyone. Private ordering has no need to accommodate values such as privacy and freedom of expression, and in fact opposes other public interests such as the need to foster competition and follow-on innovation through reversed engineering and interoperability research.
Copyright policy should reduce the unfairness that is inherent in the process of private ordering.
The Copyright Act should protect certain consumer rights, including the ability to undertake security, interoperability and reverse engineering research, make reasonable use of content (timeshifting, space-shifting), to make private copies for personal use, and to re-sell content, notwithstanding contractual terms to the contrary.
9. Clarify that Ephemeral Digital Copies do not Infringe Copyright
The Copyright Act affords rights-holders only limited rights. It has never been an infringement of copyright law for a consumer to simply read a book, or to listen to music in the privacy of one’s own home. These are important user rights that reflect fundamental liberty and privacy values that underpin Canadian society.
As we have shifted from analog to digital formats, these rights are coming under attack. Some rights holders view the use of digital content - reading an e-book, or listening to an MP3 music recording - as not non-infringing private use, but rather a reproduction of a work that infringes copyright where the reading or listening occurs without the rights holder’s permission. This startling view rests on a characterization of the “RAM copy” - a temporary copy of a work in a computer’s short term memory - as sufficiently “fixed” to qualify as a copy for the purposes of the Copyright Act’s reproduction right. This argument is fallacious: the digital content is completely ephemeral - it is no more “fixed” than a book reflected in a mirror - and derives from an accident of technology rather than a deliberate effort to reproduce a work.
To hold that an “unauthorized” RAM copy infringes copyright would be to create a new exclusive right to read digital content. Such a right would radically tip copyright’s balance in favour of rights holders and away from consumers interests, with unfortunate implications for freedom of expression, liberty, and consumer privacy. The government of Canada should clarify that ephemeral digital copies are not sufficiently fixed to implicate the reproduction right.
10. Monetize P2P
For a decade now, Canadians have used peer-to-peer file-sharing services to access music and other content. The content industry has responded by suing consumers, attempting to shut down P2P networks and locking down content with technological measures. These efforts to kill filesharing have failed. Today, file-sharing is more popular than ever and Canadian artists are still not being paid for content shared by their fans. The time has come to look for alternatives.
Consumers deserve access to the services of their choice, and artists deserve to be paid. Finding ways to transform P2P networks into legitimate music distribution and compensation vehicles would unleash a wave of innovation that could only benefit Canadian music creators and their fans. It is time the Canadian government showed some leadership and undertook active study of this option.
Our Call
We are concerned that proposals to change Canada’s copyright laws do not represent the interests of Canadian consumers. These proposed changes remove many rights that consumers have traditionally enjoyed and fail to address obvious changes that would benefit consumers and creators. What we want are laws that:
(1) do no harm to Canadians;
(2) are based on reality, not rhetoric; and
(3) serve Canadians.
1. Do No Harm
Changes to Canada’s copyright laws must be guided by the principle of “do no harm”. We must not enact changes that harm consumer welfare and threaten education, freedom of expression, privacy and security. We do not want laws that harm small business, stifle innovation, or that cost Canadians millions of dollars.
2. Considered Copyright
The Canadian government must consult experts on education, security, privacy, small business, and consumer groups. Our copyright laws should be based on the facts, not on rhetoric.
3. Canadian Laws Must Serve Canadians
Statistics Canada reports that our copyright royalty deficit - the amount of royalties generated by Canadians abroad compared with royalties earned by foreign performers in Canada - has grown dramatically in recent years. For every $1 earned by Canadian performers outside the country, $5 flows out of the country. Proposals for longer and stronger copyright will increase the flow of dollars out of Canada, rather than foster Canadian creativity. It is important that we address this trade imbalance and focus on the needs of Canadian creators and consumers rather than the selfinterested demands of a limited group of rights holders.
Where changes to copyright laws are needed, Canada must adopt laws that serve Canadian interests first. Pressure from American interests and proposals that primarily benefit foreign distributors should be rejected.
Stay tuned.
.
.Stumble It!
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:54 am
pretty much sums up what the copy right act should be.
but they should add a segment to abolish the CRIA since they no longer are needed, the artists can pretty much promote them selves on the internet.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Sorry but I’ve had the devils own time of opening any article. Can get the opening site page fine. I have to guess that you are not getting all the bandwidth and server load yet you are due from The Planet server farm. I can open other sites just fine so it’s not on this end. This has been an on going problem ever since the problem at The Planet. Mostly I come here, look around, and any attempt at opening an article, I can open another tab and go surfing around the net while waiting to see if it is going to time out or open within 4 minutes or so.
The length of time to open an article tends to favor timeouts more than success at seeing the article. Good thing you are off and surfing because the articles would be off the page and new ones up without ever seeing what they were. Hope this gets straightened out sometime soon because under the present conditions it’s not worth the wait for a “maybe” it will open to see an article.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:37 am
BALANCE?
“Copyright law is designed to balance the interests of creators with the interests of the public.”
Being a starting point (a purpose), this statement, often repeated, must be analized.
It is like saying that criminal law is designed to balance the interets of criminal with the interests of the public. No one would beleieve that. Criminal laws are designed to prevent crime. That is the starting point.
It is like saying that labor laws are designed to balance the interest of employers with the interests of the workers. No one would beleieve that. Labor laws are designed to give rights to the workers. That is the starting point.
It is like saying that banking laws are designed to balance the interest of depositors with the interests of bankers. No one would beleieve that. Banking laws are designed to prevent fraud by banks.
Sure, we know that politicians have a habit of forgetting the starting points (purpose) of the laws they are designing. They start in one direction and get lost in the way. Most laws I have seen and I have seen many have this problem. They say the purpose is to get to the north, and wind up in the south.
Then what is copyright law designed to do?
Up to now it is designed to make a few industry barons wealthy and many artists, songwrters, scientists, poets very poor. The law has been designed by the industry barons. Sure, some artists, songwriters (poets, others, enginner, scientists, never) have voiced their opinion, after having been brainwashed by their publishers and record companies that its all about the money they will (frequently never will) receive.
That should change. The new design should be to maximize the production and availability of quality intellectual works at the least cost to the people. In order to do that yo need to know what it costs to produce intellectual works. A photograph may cost $0 and be worthless to the public and a movie may cost $100 million and bring great joy to the public, while a book by a scientist may be somewhere in the middle, with value, perhaps, to other scientists and worthless to the general public. Surely it is senseless to think that one copyright law will do the complicated trick of maximizing the production of quality intellectual works at the least costs.
Let’s take photographs. Copyright law has done little to promote the production of quality photographs and their enjoyment by the public, certainly not a fraction of what the invention of digital cameras and the Internet have done. The point: Copyrights do little for photographs. Technology has done a great deal.
Let’s take movies. Certainly no movie producer will invest $ millions, if the movie producers did not own copyrights and the movie can be copied freely upon release or after too short a period of the owner’s copyright. We must agree then that copyrights for the proper, calculated (on a movie by movie basis?), pediod are required for movie production if the production is not financed with public money (which is another possibility).
Let’s take music creation, publishing and recording. These fall in the middle. Too, no one will spend $ thousands to make a symphonic work recording if there were no copyright for the producers, and that would be bad for the public. At the other extreme, a singer will record, if need be, for nothing even if there is no copyright for him/her (as is frequently the case, as copyrights wind up in the hands of the barons).
Based on the above, I propose that all talk about copyright law should have the starting points that are clear:
- The purpose is to promote the creation and availability of intellectual works at the least cost to the people.
- Different laws are needed for different types of intellectual works. Each law has different copyright duration formulas (method calculating copyright duration) based on scientific methods (Operations Research optimization methods) and not as requested by special inteets grops.
- Copyrights are lost when sales stop. A movie that is not available for the public to see in a theater and is no longer sold for home viweing, should not have any copyright, regardless of original copyright’s duration. This is because avalability is extremely important to the people. Perhaps it is everything.
- Claiming copyright on public domain works should be a crime. It should also be prohibited the locking of the works so it cannot be copied. Any lock should automatically become inactive as soon as a work enters public domain. Is this is technically unworkable and means the end of DRM, then let it be. Again, availability is supreme.
Sure, it’s complicated and simple minded legislators may not be fit for the task. Judges too may not be fit to judge the laws. That is precisely why we have a huge legal mess that makes no sense to the people and industries (at least the musicians) going down the drain.
Then, lets change them.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:50 am
I am also having a lot of trouble opening pages. It is very annoying. But if you wait for long enough they eventually open.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:41 am
“For every $1 earned by Canadian performers outside the country, $5 flows out of the country.”
In my country, it is far worse. I estimate the ratio is over 50 to 1. I live in a country of dumb people.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
The lawyers will love this new proposed law. It will encourage thousands upon thousands of lawsuits against ordinary people, and make a windfall for those in the legal profession. Aren’t most of the people running the country lawyers anyway?
March 27th, 2009 at 11:57 am
COMMUNISM & THE DEVIL WORSHIPPING COPYRIGHT LAWS
3/26/09
Yep!! You heard me right! Copyright laws are straight from the communist party and second cousin to the devil. “How’s that work?” you say? Well when article 1, sec 8 of the constitution was written it started the largest “bailout” in American history. The founding fathers just wanted to protect artists and inventors from the pirates, and that was very noble of them. Now I have nothing against protecting inventors, after all they do a very large service to all mankind. So this complaint is against the arts only!
After a couple hundred years and billions of dollars later we are still protecting the artists from what? The answer is, protecting them from competing in the business world. Plain and simple they have a free ride with the aid of the communications and entertainment industries unions, guilds, associations, and their contractors. Unions and that’s what I’m talking about! The largest collection of unions in America bonded together by one kind of glue, “copyright protection”! It’s nothing new, “Ayn Rand”, “Red Star over Hollywood”, “Roy Brewer”, “and Communists in America”, “How Communists Seduced the American Film Industry”, and the list of evidence goes on. The proof is there to be had for anybody that wants to view it. Government intervention into the business world has always had some kind of repercussion. In this case the artists have found a way to live like kings off the royalties from some simple country song or just a cartoon drawing of an animal. In some cases the “one hit wonders” can support an entire family for several generations from their simple production.
So what’s wrong with somebody making big bucks from a one hit wonder? First of all it’s “golden calving”. When Moses came down from the mountain and saw that some people had made a golden calf and were worshipping it, he was angered. As should any man of God be! It’s a shame when you see young girls swooning and even fainting in idol worship of a musician or entertainer. That’s what happened when the artists were making the golden calf. The women stood around them remarking on the quality of art, and what great and talented artists they were. In these day’s they would have even gotten a copyright on that calf. Copyright laws suborn IDOL WORSHIP OF GRAVEN IMAGES! Is copyright law part of the Mark of the Beast? Do we treat this kind of idolatry indirectly, going roundabout and with a backhanded ambiguity ignoring it’s true nature? Is it arrogance and folly to claim copyright over God? (Mark 7: 21-22)
GOD DESTROYED THE PEOPLE OF ALABAMA FOR THEIR IDOL WORSHIP. In the mid 1800’s Alabama was a prosperous thriving state. Mineral explorations found large deposits of iron ore. The state grew wealthy and Birmingham was once named the “magic city”. In 1903 the people of Alabama built a 52-foot tall iron statue of the underworld God Vulcan. It was made completely of iron ore from Alabama. People didn’t fall to their knees and pray to this god, but the Lord God of us all was still offended. In just a decade after this Vulcan (largest iron statue in the world) was built the great wealth of Alabama disappeared completely. To this day as the statue sits on a perch overlooking Birmingham the people of Alabama remain one the poorest of all the states. A testimony that idol worship goes beyond praying and serving a false god. “Thou shall have no other Gods before me”. Exodus 20:3, Jeremiah 25:6, Deut 6:14 People of Alabama, God is not slack! If you don’t remove this demon god from your midst our father may bring it down by shaking the ground it stands on!
THE PARABLE OF THE SIRENS OF ULYSSES. We all know Homers story, and how Ulysses tied himself to the mast of his ship, even as some men jumped to their deaths for want of the sirens song. Those of us who took heed from such tale know there is a real life to it. Men and women drunk and drugged take their lives by the thousands every year. Many are encouraged and hypnotized to end their life with the assistance of seductive music and art. Come on now, its time to “cheapen “ the stranglehold hold art has on us. Remember it could be your children next to commit suicide while listening to some Sicko horrible rock song!
Copyright advocates have had a thousand years to develop the perspective that there are an infinite number of copyrightable expressions. Using the word “infinite” almost hypnotizes people. They have cloned in the idea that we must have government protection of the arts. That art as a business could not survive without the assistance of the government. Complicated math combined with the abuse of the infinite and eternal identification leaves today’s copyright lawyers unchallenged. You see THERE REALLY ISN’T 6 BILLION NAMES FOR GOD. That’s just another example of word magic. Oh, if you want to start calling God names like Fred, Bill, Susie, or horse and dog then you will find 6 billion names. Call him rumplstilskin for all I care, but it’s not a true name for God. If it is true then we would see some new kinds of art, we very seldom do! Now we have talking French Fries and Milkshakes because artists can’t find uncontested designs. They are scrapping the bottom of the barrel of creativity. And the only thing under the bottom of the barrel is nothing. HOW MANY MELODIES ARE THERE IN THE UNIVERSE? Go to “everything2.com” and see one guy’s answer. According to the author it almost rivals the infinite. Unfortunately he should have made it “how many copyrightable and tuneful melodies are still uncopyrighted”? Don’t forget to factor in the 25 million hits on the copyright office website (an indication of increased copyright literacy). Multiply exponentially the human population growth rate (approximately 75-80 million per year). Add any increase in Berne convention countries, etc., plus any new systems on recognizing unregistered copyrighted works. When it’s all said and done you may not like what you see. IT MAY BE PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CREATE NEW MELODIES WITHOUT INFRINGING ON EXISTING COPYRIGHTS! I like using country music as an example. It all has pretty much the same twang and lyrics. I have not heard anything different and new from the country music industry in 30 years. The lyrics may vary a little and the names of the artists are different, but country is still just country. You may say the same of rap music or heavy metal, etc. and contrary to what the industry experts say “You Are Right”!
One sin begets another! You have let in the golden calf in America. Then the communists took the next sin by unionizing the artists and controlling free enterprise! How many times can they remake King Kong before people stop paying to see it? The answer is forever, as long as the unions make sure it’s the only new release at the cinema. The consequences are, we are still living in the dark ages of art. The day the government gets out of the copyright protection business is the day we will see A NEW RENAISSANCE OF ART IN AMERICA. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, thousands of new arts will arise, along with millions of new jobs and businesses. A thousand years of government control in this business has left us weak and dependant. We can prosper and probably make even more money without the government’s protection. YOU SEE PEOPLE WILL PROSPER WITHOUT COPYRIGHT LAW. In fact the artists will probably make more money. They will find ways to distribute their product more effectively. Simultaneous distribution will allow them to maximize their profits. Oh. Sure a small handful of artists might get lost in the shuffle. The true artists will manage by being qualified to create new art on a continuous basis. Manufacturing and distribution will replace the government’s copyright protection. They will control in such a manner as to maximize distribution that will eliminate infringement. No longer will the artists of the gray zone be left out in the cold, having to resort to under the table shenanigans. LAISSEZ-FAIRE- It’s only art. For once let the people run the business without the government!
Millions of pieces of art that manufactures and distributors will not touch because it might be infringing will immediately be available. They do not want to risk the lawsuits! These gray area arts can have a probability of at least 50% that is not infringing. Unleash this art into the new renaissance of a copyright free world. Open the market and utilize the manufactures, so they no longer serve the pirate industry.
WE ARE LIVING IN THE DARK AGES OF ART. My favorite example is the theatre industry. The theatre industry services have not changed much in the last 100 years. We have the same old dusty dark box seating. Soft drinks that have that chemically treated taste, and popcorn with the “other” butter. They don’t have to compete because copyright laws protect them. The new movies are sent to the theatre for a month or two, then on to the cable, and finally on DVD. If we took away copyright protection for the arts the producers and corporate bosses would panic. We’d have them in the sweatbox! It’s fairly obvious they would opt to release all new movies on the same day to the theatre, cable, and DVD. Let them compete for customers! Free enterprise would prevail! We are in the dark ages of movie theatres because futuristic theatres don’t exist. The theatres would have to offer new amenities to attract customers. FUTURISTIC THEATRES COULD INCLUDE: dining options, theme park simulation, cubicles for those that want to talk while viewing (like an old fashioned drive in theatre, but indoors), download availability, and who know what else?
It’s time for the government to get out of the copyright bailout of artists. Say no to the AM/FM royalties!!!
COPYRIGHT PROTECTION MADE SENSE HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO. Today we have millions of people per year accessing the copyright offices website. This mushroom cloud of copyright savvy is accelerating into a real monster. Our courts can’t even handle deciphering what is and isn’t infringement. The judges create an enigma of myriading formulas to work with. They have the abstraction test, the subtraction test, the patterns test, and the totality test. Is it extrinsic or intrinsic, is it contributory, and is it similar? The real question is do the judges even have a remote idea of what they are doing? Can we tolerate infringement suits because 4 notes in a melody are similar? Do the judges know the difference between the eastern scale and western? It is time to take the founding fathers advice and call “Time Out” to copyright protection for the arts! So many people would like to see an end to copyright law. The ease of copy machines, cd, and downloads render copyright obsolete. Those that defend copyright ignore one very important factor. A world without copyright law doesn’t mean artists will be without protection. People are adaptable, and in this high tech generation it’s probable that we can do it better without the government. Even the judge that presided over the NAPSTER TRIAL proposed a plan to reform copyright laws. A plan that would employee manufactures and developers with public and private administrators to oversee rules and regulations, etc. Patel said, “Our copyright laws have become a patchwork of amendments that are adopted as emergencies arise”. Honest people waste hundreds of hours searching for copyright permission only to reach a dead-end. They are more than willing to pay the royalty fee but some times can’t even find out who owns the copyright. What a bunch of crock the government has given us! Then they offer to let us pay an orphan fee, money that goes to the government not the author. It’s like a deadbeat dad paying off the gov instead of the kids. Look how heinous our courts have become that you can’t even place a Christmas bow around a statue. In Prise de Parole vs. Guerin edituer Ltee (a Canadian case) the courts ruled that it’s a MORAL violation to alter art with something as simple as a piece of ribbon.
REVERSE ENGINEERING LAWS VIOLATE THE AXIOMATIC AGE OLD AND ACCEPTED CONCEPT “SCIENTIFIC INVENTION, DISCOVERY, AND INNOVATION.” Innovation ceases to exist, because we cannot study what has already been created. We become like the Eloi of the H.G. Wells movie, “The Time Machine.” Obey and never ask the How or Why of things. If invention and discovery are the fruits of civilization then innovation is the stem and stalk that makes the flower grow. If our copyright laws existed 10 thousand years ago we would still be talking the wheel. Our modern airplanes are not solely the product of the Wright brother’s invention.
COPYRIGHT LAWS ARE DEAD
Like a dinosaur on the verge of extinction it is dead. The belief that there is an unlimited, infinite, bountiful supply of untapped art is now over. It has been replaced by the computer that can create an endless supply of art overnight using computer programs and robotics. Mass production and distribution can delivery billions of pieces of art globally in just a few hours to your doorstep. Only a handful of “uncle toms” still believe that copyright protection serves any useful purpose. As more and more art is created the number of infringement related altercations ties up our courts, creating an enormous backlog. How many times can you draw a cartoon picture of a rat and it still has the identifiable appearance of being a rat? So a small group of people gets copyright and the rest of the world can’t make a living drawing pictures of rats? How is that right for us all? The world is a lot more complicated than it was in the 6th century when King Diarmed copyrighted baby calves.
“IF CREATIVITY IS A FIELD, COPYRIGHT IS THE FENCE”-John Oswald
IS CREATIVITY A LEARNED BERHAVIOUR? There sure seems to be some experts that say it is developed. Another thing, is a personal one for me, I call it Universal Thought. Whether or not it’s some kind of mental telepathy or communication from God it does exist. Which means many artists have been given their inspiration, sometimes subconsciously and sometimes directly from the hand of the Father? So it really isn’t your art, its Gods. Don’t believe in God? There is a unity of thought and perception that is dependant upon the wholeness of life’s experiences. No man is an island! (John Donne)
Please don’t let a few desperate sour pusses destroy our heritage by making free music on radio disappear. That’s what will happen if the stations have to pay to play. Many will switch to talk radio or use more talk to serve as filler between songs. Those artists knew what they were getting into when they began a career in music. The free music on radio has been around for almost 100 years; let’s keep it going awhile longer, for the sake of our American culture and heritage. God said, “Give and it shall be given unto you” Luke 6:38 Oh! and don’t forget PATTERN THINKING. Pattern thinking is defined as one who organizes ideas and things together in a way that allows them to become useful and fitting to the product or endeavor. Our minds form patterns beginning on the day we are born, and we cannot have them without other forces allowing them to interact with us.
EXPERTS LIKE TO SUGGEST THAT COPYRIGHT LAWS SECURES FIANANCIAL REWARDS FOR AUTHORS. I challenge these experts to prove it. Validate that protections would not happen without the governments hand. These experts would also have us believe that copyright policy serves as a stimulus for creativity. Again I say, “Where is the proof”? It is just as plausible to say “copyright laws stems and stymies like a brick wall against the road of imagination, blocking many artists and inventors from every finding the final destination”. The lack of clarity that infringement brings has the potential for millions of authors to be left out of the design frame. The gray area of legitimacy sparks fear and resentment against the establishment that is manipulated by the upper class of authors and artists. The privileges wealthy copyright holders have garnered affords them monopoly powers capable of “slap suiting” lesser artistic creations out of the ballpark. Ruthless tactics designed to preserve old stale art and keep competition down adorn our halls of entertainment. Pray that they sit on the chopping block of the faux pedestal. The end result is the established dominant authors are not really the genius they have been likened to. Perhaps they are just old tired worn out has beens, unable to compete with new art and clinging to the government protections like a dog that covets his bone collection. And the copyright office may very well cater to these wolves. I’ve heard that it can take up to a year to get some works copyrighted. This can be construed as a tactic to leave new artists standing in the soup line.
I reiterate that you cannot scientifically prove the necessity of copyright law on our modern society. In all likelihood authors may find greater rewards by learning to protect their works without the government. Quality industrial services in a globalize system of accessibility will prove to be the ultimate protection, and provide greater rewards to the artists. It’s like someone offering to buy 1 million dollars of your product for 5 years of use. Then he offers you an extra 125 thousand if you are willing to take 5 annual payments instead of the lump sum. Anybody that’s owned a small business knows to take the 1 million, because the customer might not come back next year. You’ll have a larger lump sum payout vs. the trickle down royalties that the copyright laws give you.
Remember copyright protection is ONLY A RIGHT FOR A LIMITED TIME. The founding fathers didn’t authorize eternal services.
IN THE END BY BREAKING FREE OF THE HOLLYWOODLAND UNION CONTROLS AND GOVERNMENT INDULGENCES WE WILL UNLEASH A TORRENT OF ART, A RENNAISSANCE LIKE NEVER SEEN BEFORE ON THIS PLANET EARTH, AND THE PROFITS WILL SOAR BEYOND IMAGINATION!
When the transition happens some people will lose out, but new jobs and businesses will be created to replace government control. We will survive and prosper like business as
Usual. The fluency of the art will resonate without copyright, producing enormous profits for authors, yet keeping a natural check and balance by filtering out the old stale art that has outlived its usefulness.
THE COURT JESTER IS NOW THE KING. Well it worked out for the better with Reagan, but that doesn’t mean every singer, dancer, actor that has a hair to become a politician will be as good as him. We’ve given to much power and wealth to the artist community. Reduce their stranglehold on our country and let the real politicians get the votes. Hey! Hey! Vote for me I’ve got Big Muscles. Check out my biceps, just the right size for president eh! “Oh what a wicked web we weave when a first we do deceive”. You sowed us copyright law and now the vines of government abuse will suffocate the lifeblood from our souls. Radio paying royalties will equal “HARDCORE” paid advertising and that will be the end of free radio. It was the free music that allowed radio to survive the television. Now we will see an era of RUSH LIMBAUG SPAWNS spewing up across the country like little demons returning to their haunt 10 fold. It won’t matter what side of the fence they represent just as long as it doesn’t exceed the company budget. Let us keep the court jesters in their field of entertainment by eliminating copyright laws. Do you want some Bozo as your circuit court judge or would you have Judge Harvard Yale, a man learned in the science of law and politics? Copyright laws have turned the Bozos into the crème de la crème and they have developed the knack to jump careers into politics at a whim (thanks to the success of Reagan). Don’t expect every song and dance act to be as good as he was!
AS THE RECESSION ROLLS ON CONGRESS PLOTS TO DESTROY MORE JOBS AND FAMILIES. Millions of unemployed and more businesses on the chopping block of Bill # H.R. 4789. If hundreds or even thousands of radio stations cannot afford to pay the royalties, the next step will be to the poor house. Why take a chance with this bill during the great recession? Just to satisfy a small handful of old washed out artists that cannot compete any longer. They cannot cut new music so they have found the proverbial buried bone in the back yard to dig up. I say, “put these dogs down”, they are still young enough to learn a new trick or song. Say NO to BILL H.R. 4789
ARE THE ATROCITES OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT LITIGATION HIDDEN FROM THE PUBLIC EYE BY SETTLEMENT AGREEMENTS AND SLAP SUIT TACTICS? Before congress acts they must get the whole story. Look at the case of Beatty Chadwick a lawyer imprisoned 11 years for not paying child support. Just one example of the dark side, and a government in need of more safeguards. Has anybody in congress seen a categorical survey of the arts potential? If drawing a picture of a carton animal is a category then how many times can you draw a cat without becoming an infringer? It must have some resemblance of a cat, some identification pattern to fit the category. THE CASE OF DMITRY SKLYAROV, he was arrested for creating tools to read encrypted books. In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church persecuted scholars who tried to translate Latin bibles into the common languages. In some MUSLIM countries today they still permit Arabic wording only when copying the Koran. Does history repeat itself or not brothers and sisters?? Is there any difference between Islamic fascists that will put a man to death for translating the Koran in another language other than Arabic, and the U.S. government copyright laws that arrested Dmitry for translating encrypted books?
IS INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY A CONSECRETED RIGHT SOLELY FOR WEALTY COPYRIGHT HOLDERS? Doesn’t our conscience owe us an equal opportunity for all? Many of today’s copyright holders avail themselves to mass production strategies in lieu of simpler age-old systems. Crafters in flea markets, craft and art fairs, basements, and in the garage create art that is outside the realm of big business, and is frequently found to be infringing. It’s not fair to the street corner musician and all the others that work out of a car, bus and boat to make an honest buck. Simple remakes of ancient art altered and online by clever vendors out for a quick buck, along with a plethora of other types are forcing the issue of right and wrong. Yet the only way people can have this art is through the underground and on the Internet. There is obviously a lacking of brotherly love and charity from the copyright holder. The Grand Architect bids us to the common mans struggle like a crusade and an obligation against ignorance, fanaticism, and error. Because in the end we are responsible for our own actions, which means there is a system beyond government copyright law.
IT DOESN’T TAKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST AMOUNT OF INTELLIGENCE TO KNOW THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO GET OUT OF THE COPYRIGHT BUSINESS. The constitution has already promised that the government will limit its time of involvement into to the private sector business. Obviously, the Founding Fathers knew that there are not an infinite number of copyrightable expressions.
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively posses as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
Its peculiar character, too, is that none possess the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He, who receives an idea from me, receives instruction without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instructions of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, Like fire expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.” -THOMAS JEFFERSON
IF THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT GET OUT OF THE COPYRIGHT BUSINESS WHAT WILL HAPPEN? One possible action is people could step in and replace the copyright office anyway. Create a system to help poor people get their art copyright protected by registering it online so the time stamps of the Internet could be a partial protection. Such an action would help put the courts in a backlog and tie up litigations for the next hundred years. Free enterprise copyright assistance already exists thru the attorney, but the mantra of service is lacking and they are only out for the quick buck. A discount copyright clearinghouse for the unregistered could take us to a new playing field.
Now wouldn’t it be something if thousands of radio stations refused to play any more music rather than pay royalties? We could have an enormous boycott of the new law (if it gets passed).
Copyright law multiplied by exponential growth factors (egf) = AAD art at death
Egf could include: 1. Human population growth 2. Copyright literacy 3. Mass production 4. Copyright laws.
This article is copyright free. Use it or lose it any way you want.
DARN DOG CAN’T FIND ANY REAL MEAT, SO HE DUG UP THIS OLD BONE FROM OUR BACK YARD!(You must imagine a pic of a dog with a bone in his mouth. Caption on bone reads, am/fm royalties bill).