p2pnet - rss feed: Not a happy day for Canadians
p2pnet.net News:- “This is not a happy day for Canadians,” says Philippa Lawson, executive director of CIPPIC, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
The long-awaited bill to amend the Canadian Copyright Act, released a short while ago, “calls for a massive transfer of rights and entitlements out of the hands of the Canadian public, and into the hands of copyright holders,” says Lawson.
The winners are foreign content industries who should be, “very, very happy with the government’s draft legislation.”
And the losers are, “Canadian consumers, educators, students, Canada’s security research community, Canada’s public domain and Canadian innovators and creators, whose interests have been sacrificed to the wishes of collectives and multinational entertainment companies,” Lawson declares.
CIPPIC counsel David Fewer says the bill’s sweep is, “really startling”.
Characterized as merely implementing Canada’s obligation under the 1996 WIPO Internet Treaties, in reality it, “ranges far from digital issues alone,” he says. “In addition to digital issues, the bill touches on photography, sound recordings, and performers’ rights issues.
“And on each issue, it is the rights holder community that benefits. Even the so-called user rights in the Bill - the electronic delivery of distance learning and interlibrary loan materials - are hobbled in ways that undermine their usefulness.”
But it could have been a lot worse, Fewer goes on.
“First, the government has not back-tracked significantly from its March 24, 2005, proposals. Second, this Bill suggests that the government continues to reject the one-sided approach to copyright we saw in the May, 2004, Interim Report on Copyright Reform of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Third, this Bill suggests that the government has learned from the disastrous US experience under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This Bill falls short of the radical approach to many of these issues adopted by the United States.”
Proposed amendments include:
- Creating new “anti-circumvention rights”, prohibiting circumvention of technological protection measures (”TPMs”) for infringing purposes
- Creating a new “anti-tampering right”, prohibiting tampering with rights management information (”RMI”) for infringing purposes
- Creating a “making available right”, granting copyright holders the exclusive right to make copies of copyright-protected materials available to the public in respect of “on-demand services” over the Internet
- Formalizing the current “notice and notice” system for imposing liability on Internet Service Providers for the infringing activities of its customers;
- Expanding the nature, scope and term of rights afforded performers and sound recording makers;
- Expanding photographers’ rights at the expense of the rights of those - including consumers - who commission photographs; and
- Facilitating the electronic delivery of materials to students and library patrons.
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June 20th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
when does this become law?
June 20th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
and is there anything we can do now?
June 20th, 2005 at 11:08 pm
apparently now that it appears the Liberals have lost their sponsership $$ they have decided to sell themselves to the cartels!
June 21st, 2005 at 12:49 am
Why does Canada keep listening to the USA… morrons… do government your way… and don’t listen ot the USA… whatever the USA government says/or threatens… screw them…
All you’ve done by allowing these crapy copywrite laws, is take more power away from your public, and given it to the big American companies…
Whatever happen to governments for the people, not for the big companies…
June 21st, 2005 at 1:13 am
Consistent with my theory that the copying of digital files can be made illegal but cannot be actually stopped:
“Creating new “anti-circumvention rights”
“Creating a new “anti-tampering right”
“Expanding the nature, scope and term of rights afforded performers and sound recording makers”
The result will be that cosumers will not buy lame products from sellers that use all available rights to prevent copying. The sellers will learn that difficult to copy produces will not sell well, after loosing market share. Easy to copy records will sell better.
“Formalizing the current “notice and notice” system for imposing liability on Internet Service Providers…”
There is no way to make Internet Service Providers liable for the traffic of digital files the ISP knows nothing about and which the ISP cannot open to determine if the contents are “legal”, are in public domain, or if the copyrights are owned by the sender or if the files are in any way infringing on the rights of anyone (in what country?). The proposed changes in the law are only making the law more confusing for trial copyright lawyers and judges.
“Expanding photographers’ rights..”
The result will be that photographers that exercize their legal rights will not get much work. Bad timing for giving rights to photographers, considering that digital photography is making the professional photographer less necessary and his/her work less valuable each passing day.
Ths reminds me of the expanded rights of workers. The more rights, the fewer the jobs.
“Facilitating the electronic delivery of materials to students and library patrons.”
The only way that legislators can “facilitate” anything is by getting out of the way and not passing any laws that places any controls on the flow of files.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
June 21st, 2005 at 1:44 am
I beg your pardon Rafael. You know not of what you speak - as a professional photographer who has to constantly stop people from copying my work and reproducing it to give to others or even worse, selling it to others, this amendment does what it should, gives me the copyright to my work. After all, it was my money, my time, my expense, my knowledge and expertise that created those photographs DIGITALLY, who are you to say that I should not have my copyright to my work and say who can produce it and who cannot. As for exercising my legal right, I will and do continue to get work with my digital equipment and you probably cannot fathom this Rafael - I do get work and even turn it down, because I am good at what I do.
Anybody can buy a digital camera - knowing how to use it is another thing. I have a right to say what happens to my photographs.
Tracey Eide
June 21st, 2005 at 4:03 am
And what effect will this have on filesharing in Canada? Fuck all !!! Just like in the States where sharing continues to increase. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
June 21st, 2005 at 4:19 am
You may have the right to say what can and cannot be done with your photographs that you take on your time, but if I hire you to do a photoshoot, then any photos that you take belong to me because I paid you for your services. If you cannot grasp that simple concept, then you are more niave than Rafael is.
June 21st, 2005 at 9:24 am
But it could have been a lot worse, Fewer goes on.
Could have been? Just with photography rights alone it is a big step backwards. Imagine that last week you hired Sears portrait studio to take your photograph, under current copyright law you own the rights to it (law has been that way for about a 100 years). If professional photographers get their way and the law changes places like Sears will own the rights to your portraits. What happens if 1 - 2 - 3 years down the road you would like a copy of your portrait? You’ll have to find the business/person who owns the rights to the image and get permission to have a copy made. What if they say no? Or they say sure I’ll allow you to make a copy but it’ll cost you $2500 in royalties for the right to do so.
The problem for professional photographers could easily be fixed by creating domestic and commercial definitions within the act so that examples like the one above don’t happen to joe consumer. But the committee (last time I checked) refuses to create separate sections to correct the problem, in fact they think it is a non-issue. How can it be?
We’re going to wind up with a system where your local 1 hour place may not print your photo because it is “too professional”
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-16-digital-picture-problems_x.htm
What a load of equine excrement this Bill is.
June 21st, 2005 at 9:27 am
The funniest part about all of this is on the one hand we will still have the right to make copies for personal use BUT … it’ll be against the law to circumvent any DRM.
June 21st, 2005 at 1:47 pm
“who are you to say that I should not have my copyright to my work”
Sorry, but I did not say such a thing. Certainly only you, as an artists, should have the exclusive rights to commercially exploit the photos you took on a not for hire basis. I am sure that Canadian law recognized this in the past and will continue to recognize this.
But one thing is to have a right and another is to enforce it in a diminishing market situation. That was my point.
Anyway, I think, all future publication of photgraphs (as well as books, newspapers, etc.) will be in digital files format. Only the commercial exploitation of photographs can be stopped, in the country of the photographer, with the caveat that it is a very expensive proposition to sue for infringement or to actually collect money if a case is won.
Private copying of digital files for private enjoyment with frineds is unstoppable regardless of what the laws allow. That is the reality.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
June 21st, 2005 at 3:55 pm
This is of course by design. They still get to collect their ‘tax’ on blank media, thus getting money for nothing. With the cartels that seems to be their way of thinking….or maybe they are going to let that money fall back to the ‘government’ maybe that is the payoff for screwing their constituents
June 21st, 2005 at 4:32 pm
If it is tied affirmatively to infringement, does it effectively protect the producers of fair use tools as well as the implied protection to consumers.
These are important nuances which should be addressed before raising alarms.
If there is adequate protection for producers and consumers of fair use tools, then this “protection” of tpm’s is effectively defanged.
If there is not, then you should outline the points in the draft where there is not adequate protection for consumer and producer liberty.
June 21st, 2005 at 6:05 pm
What people can do:
a) Sign the Petition for Users’ Rights which already opposes most aspects of this bill. http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/
b) learn about and talk about this issue.
The legacy content and “software manufacturing” industries are relying on misinformation and people being uninformed to get this bill passed. We need to get more people informed and involved, and given there are far more of us than there are of them we can win.
Remember: When we first started the petition we were told we would be lucky to get the 25 minimum required to be tabled. Even before the tabling of the bill we had nearly 1800 signatures and growing.
June 21st, 2005 at 6:24 pm
Tracey,
Please don’t rely on the lobbying of the professional photographer organizations to determine what rights you will have. They are trying to access the lucrative stock photography industry, and be able to publish commissioned photographs possibly without the informed consent of the subjects.
You are unlikely to gain any new rights in the places where professional photographers make most of their money. While 13(2) of the copyright act (commissioned photography) is being repealed, this means that photographers will fall to 13(3) (employment) and you will still not be the first holder of copyright.
I expect that there will be a lot of education about this bill by consumers groups to protect consumers rights. I know that I would never hire a photographer where I wasn’t purchasing the copyright of the resulting pictures (IE: hiring someone for a wedding, family portrait, etc), and as customers become more informed on copyright issues I suspect (and hope) that others will demand the same.
Sorry, it is the “customer that is always right”, not the photographer
Note: I am a creator myself (software and non-software literary works), so am obviously not opposed to the rights of creators. I just believe you are taking a harmful approach to your business by attacking the rights of your customers through support of these backward-facing laws, rather than working to be an ally of your customers.
I know another photographer I would never feel comfortable hiring: http://www.equinesportphotography.com/
June 21st, 2005 at 6:38 pm
Chances are you already signed away your copyright when you commissioned the photograph. How many people read the fine print when they sign the bill of sale, or anything else they may sign when hiring a photographer? The default in the act doesn’t define who IS the copyright holder, only who the first holder of copyright is and not who currently owns copyright due to a contract.
While CIPPIC.ca made a big deal about the “default state where there was no contract” with commissioned photographs, I think consumers were already at a huge negotiating disadvantage with professional photographers and were already signing contacts that took away any consumer rights. While this change will offer moral rights for independent photographers (those not working for someone else), it will have no positive impact on material rights ($$) for photographers.
I believe photographs should be fixed term from when the picture was taken, given it is unlikely the customer will know who the photographer was 50 years later, but they will be able to determine the age of the photograph from its contents. I would have been supportive of the changes that photographers were asking for if it was accompanied by something to adequately balance their demands with the rights of their customers. The main impact these changes will have on my life is an increased unwillingness to hire a professional photographer to record any aspect of my life.
I consider the photography changes to be the least problematic aspect of the bill. Will you be able to buy a digital camera of your choice and plug it into a computer running software of your choice? This is unlikely given the purpose of legal protection for technological measures being added to copyright is to remove any consumer choice in the brands of technology that you buy. Likely all that will be available commercially over time are devices that are controlled by a very small number of “software manufacturing” vendors (Microsoft, Apple, Sony, etc) that will not plug into each other.
Who will effectively own your photograph in the long run? It won’t likely be you or the photographer, but some “software manufacturing” vendor.
Sign the petition: http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/
June 21st, 2005 at 6:45 pm
The answer is: The bill is extremely convoluted, hard for even the technical and legal savvy to understand, and it is uncertain how a judge will interpret the confusing language used. The practical effect of this is that nobody will likely be willing to be the extremely expensive “test case”, and thus the well funded media, content and “software manufacturing” cartels will effectively be able to use legal protection for TPMs to shut out any and all competition and users’ rights.
There would need to be a positive Users’ Right expressed in the act before citizens could feel comfortable with those rights.
How many people were willing to be test cases for the old act? How many reading this forum believed that unauthorized P2P distribution was legal in the past? I didn’t believe that unauthorized P2P was legal, but without a court case there was no way to know that for certain one way or the other:
http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/p2p-legal-theories.html
June 21st, 2005 at 9:53 pm
Just because you signed away your rights because you failed to read the fine print when signing on the dotted line isn’t a good enough excuse to change the law. Ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse not should it be a reason to change the law.
The recommended changes are only going to benefit a very small percentage of professional photographers and there ARE other ways to satisfy professional photographers such as photojournalists who would like to use a photo they took while on the job somewhere else but are prevented under current legislation.
It may seem like a pissy thing to you - who is more interested in other aspects of the Bill - but to canadian amature/professional photographers its a big deal, just like fair use/notice and take down/future of p2p is important to p2p users
June 21st, 2005 at 10:04 pm
I agree with the others here.
I don’t like the idea of hiring a photographer who holds copyright on the images I’ve paid them to take. I know there are many, if not most photographers doing this now days, and I’d hate the idea of ending up the photograph used to sell picture frames in Walmart (not that I would).
I also hate photographers take photos of people without permission and this happens more and more often now with picture phones.
Tell me did you get the permission to takes the photos of the all people in the backgound of your “first impression” photos?
Perhaps I should copyright the image of myself my belongings and sue people who include me, my house, my car, etc in the background of there holiday snaps? I have as much right to this as people like you do to take the pictures of people without their permission.
If you take photos of things you own in your time, then sure you can hold copyright, otherwise bugger off.
June 25th, 2005 at 5:56 am
Aren’t we paying a levy on all recordable media, I should hope that if/when they enforce this bill that the levy will be lifted. But I doubt it.
June 25th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Furthermore the only one who owns the right of anything I hire them for is ME.. you understand… ME ME ME ME ME… Its is amazing how any idiot would think that he/she owns the photos of my family that I hire him/her to take. Can you also lat claim to whats in the photos? You get business because you are good at what you do, good point, thats the way most business’ work, if your good you get more business. But for you to believe that you have ownership of the photos i take, cmon are you insane. If this turn out to be the case how soon will it be when construction companies lay copyright claim to buildings that they build. You can all see the possibilities. As for the photograhers who believe that i can copy there photo after i pay for it to be taken and provide the means to have it taken. KISS MY FLASH!!!
July 13th, 2005 at 4:52 am
I do not attack the rights of my customers Russell, I am trying to preserve my business and earn a living without people taking my photos and manipulating them, copying them and selling them, which has been done. So, if I can retain the rights to my photographs, so be it. I’m not opposed to people using them for personal usage at all, but I wouldn’t take your software and buy it and sell it to somebody else, just as I don’t want my photos used that way either. That is the protection I would like to see, so to slam me, to me Russell, is in very poor taste.
Tracey Eide
July 13th, 2005 at 5:26 am
Thanks for your .02 worth. It’s amazing how narrow minded you are, of course you’ve never heard of “talk a walk in my shoes” have you? All I want is to be able to control the sale of my photos/work - I don’t give a dog’s butt what they do with it personally - make mousepads for the kids at Christmas, etc., but when I see my images being used as Stock Photography and in advertising campaigns without any compensation (no I wasn’t hired to specifically take those photos for an ad campaign and if I did, I wouldn’t have the right to keep them, but I would want the right to display them to show people my work and right now, I’m not allowed to do that). You just read what you want to read and rip me another one without any consideration from my point-of-view, you just think photographers are out there to screw you around and maybe there are those types, I choose not to be. I just choose to happen to want to get paid for my work and not have others sell it away from me. So, if you want to judge me amoral, so be it - you seem like a very one-sided person and I invite you to KISS MY FLASH.
Tracey
July 13th, 2005 at 5:29 am
Finally someone who realizes there should be another part to the Bill - I agree 110% - Commercial and Domestic - it should be defined and then photographers like me who are trying to earn a living don’t have to worry about misinterpretations or have people on lists like this rip our faces off for trying to make a living and stop people from using our photos for monetary gain, when a photoshoot wasn’t commissioned that way.
Tracey