Oz parliamentary TPM report
p2p news view / p2pnet: Kim Weatherall provides a quick summary of what is an exceptionally important Australian parliamentary report on TPM provision implementation. The report includes 37 recommendations with a long list of protections. Kim points to coverage of region coding (specifically excluded as TPM), linking access controls to copyright, and exceptions when the amount of non-copyright material protected under a TPM is substantial (and modestly doesn’t reference the committee’s citations of her own work).
There is lots more including exceptions for fair dealing, education, and libraries. Moreover, the committee made it clear that changes in the law that facilitate greater access (such as format shifting or backup rights) should be matched by a TPM exception. As Kim concludes:
"Two arms of government have now spoken: the High Court of Australia, and a committee of the Parliament. Both have affirmed that copyright law must be balanced; that anti-circumvention laws should be matched to copyright rights, rather than overly extending them . How will the executive react?"
This report should obviously be required reading in Canada. In fact, it should be more than just read. It should be matched by a similar process (just as recently occured in the UK) that ensures that Canadian law similarly preserves the appropriate balance should we enact anti-circumvention provisions.
The copyright lobby argued that Bill C-60 did not go far enough in protecting TPMs.
It seems to me that this report from independent parliamentarians (no pro-user zealots there) confirms that the opposite is true: the bill did not do enough to provide consumers and the marketplace with adequate protections from TPMs.
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
