I am far from being expert in these matters, but I know where I stand, which is: compensate creators reasonably, for a reasonable amount of time, allowing for all traditional fair use, first sale etc. rights.
This issue has some particular importance in Canada at the moment as we are having a Federal Election.
The Corporation tries to pull all into private space forever, this is a rational action by it to maximize profits.
I will let more expert voices speak, I do have one note: the "UN" WIPO treaty was just the US advocates of DMCA legislation, thwarted in the US, making international law behind closed doors and then coming back to the US and saying "oh dear, it's international law, I guess we must have a DMCA now". I don't have a good ref on this, feel free to provide some.
I find it interested that the passion of the Canadian "rational technology policy" groups seems to be around copyright (which is certainly an important issue) with, as far as I can tell, no energy devoted yet to fighting electronic voting in Canada.
Anyway, on to some resources and thoughts on copyright and DRM in Canada.
Cory Doctorow has a major article out in Sunday's Toronto Star: Trademark political shenanigans.
Worrying about the Americanization of Canada is practically a national sport, and nowhere is it more prevalent than in politics. Recently, two-term Liberal MP Sam Bulte (Parkdale-High Park) has followed her American counterparts down the path of rewarding her entertainment-industry campaign backers by throwing her support behind U.S.-style copyright laws for Canada.
On Thursday night, just four days before the election, she will host a $250-a-plate fundraising dinner sponsored by the heads of the industry associations for the film, music, publishing and videogame sectors.
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Take 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that was enacted to implement the UN's WIPO Copyright Treaty. This is the same treaty that Bulte led the charge on trying to implement in the last Parliament with Bill C-60, Canada's own controversial copyright reform bill. (The bill died when the election was called but could be resurrected if the Liberals win the election; Bulte is thought to be a shoo-in for the job of minister of Canadian Heritage, which would make her responsible for copyright laws.)
The DMCA, passed in Congress with no debate, represents a kind of farcical wish list for rights holders who don't want to have to reinvent their business to accommodate the digital age. It lets anyone who claims to be an infringed-upon copyright holder demand the censorship of Internet materials without showing any evidence that any infringement has taken place.
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Another form of "self-help" is so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. These are the technological restrictions put on the media that you buy, such as games, CDs and DVDs, that seek to control how you use works after you buy them.
These DRMs indiscriminately restrict the enjoyment of your lawful property, allowing rights holders to control your private use of media in ways not considered under copyright law. For example, Adobe's eBook technology blocks your ability to copy and paste a quotation, even where copyright law would allow it, e.g. in the course of criticism or in academic research.
DRM technology on DVDs prevents you from watching discs bought overseas in a Canadian DVD player, despite the fact that copyright doesn't give creators the right to control where their creations are viewed after they've been sold. That's why you don't need to leave your Canadian editions of your favourite books at home when you go on holidays in foreign countries.
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Bill C-60 contained its own analogue to the Broadcast Flag: a mandate that required libraries to use DRM technologies when loaning out digital documents to patrons. Under C-60's proposal, Canada's tax-funded libraries would have to buy and use onerous restriction software to control how patrons used their digital documents — and their patrons would also have to pay a premium for DRM technologies to read and use these documents.
The outcome of the American approach that Bulte advocates is nothing less than a war between the entertainment industry and the public. In the U.S., thousands of lawsuits have been filed against music fans, including grandmothers and little girls in subsidized housing.
If you want a UK angle, I liked the posting by Kevin Marks: Response to the UK Parliament's DRM Inquiry
Each computers' immanent ability to become any kind of machine and the copying of data that happens as part of this, leads the DRM advocates naturally to the point where they want to outlaw computers, or to take them over by stealth, using virus-like techniques.
The reductio ad absurdum of this is to privilege DRM implementers in law above the owners of the computers on which their software runs, without their effective consent. Sadly, this is exactly what is being demanded by the publishers' lobby.
Slashdot points out yet another issue about DRM, in that it is in a way an attack on your own computer, potentially comproming your security. The Choice Between DRM and Security, quoting a Groklaw article
We are entering the era of ubiquitous and safety critical computing, but the developers of DRM technologies seem to believe that computers are nothing more than personal entertainment systems for consumers. This belief is convenient, because creating DRM mechanisms that respect security, safety, and reliability concerns is going to be an expensive and complex engineering task.
I'd like to mention a side pet peeve of mine, which is that copyright holders are demanding so much money for even brief bits of their content, that is slowing, preventing, or altering DVD releases of TV shows. Or even important documentaries, the pre-eminent example being Eyes on the Prize. (Eventually rescued by donations of over US$850,000.)
There are also ongoing battles around the ability to make copies of digital content. This includes forcing HDCP DRM on digital content, the endless HD DVD format and DRM wars, and digital radio. (As a side note, corporate paranoia leading to increased DRM associated with enhanced digital quality has basically killed at least three technologies so far: DAT, SACD and DVD-Audio.) It gets even worse, as the latest idea is a "broadcaster's right" and "webcaster's right". That doesn't mean "right to webcast" that means "right to prevent anyone else from ever showing anything you transmit, even if you don't own the content yourself".
Slashdot 'Webcaster's Right' in WIPO Treaty /.
Slashdot Tension Between Record Labels And Digital Radio /.
Ars Technica "Analog hole" legislation introduced
Ars Technica Licensing our history
As luck would have it, there are a wealth of Canadian resources on these topics:
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