Just wanted to share this fantastic short documentary about the recent shifts in copyright law from Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch.
The film features Fred Von Lohmann, Michael Geist, and others, and discusses the problem of physical-age copyright law in our digital age.
Today, Michael Geist, law professor and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law from the University of Ottawa, tweeted a link to some leaked documents allegedly pertaining to trade negotiations between Canada and the European Union. While there are quite a few documents available, I took a moment to flip through the one focused on intellectual property negotiations, and found some rather shocking proposals that would both lengthen existing copyright terms and dismantle what few fair-use laws currently exist in Canada.
It’s no secret that our federal copyright law is a mess. While US copyright law tends to be more draconian in nature (see the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act), Canadian copyright law consists of a mass of overlapping statutes and supreme court decisions that combine to make it inefficient, costly to consumers, and extremely hard to navigate. Check out this episode of Jesse Brown’s Search Engine Podcast for a great interview with Howard Knopf, an intellectual property lawyer from Ottawa who believes that Canada already has excessive IP laws, and the Copyright Board of Canada’s ridiculously long list of Canadian copyright organizations for more information.
This past summer, our federal conservative government held public copyright consultations on the possibility of Canadian copyright reform. At the time, I both participated in the consultation process, and wrote a lengthy post detailing my answers to the questions posed by the government. Based on this leak, and previous leaks of alleged ACTA materials, I guess that secretive international treaties were what our government actually had in mind when they said that they would take a ‘made in Canada’ approach to the reform process.
So without further ado (and with full recognition that I am not a lawyer, and could be way off the mark with my comments), I’ll run through a couple of the scarier things that I found in the leaked document:
The rights of an author of a literary or artistic work within the meaning of Article 2 of the Berne Convention shall run for the life of the author [EC: and for 70 years after his death, irrespective of the date when the work is lawfully made available to the public.] [Canada: and the remainder of the calendar year in which the author dies, and a period of at least 50 years following the end of that calendar year.]
[EC: In the case of anonymous or pseudonymous works, the term of protection shall run for 70 years after the work is lawfully made available to the public.] [Canada: Where the identity of the author of a work is unknown, copyright in the work shall subsist for whichever of the following terms ends earlier:
(a) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the first publication of the work and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year, and
(b) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the making of the work and a period of seventy-five years following the end of that calendar year.]
[EC: The Parties shall ensure that any person who, after the expiry of copyright protection, for the first time lawfully publishes or lawfully communicates to the public a previously unpublished work, shall benefit from a protection equivalent to the economic rights of the author. The term of protection of such rights shall be 25 years from the time when the work was first lawfully published or lawfully communicated to the public.
The Parties shall provide, for the benefit of the author of an original work of art, a resale right, to be defined as an inalienable right, which cannot be waived, even in advance, to receive a royalty based on the sale price obtained for any resale of the work, subsequent to the first transfer of the work by the author.
The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective. The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitation the circumvention of, any effective technological measures.
For the purposes of this Agreement, the expression ‘technological measures’ means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the right holder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law. Technological measures shall be deemed ‘effective’ where the use of a protected work or other subject matter is controlled by the right holders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against any person knowingly performing without authority any of the following acts:
(a) the removal or alteration of any electronic rights-management information;
(b) the distribution, importation for distribution, broadcasting, communication or making available to the public of works or other subject-matter protected under this Agreement from which electronic rights-management information has been removed or altered without authority, if such person knows, or has reasonable grounds to know, that by so doing he is inducing, enabling, facilitating or concealing an infringement of any copyright or any rights related to copyright as provided by law.
Where an information society service is provided that consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network, Parties shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information transmitted, on condition that the provider:
(a) does not initiate the transmission;
(b) does not select the receiver of the transmission; and
(c) does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission.
Please take a moment to read the document for yourself, and consider contacting your member of parliament to discuss the proposed treaty with him/her. It’s only by being vigilant that we, the citizenry, can protect our rights against laws such as this that are quite obviously slanted in the favour of corporate rights holders.
Just wanted to share another fantastic TED talk, this time from Michael Specter of The New Yorker.
In his talk, Specter argues that by any metric, we are currently living in the greatest time in which anybody could ever have lived throughout the entire history of the world. He then qualifies that claim by stating that if we don’t change popular opinion on the issues currently facing modern science, that state won’t last. In particular, Specter has beef with what most people call ‘junk science,’ including homeopathic medicines, herbal remedies, and the batshit-crazy beliefs of Jenny McCarthy. It is his belief that in order to solve the important problems that are facing modern science, we as a people must overcome our superstitious distrust toward the scientific method, and the gifts that it has brought humankind.
Enjoy.
I spent my morning enjoying a coffee while reading through the Region of Waterloo’s Moving Forward 2031 Transportation Master Plan (pdf). It contains some very interesting information related to last week’s post on the feasibility of light rail transit here in the Region of Waterloo.
The report reviews the justification for some sort of rapid transit system, discusses three alternative plans for the building of such a system, the tax burden imposed by each, and the justification for settling on a north-south light rail line supported by a series of east-west iXpress-like bus routes. One of the most interesting pieces of information in the document concerns the current rate of rapid transit growth, as reported by the GRT:
Since 1999, annual transit ridership has increased from 9.5 million rides in 2000 to 16.5 million rides in 2009; a 75 per cent increase or 6.3 per cent annually. This increase is significant compared with the population increase of 1.85 per cent per year in the region. The commitment to funding increased service levels and new initiatives such as the iXpress has played a key role in ridership increases.
It also contains a map of the region upon which the proposed upgrades to our public transit system have been superimposed:
A map of proposed improvements to the transit system here in Waterloo Region (Click to Enlarge)
Finally, the document announces three public consultations to be held this month in Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo. The meetings will present current plan for the future of transit in our region, and accept public feedback on the proposed improvements. The meetings are as follows:
Thursday, April 8, 2010
United Kingdom Club
35 International Village Dr.,
Cambridge
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
54 Queen St. N.,
Kitchener
Thursday, April 15, 2010
First United Church
16 William St. W.,
Waterloo
Check out the to the TriTAG Blog for related information on the future of transit in the Region of Waterloo.
Earlier this week, I stumbled across the third episode of a new podcast called The 100 that was all about issues local to Waterloo Region, politics included. One of the primary issues that was discussed in the episode was the state of public transit here in Waterloo Region, which naturally led into a discussion about the proposed Light Rail Transit system (LRT). Listening to the piece, I realized just how uninformed I am about the proposal. Since the LRT has been a divisive issue since its introduction, and since there are so many misconceptions surrounding the project, I decided to try and learn as much about it as I could. In the process, I will try to dispel some of the myths surrounding the proposal.
A little bit of background
The proposed route of the LRT (Click to Enlarge)
According to the Region of Waterloo’s Rapid Transit website, the LRT will be a system of public transportation that forms a backbone for attractive, inexpensive public transit that runs through our city centre. It will be constructed in two phases: in the first, a light rail system will be built between Conestoga Mall in Waterloo and the Fairview Park Mall in Kitchener, with a bus route running from Fairview Park mall to the Ainslie Street terminal in Cambridge. In the second phase, the bus line to Cambridge will be replaced with a continuation of the light rail transit line.
The entire project will cost the region an estimated $790 million to build, with an additional $1 million per year set aside to help build transit ridership in Cambridge for the first ten years of the project. The operating cost overhead added to our existing public transit system will result in a property tax increase of about $40 per year per household. The region is currently seeking funding for the project from the federal and provincial governments, who have promised up to 2/3 of the required monies in past budgets and announcements. Construction of the first phase of the LRT is expected to begin in 2012, with the line slated to open in late 2014.
Why the focus on the city centre?
When many people hear about the plans for the LRT, their first reaction is that we shouldn’t pour such a massive amount of money into a transit system that will ‘really only benefit those who live or work near the city centre.’ The planned line runs north to south along King Street for the majority of its distance, and many see it as a system that will benefit only a minority of our population. So why the focus on the city centre?
Basically, the region is landlocked. According to the regulations of the province of Ontario’s Places to Grow initiative, by 2015, at least 40% of all annual residential development within the urban areas of Waterloo Region must take place in the urban centres of our existing cities. The regulations further stipulate that we must intensify these core areas so that our cities demonstrate a minimum of 200 people and jobs per hectare of land. This means an end to the sprawling suburbs that we’ve been building to accommodate our expanding population for the past 50 years. The new focus is on building upward instead of outward.
The Region estimates that when our census data is combined with these new provincial stipulations, we can expect an influx of around 100,000 people to our city centre over the course of the next two decades; likely more once the LRT and other urban renewal projects are completed. This growth will exacerbate the traffic problem that is already present in the area, and we will need to come up with some way to relieve that congestion, lest the city grind to a halt.
So what about building more roads or increasing the number of buses?
Unfortunately, due to the less than ideal urban planning of years past, there really isn’t any more room for roads in the downtown areas of Kitchener and Waterloo, unless we demolish existing commercial and residential buildings in order to accommodate road widening. While this alone is an undesirable solution, wider roads also tend to reduce the desirability of a neighbourhood, as they increase noise and traffic, and present a physical barrier to pedestrian travel. Since the overall goal of this project is to increase the density of our downtown core, more or wider roads are not the answer. Another consideration is parking availability. Many people currently avoid our downtown areas because parking is at a premium. A fast, cost-effective transit system would allow both consumers and employees to reach downtown shops and workplaces without having to bring their cars with them.
A GRT Bus
All right, so we need public transit for the downtown core. How about buses? According to Grand River Transit, bus service alone cannot continue to provide enough capacity for the projected increases in regional population and transit ridership. The existing iXpress system runs a route very similar to that of the proposed LRT system, and is already running at near capacity. Simply increasing the number of buses on the road will lead only to further congestion of our busy roadways, as buses share a lane with other traffic, and are constantly stopping and starting. Traffic congestion already makes our bus system unreliable, and thus undesirable to the vast majority of our population. A transit system like the LRT that travels within a dedicated lane can avoid this problem.
Finally, unlike widened lanes or increased bus frequency, a permanent LRT installation is a quiet, efficient, and attractive public transit solution that tends to increase property values and standard of living along its route. Should this claim seem incredulous, I urge you to read about an example case study from the City of Portland, Oregon.
Will this thing actually be used?
According to the Region, transit models developed in association with the Universities of Waterloo and Toronto show that ridership throughout the downtown core can be expected to nearly triple with an LRT system in place. The same model predicted a ridership of 27,000 passengers per day on opening (about three times as many as the iXpress route currently services), with an expected increase to 56,000 passengers per day by 2031. Although the estimated growth in ridership may seem large, one must keep in mind the estimated population influx of over 100,000 residents to the area over the same period of time.
Those who live outside of the area directly surrounding the installation will also be able to use it. The region has proposed three park and ride facilities, and a number of cross-city bus routes similar to the current iXpress system that will run east to west, ferrying passengers to and from the LRT backbone. Ideally, the combination of high speed bus service and the high speed LRT installation will create exactly the kind of desirable public transit system that solves the congestion problems that we face while urging the inner city growth that is required by provincial law.
However, some people aren’t happy with the plan…
The T4ST is a group opposed to the plan
As is to be expected on any large infrastructure project, some members of our community are unhappy with the proposed plan. Unfortunately, many of the fears on which they are basing their assessment of the plan are simply unfounded, and the dissidents show a lack of willing to educate themselves on the issues at hand before commenting. For instance, a petition organized by the Taxpayers for Sensible Transit (T4ST) claims that
“The LRT will turn King Street and other streets into rail corridors. For much of the route, King will be reduced to one lane of car traffic each way. There will be no parallel parking, and left-turns will be impossible. This will reduce accessibility and have a negative impact on many businesses.”
In point of fact, the vast majority of King Street is already one lane of car traffic in each direction, a situation that will not change. While it is true that parallel parking is likely to be removed along much of the route, larger parking structures like the one built across from The Shops at Waterloo Town Square can easily handle the displaced vehicles, and many people will use the LRT to get downtown instead of bringing their cars at all. Left turns will be no harder to make than they are now, as LRT trains will always be given the right of way at intersections, allowing them to move through quickly without disrupting traffic. While the construction process may temporarily reduce accessibility to many businesses along the route, the Region feels that its effects will be more than offset by the increased levels of pedestrian traffic that the LRT system will bring to the downtown core, and the increased population density that the project will encourage along its route.
Although the wording of their petition may be a little bit off base, the Technical Studies page of the T4ST’s website is a little bit better written, and is also worth addressing. In particular, it points out that the estimates of initial ridership and eventual rider growth increased wildly between two studies commissioned by the Region, one from 2005, and the other from 2009. Unfortunately, the claim of the T4ST does not take into account the actual conclusions of the 2005 study (*.pdf), as expressed in the following excerpt:
As points of comparison, the Edmonton LRT system, which is similar in size to the proposed Region of Waterloo system, reports 36,000 daily boardings (track length 12.5 km and 10 stations) with a transit service population of 660,000. By 2041, the Regional transit system and service population assumptions would be similar to Edmonton today. The Portland LRT system (serving a much larger 1.25 M. population) reports 80,000 daily boardings or 1,300 boards per km and 1,500 boards per station. For the Region of Waterloo LRT line, boards per km are estimated at between 900 and 1,900 (2011 to 2041), while boards per station are estimated at between 1,300 and 2,800 (2011 to 2041).
This paragraph rather clearly shows that even with the lower estimates of the 2005 study, the projected ridership of the proposed system was still found to eventually be comparable to similar systems in both Edmonton, Alberta and Portland, Oregon. On the same page, the T4ST also points out that the 2005 study showed that an expanded bus system would cost far less than a light rail system, and thus made much more economic sense for the Region. However, the group discounts the additional benefits of the LRT that the study also revealed. Quoting again from the 2005 study:
The TransDec model is typically used to evaluate traditional transportation projects and is not well suited to evaluate a complex initiative such as the Region’s [rapid public transit] initiative… The results indicate that although costs of LRT are higher than [bus rapid transit systems] BRT, the benefits associated with LRT are also much greater than BRT and that LRT is much more likely to achieve the benefits associated with the Regional Growth Management Strategy than BRT.
Unfortunately, careful reading of both the T4ST’s website and the studies in question reveal the formers’ tendency towards misinformation. Because the Region’s 2005 study addresses most of the concerns raised by the T4ST, those who agree with their concerns are urged to read it for themselves. The Tri-Cities Transit Action Group (triTAG) also runs an excellent page dedicated to dispelling the myths around the proposed light rail system.
Well, I’m Convinced
Everything that I’ve been able to find about the proposed system makes it seem like a great idea, and one that will finally make our public transportation system attractive to the vast majority of our citizens. It’s no secret that urban sprawl of the kind that we’ve witnessed throughout south-western Ontario increases living costs, raises health concerns, and leads to more time spent commuting than with family. It’s also no secret that while Grand River Transit tries its best to provide timely and reliable bus service, it falls short at times. By avoiding congestion and helping to construct dense communities centred around the service, the light rail transit line will allow us to conform to the demands of the province’s Places to Grow initiative, and will ultimately result in a community that is more attractive and easier to navigate for all of our citizens.
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