Canadian Copyright Reform Consultations

This week, Arstechnica ran a piece detailing the history of copyright reform in Canada, and providing coverage on the government’s current efforts to revive the program. It seems that after the blowout surrounding Bill C-61, the government has decided to at least pretend to listen to citizens this time instead of simply bowing to the interests of foreign industry groups. To that end, the government has launched a website where Canadians can follow the process, and submit their own thoughts on the issues at hand. The new website is open until September 13, 2009, and puts five questions to participants:

1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time
3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?
5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

My answers to the survey went something like this:

1. Copyright laws effect every person with a desire to utilize physical or digital media in this country. While current laws are reasonably fair, they tend to be applicable primarily to physical medium, and lack use cases that address digital distribution, storage, and usage schemes. The changing landscape of media consumption calls for a modernization of copyright law that should be centered on preserving relics of our culture and society for future generations to freely enjoy.
2. The primary purpose of copyright law is to ensure that artists’ contributions to society stand the test of time, while allowing the artist to make a living from their works for a reasonable period of time. To that end, any media that has ceased to be distributed by rights holders should be released into the public domain. This includes music, television, video, and written word that is no longer producing a profit for it’s owners and may otherwise be lost to future generations. How bankrupt would our society be without access to the works of classical playwrights, composers, and painters? At the same time, rights holders should be prevented from charging exceptionally high fees for back-catalogue media, as the digital age ensures that the storage and distribution costs of aging content are minimal.
3. Innovation and creativity are largely driven by exposure to and inspiration from the works of others. To that end, Canadian copyright law should call for explicit bans on Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes, which serve only to hinder the availability of media and to frustrate honest users of such. It would be beneficial for lawmakers to remember that any lock can be broken given enough resources and time; and that the only purpose of a lock, be it on your front door or on your digital media, is to keep honest people honest. Those who want through the locks will accomplish as much in short order, while those who are unnecessarily prevented from using their media by poorly designed or no longer supported DRM systems are left frustrated and are given incentive to hang up their honesty all together.
4. It is unfortunate that most industry groups consider the fostering of innovation and creativity to be at odds with the increase of competition and investment in the marketplace when in truth, a healthy marketplace with reasonably short copyright durations can serve to directly increase the former. Current copyright schemes assign rights to their holders for a duration of life plus 50 years. In an age when immortal corporations own the majority of such rights, these laws actually serve to reduce competition in the marketplace. If companies knew that their works were to enter the public domain within a reasonable period of 10 to 20 years, they would be forced to continually develop better products to stay relevant in the marketplace. This would create an atmosphere of nimble companies that are forced to release new products on a regular basis that are not simply incremental updates to existing properties.
5. With a global digital economy in mind, changes to copyright law need to consider the vast power of the internet as a medium for communication and distribution. Current licensing laws prevent many internet properties that distribute media from working to their full potential over international borders. Many sites that stream video or audio, or allow visitors to purchase media, are vastly limited in countries other than that where the site is based. To this end, copyright reforms should concentrate on breaking down international boundaries and utilizing the internet to its full potential. Furthermore, reforms should focus on doing away with laws based on digital media, and look constantly toward the future with digital distribution schemes in mind.

I would urge any Canadians who stumble upon this to check out the survey and to submit their opinions to the government. We as citizens should encourage this kind of mass public consultation whenever applicable in an effort to force our politicians to represent our interests over those of foreign lobbyist groups.

Cheers,

Jon