An Open Letter to the Conservative Government of Canada

To: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
To: The Honourable Tony Clement
To: The Honourable James Moore

CC: Marc Garneau (Liberal Industry critic)
CC: Pablo Rodriguez (Liberal Heritage critic)
CC: Charlie Angus (NDP Digital Affairs Critic)
CC: Peter Braid (MP, Kitcener-Waterloo)

Dear Members of Parliament:

It is with much consternation that I view the continued efforts of the federal Conservative government of Canada to ‘reform’ Canadian copyright law. I fear that the government has lost sight of the original purpose of copyright law, and has forgotten their sworn duty to protect the interests of their constituents over those of foreign media conglomerates.  This week brought the news that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ordered the Honourable James Moore, Conservative Minister of Heritage & Official Languages, to proceed in drafting a copyright reform bill that is likely to include strong anti-circumvention clauses and an inflexible approach to fair dealing exceptions. As a Canadian citizen and an entrepreneur in our strong technology sector, I must make clear my view that these types of laws fail to benefit the end users of technology, and Canadian industry as a whole.

In particular, anti-circumvention laws styled after those of the United States’ 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act serve only to reduce consumer choice while failing to prevent digital piracy in any capacity whatsoever. Lawmakers would do well to understand that digital rights management (DRM) schemes are no more than the digital counterparts of real-world mechanical locks. There has never been, and will never be, a lock that cannot be broken by any determined party with time, knowledge, and resources on their side. In the digital case, a single defeat of the DRM system designed to protect digital media often results in the widespread availability of that media to any and all interested parties by way of the internet. Therein lies the biggest problem with DRM schemes: One does not have to be a determined hacker to access the media that a DRM scheme is intended to protect; one simply requires access to the internet, and knowledge of a website that distributes media that has been helpfully unlocked by other, more capable parties.

The global nature of the internet ensures that the parties most interested in defeating digital rights management schemes need not operate in countries unfriendly to their cause. As such, a government mandate that protects the sanctity of digital locks will not have the desired effect of preventing widespread domestic piracy. Instead, such a ruling will serve only to impact the ability of consumers to utilize their rightfully purchased digital media in a fair and open manner. Taken to their fullest extent, anti-circumvention laws prevent consumers from watching legitimately purchased films on their computers and from listening to personally owned music on their mobile devices. They encourage a marketplace that limits consumer choice and promotes vendor lock-in; a market that licenses media to consumers instead of selling it. This situation often results in the loss of personal property when DRM servers that consumers rely on to enjoy their media are inevitably shut down for economical reasons.

Last summer, the federal Conservative government conducted public copyright consultations under the auspices of creating what they advertised as a “made in Canada approach to copyright reform.” Unfortunately, it seems as though the thousands of voices that participated in those deliberations were largely ignored by this government, contrary to the very concept of a representative democracy. While we can all agree that copyright reform is necessary, it is important that the reforms that are ultimately enacted accurately represent the interests of the majority of Canadians, whose lives are impacted by their access to media technology on a daily basis. We must remember that the primary purpose of copyright law is provide a monetary incentive for artists to contribute to our society, and not to enrich foreign media conglomerates.

Thank you for your time,

Jonathan Fritz,

A concerned citizen

This open letter was emailed and posted to all listed Members of Parliament. If you are interested in joining in on the discussion and want your voice to be heard by your representatives, feel free to borrow my letter and to modify it as you wish. Alternatively, head over to the website of the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights and use their automated form to accomplish the same task.

Canada Cripples Copenhagen

Our spineless excuse for a government has publicly presented the results of the Copenhagen Accord on Climate Change negotiations. Once again, our Conservative government lead by the Right Honourable Stephen Harper has proven that it just doesn’t give a shit.

According to the Globe and Mail, Canada has officially agreed to reduce it’s carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, our government still hasn’t managed to meet their 2006 goal of reducing our emissions to 3% lower than 1990 levels.

Dave Martin, a spokesman with the Greenpeace foundation has pointed out that this new target will actually increase our emissions levels by 2.5% over the levels that the Conservative government’s as of yet unaccomplished 2006 goal would have yielded.

We’re heading in exactly the opposite direction that we need to head,” Mr. Martin said. “Not only have they reneged on the target that they adopted a couple of years ago, they have also failed to put in place the regulations that they promised last year – Dave Martin, Greanpeace

While the shockingly nonsensical stance that Greenpeace takes on nuclear technology gives me very little reason to trust anything that the group publishes, Mr. Martin has written some excellent pieces covering the Harper government’s lack of commitment to the Copenhagen process.

But perhaps more worrying than the alleged role that the United State’s own climate policy has played in crafting our targets is the lack of hindsight in the following statement from Conservative Environment Minister Jim Prentice:

Mr. Prentice pointed out the major emitters such as China, Brazil, India and the United States didn’t have obligations to cut emissions under the Kyoto accord. He hopes this time it’s different, and that there will soon be news of emission cuts from countries that haven’t yet announced their own targets. – Bill Graveland, The Globe and Mail

Jim – I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but your government didn’t cut emissions either. In fact, during the last election, it crippled the Liberal Party’s attempt to put a real plan for cutting our emissions in place. Way to set an example, buddy.