Issues - Russells response
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psema4 wrote: > Could someone provide a quick rundown of the major technology-related > legal issues facing the Canadian public? (Who are, for the most part, > generally unaware - or uninterested.) I recommend you follow the discussions around Richard Stallman's visit to Calgary http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/844 The topic of the visit is software patents, and Brett is organizing to bring our petition to the event which involves copyright. Here is my personal summary: a) Patent: Non-transparent and unaccountable expansion by CIPO of patentability to software and business models. Previously CIPO was denying software patents, and now they are granting them. No change in Canadian legislation, precedent or policy/regulations happened, they just re-interpreted existing laws with the "help" of patent lawyer extremists to now grant them. - In 2003 I was hired by ICT branch to do a report on software patents http://www.flora.ca/patent2003/ - This year (End of 2004) I filed an ATIP request to try to force CIPO to disclose their "consultation" and the process they went through to now grant software patents. I received a reply mid-March 2005, which included the submission from the patent lawyers to mis-interpret existing law, precedent and regulations to expand patentability. The most visible vendor promoting software patents was IBM, who I strongly believe needs to be recognized as the greatest threat to Free Software. http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/626 http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/729 b) Copyright Attempts to put the Internet genie back in the bottle with two broad methods under copyright, and then some 'misc' issues. i) Introduce legislation that would try to re-impost broadcast/publisher style bottlenecks on distribution of creativity. This can be seen with legal protection for DRM, which is the legal protection for a technologically protected tie between content with creator/viewers that are controlled by a specific software vendor. Control through DRM http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/845 (There are MANY articles on this from many people!) This is also what so-called "ISP liability" is about, making it easy for old-media companies to tie new-media creators and publishers up in legal threats. DRM and ISP liability are just two policies implemented in the controversial DMCA in the USA. In Canada parliament feels pressure to ratify/implement the 1996 WIPO treaties, even though they have offered no indication that they understand the implications of such policy. ii) Introduce legislation that would replace copyright with a "right of remuneration". Copyright was traditionally an exclusive right where the copyright holder could require permission of others to copy/communicate the work. This requirement of permission was business model neutral, allowing for innovation in business models. Alternatives to after-the-fact royalty payments include Open Access (where the creator is paid up-front for work that is then made royalty-free for distribution and use), Free/Libre and Open Source Software (wide variety of business models), and Creative Commons (grant certain permissions widely, keep other uses as exclusive). Statutory and Extended licensing is a technique where the exclusive right is removed and replaced with a right to collect a royalty, essentially legislating away all alternative business models. iii) Less important are issues with photography. While not critical to us, these changes make illegal current wide practice of assuming that the owner of a camera has the legal right to develop their own film regardless of who took the picture. Changes to the law would mean that the photographer would own the picture. Current practice will not change, which will mean that these law changes will just be inducing massive amounts of infringement. The problem here isn't the law, but the fact that copyright will receive less and less respect as it differs from common practice and rational understanding of the law. These proposed changes demonstrate to me that parliament is still not recognizing that copyright affects ALL Canadians (not just old-media companies with funds to hire lawyers), and that if it is to be respected must be greatly simplified from the previous top-heavy broadcast/publisher era. c) Competition: Many studies have suggested that in software it is competition and not exclusive rights that drive innovation. While this is true, competition/anti-trust offices have been paralyzed to handle enforcement in technology as they have generally carved-out PCT (patent, copyright, trademark and related rights) from enforcement. This is why the EU and US anti-trust cases against Microsoft have been ineffective. The problem is not with Microsoft who are simply exploiting current legal regimes, but the laws which manufacture these harmful monopolies in the first place. I wrote about this in a submission to the competition bureau, raising the issue of legal protection for DRM and software patents as conflicts with competition policy http://www.flora.ca/competition2003/ . Until the Canadian Competition Bureau is adequately up-to-speed on these issues, Industry Canada will be ineffective in any attempt to have an Innovation Agenda. Industry Canada is currently been carrying out an anti-Innovation agenda by strengthening rights to exclude while carving out those new rights from competition enforcement. P.S. Let us know when you have your WIKI ready, and we'll link to it from our links page. We should probably have our own summary-of-issues page, and just need a volunteer willing to come forward to maintain this. -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> http://www.digital-copyright.ca/blog/2 (My BLOG) Sign the Petition Users' Rights! http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/ To protect Internet age creativity we must reform WIPO, not copyright! _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@list.digital-copyright.ca http://list.digital-copyright.ca/mailman/listinfo/discuss
