Digital Locks, If your MP doesn't get it they can screw us all.

Do you have itunes, or purchase movies, music or tv shows from some sort of online service? If you answered yes, then you should write your MP and get them go change the digital locks provision in Bill C-32. The conservative party with one notable exception in the Industry Minister Tony Clement who seems to be very technically savvy, and has fought for a lot of the fair use provisions in bill C-32. However due to his position as industry minister or other reasons, has been very silent about changing C-32 to include a fair use provision for breaking digital locks. As Bill C-32 is currently written, all fair use exceptions are over ruled by the digital locks provision. (see my previous blog post).

The conservative Member Ed Fast seems more interested in play politics and with our future in regards to "fair use" or "fair dealing" then doing what is best in the interest of all Canadians.

Mr. Fast asked the question how could justify "eliminating digital locks altogether by allowing circumvention for fair dealing purposes?" to the Canadian Federation of Students and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Both times his response to their answers was "my concern is if you go that extra step and allow circumvention for fair dealing, you've now made it so much more easy to actually allow the cheaters to undermine the system, where digital locks become absolutely meaningless."

He obviously misses the point. Copyright was designed to stop people from making MONEY from other people's work. For example it was designed to stop people from starting selling CD's and DVD's from out of your basement, to people for 5 dollars where Walmart is selling them for 10 dollars; or buying a projector and selling seat tickets to people who go view a movie. A 21st Century example would be to stop someone from ripping a DVD and selling a digital copy of that movie for money.

If you try and stop fair use you will only encourage piracy. Look at what happened in the United States with the DMCA, it has been changed to allow for the ripping and copying of DVD's for personal use and backup.

What's going on and why should I care?

Mr. Fast seems to be having a hard time seeing the light as to why the digital lock circumvention is essential to Canada's new copyright bill. We want artists to be paid fairly, we don't want to be charged $24.99 for each copy of a movie we want to put on our personal devices. Let me see, to put it in money terms, a copy on your computer, copy on your ipod, perhaps your phone, and don't forget a backup copy, that's $24.99 X 4 formats = $99.96 plus tax for 1 movie in 4 different formats. That is ridiculous. Don't even get me started about what happens if you have an itunes account and a 3rd party or non Apple video player. Guess what under C-32 in it's current form it would be illegal for you to circumvent the digital lock on that purchased DVD and rip it to your computer to put on your ipod, android or windows device. That in my opinion is wrong and as someone who has an entertainment server where I put a digital copy of my purchased DVD's and CD's along with the digital copies I've purchased from itunes, and other online stores, to make it easily accessible for my wife and I to watch our shows listen to our music and play our games. I don't know about you but I don't want to be thrown in jail for ripping a DVD.


What can you do.

Email this Ed Fast, the members of the copyright committee and your MP. Tell them why Bill C-32 needs a by pass for consumers to circumvent the digital lock for fair dealing purposes.

Amendment:

Read the transcripts From the Committee meetings here

Red the transcript about by passing digital locks with regard to fair use with Michael Geist.

Trevor Tye

PS. Please feel free to start your letter or email by copy and pasting the following text.


Feb. 16, 2011
First Name, Last Name
Address
City, Province
Postal Code
email


Dear Mr. Ed Fast MP and the copyright committee,

I as a consumer have an answer to your question "Why does Bill C-32 needs a by pass for consumers to circumvent the digital lock for fair dealing purposes?"

{Now put what you do with movies, and music. Also put what you would like to do with all that in the future. Also think about how much money you have invested in the movies and music you purchased and how much you would have to spend if you had to re-purchase everything. Don't you think your entitled to a backup?}

Sincerely,

Your Name

A creator and consumer's view of copyright reform in Canada.

Bill Freeman wrote an interesting commentary on straight.com, and from the article what I can gather is either Mr. Freeman, doesn't consume any media himself so the copyright changes don't apply to him or he missed the issues with it all together.

As a content creator and a content consumer I can tell you that unless the digital locks provision is changed to allow backups, change formats and break copyright protection so you can use the content on other devices the bill is useless to everyone except copyright lawyers, and the people hiring copyright lawyers; here's why.

In case you haven't noticed the price on music and videos have been steadily increasing on iTunes. A user I know was telling me that a show they subscribe to on iTunes went from $30 for the season to $45 for the season. They called it a rip off and are now canceling their subscription to the show. In my humble opinion Mr. Freeman thinks the way Mr. James Moore thinks about content and copyright - you pay a licensing fee for every format you want the content on regardless if you can convert it yourself. Should digital copies cost as much as their printed counter parts in the store? Why would you pay $45 for say a digital copy of season 9 of CSI when you can go to the store and buy the same season on DVD for $20 and you get the nice packaging and pressed DVD's. <sarcasm>Makes complete sense!</sarcasm>

The copyright holders don't have their heads on straight. Lets see what's going through their heads. The consumer pays more if we put a digitally locked file on iTunes, they pay as much for it as they would pay for the DVD, but they don't get packaging, artwork or an original copy, they we tell them what devices they have to buy to play our content, and we can take away the right for them to play back their digital content.

This changes everything. Please allow me to clarify; this is right out of the proposed law. So I need to put things into perspective here. This is the proposed law's definition of "Circumvent"

“circumvent” means,

(a) in respect of a technological protection measure within the meaning of paragraph (a) of the definition “technological protection measure”, to descramble a scrambled work or decrypt an encrypted work or to otherwise avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair the technological protection measure, unless it is done with the authority of the copyright owner; and

(b) in respect of a technological protection measure within the meaning of paragraph (b) of the definition “technological protection measure”, to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair the technological protection measure.

“technological protection measure”

« mesure technique de protection »

“technological protection measure” means any effective technology, device or component that, in the ordinary course of its operation,

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Now here is what a person is NOT allowed to do.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Prohibition

41.1 (1) No person shall

(a) circumvent a technological protection measure within the meaning of paragraph (a) of the definition “technological protection measure” in section 41;

(b) offer services to the public or provide services if

(i) the services are offered or provided primarily for the purposes of circumventing a technological protection measure,

(ii) the uses or purposes of those services are not commercially significant other than when they are offered or provided for the purposes of circumventing a technological protection measure, or

(iii) the person markets those services as being for the purposes of circumventing a technological protection measure or acts in concert with another person in order to market those services as being for those purposes; or

(c) manufacture, import, distribute, offer for sale or rental or provide — including by selling or renting — any technology, device or component if

(i) the technology, device or component is designed or produced primarily for the purposes of circumventing a technological protection measure,

(ii) the uses or purposes of the technology, device or component are not commercially significant other than when it is used for the purposes of circumventing a technolog- ical protection measure, or

(iii) the person markets the technology, device or component as being for the purposes of circumventing a technological protection measure or acts in concert with another person in order to market the technology, device or component as being for those purposes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

You can read the full bill here or an excellent summary on Michael Geist Website.

The point is that you can do anything you want to the content so long as it's not copyright protected. Guess what... Everything is copyright protected! If you ever played card games like bridge, spades and hearts you should know what trump is and that is what this bill has. This bill gives consumers much updated rights to the content they buy except the copyright holders have a great big trump card that nullifies all the consumers rights.

The only way around this is the creators of the content have to come out with software that will either convert your content to different devices because under Bill C-32 it is illegal for you to do so or to seek services or any software, to put your digital copy of Toy Story Three on your New Android Tablet. That's right the digital copies provided only work in iTunes, Windows Media Player, Apple and Microsoft devices. They will not work on your PSP, Android, or other devices. This also makes ripping DVD's illegal because it has a digital lock called CSS, it was just broken a long time ago by DVD Jon.

I'm of the belief that you should only have to pay for content once and if you want to take the time to change the content from platform to platform all the power to you; and if the media companies and copyright holders want to provide that content at what consumers consider a "reasonable" price even better. In my opinion a digital copy should be 1/3 of the price of the "hard" copy since there is no shipping for the digital copy no box, no store, no sales person to sell it to me, the cost just aren't their with the digital copy that their are with disks at the store.

The other part of C-32 I wanted to comment on is the "Educational" use of copyrighted material. In my opinion, the Creator's Copyright Coalition is essentially fear mongering that they are all going to starve if a teacher don't get fair use rights in the classroom. This is ridiculous; teachers loving being able to give students books and if possible I know for a fact most teachers would rather buy 30 copies of a book then photocopy a few pages. The educational exemptions are just going to more or less legalize what is going on in schools now, like watching a movie about World War II with out having to pay a licensing fee, or copying a few pages out of a book to analyze the meaning of a phrase poem etc.

Bill C-32 has some great things in it but the digital locks issue must be addressed and changed to allow for the circumvention of DRM for personal or educational uses. Once that change is made, the bill should be allowed to pass. If a member of the Copyright Committee is reading this please feel free to add the following text to C-32 in the copyright infringement section.

41.15 to allow for the circumvention of media by use of service and software for personal, non commercial and educational uses of owned content.

42. Fair Use and Moral Rights - media shall not be restricted to or prohibit the user from not being able consume purchased media on media consumption devices. The user shall be allowed to change the format of media for devices that the user owns at the time of purchase and in the future.

That seems fair to me. I have a huge library of DVD's and we recently purchased a blu-ray player for our HD TV, this doesn't mean I'm entitled to a new blu-ray movie because I have the DVD but I am entitled to rip my DVD's to my computer for backup or to watch them on my Linux media server. If I want to re-purchase the movies I own to a higher quality format or purchase a digital copy because I don't have to convert the movie myself (because it's more convenient) that's my choice. I should not be dictated to by media companies, manufactures and government that I have to re-buy everything to pay for some executive's diamond studded solid gold TV or ivory back scratcher.

If you think I'm harsh about this don't even ask me what I think about the book publishers and their copyright issues with digital books.

Trevor

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Software EULA's; Private Resale and the law

An important court ruling in the United States has much wider implications for users then they know; if you think buying that old copy of software such as an older version of Adobe Photoshop from an auction or because a company is going out of business think again.  The US court as passed a ruling which could change everything.  The case is Vernor v. Autodesk is what set the president.  Autodesk was trying to keep Vernor from reselling software he got from a an architects office sale.  So for those of you selling software you purchased on Kijiji, EBay and Craigslist read this carefully!  In the Software EULA's such as in Autodesk and Electronic Arts's you can not transfer the software license, even if you physically own the disk and have a ligament serial number.

This ruling will probably have the following effect in the future:

1. specifies that the user is granted a license or life time subscription
2. significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software or digital media
3. imposes notable use restrictions

With this ruling I think you will start seeing a lot more EULA's and more notably digital media EULA's more emphasizing the purchaser as the licensee.  In essence this will end any ownership of digital media and software unless your the one holding the copyright to said item.  What does this mean for reselling computers?  Do you have to format that old windows 2000 machine or iMac and install linux if you want to sell it? (Ok that's not such a bad thing - I am referring to the installing LINUX folks!)  So what we have to do now is lobby our governments to allow for the transfer of these digital licensed.  For example if you father has a huge iTunes library and dies, you would not be allowed to take those songs any of them you wanted you would have to re-buy them; where if they were a physical disk they would be yours to do with as you wished.  What if someone bought a private company do you have to re-buy all the software because the software is technically licensed under the former owner?

I would like to think our governments can be trusted to handle these kind of issues, but based on their track records with copyright laws such as the DMCA in the US and Bill C-32 here in Canada and the ACTA Treaty I don't have much faith.  Write your elected representative, and let's make sure that our consumer writes are being protected because right now there not.

Read Arstechnica article

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Canada's Copyright Modernization Act - How to Fix the Digital Lock Problem

As I write this our politicians in Ottawa are going through Bill C-32 the new copyright bill. At first glance there are some significant problems with it but they mostly come from the idea that to circumvent the digital lock on digital media automatically makes you a criminal.  So I'm writing a post on how @mpjamesmoore and @tonyclement_mp can fix this with very little work.  First of all remove any refereance to "any circumvention is an infringement".  

 

 

 

If the media companies insist on this then they must do either of the following:

1) Provide the media in every format available when you purchase the media. So when you buy a DVD, you get the ipod version, a computer version, a phone version, a version to run on Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows, and a hard disk backup.

2) Start a free service where customers need to put in a some sort proof of purchase, and the company will ship for free or make available for download that media you purchased.

3) Digital media needs to be transferable to there will need to be a very simple way to change ownership, and allow format shifting. Lot's of people share a computer and have a single itunes account when kids leave home they may want to take their music with them.

4) If Media companies GET ANY tax payer money it would be considered already subsidized by the TAX PAYER and must have FAIR USE provisions for format shifting and backups even if DRM is on the content.

5) Media companies need to pay a Inconvenience tax, if they are going to treat us like criminals then we should do the same to them. If they want to tell Canadians how we consume our content then we are going to may them pay a lot of money to do business here in Canada.

Don't get me wrong I believe if you like the content you should pay for it. However I do feel media companies are unfairly taking advantage of consumers. You should NOT have to pay for every way you want to consume your content. If you have a DVD you should be able to watch it on your computer and ipod. You should be able to make a backup of it. You should not have to pay $10.00 for a digital copy when the physical DVD is in a bargain bin at Wal-Mart for $5.00. It cost more money to make that DVD and house it in a store then to put a digital file on a web server some where.  That's just my point of view. If you buy it you should have the right to do what you want with it (for personal use only).

Read about Canada's New Copyright Law

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Canada's New Copyright Modernization Act (or Bill C-32) Otherwise know as DCMA

Well it's here and it's not as bad as I thought it would be I have to admit I was expecting a lot worse. On Wed. June 2nd the government introduced the Copyright Modernization Act (or Bill C-32) Otherwise know as DCMA. So here is the Good, and The Bad, and what we consumers need to do.

The Good:

new performers rights as demanded by ACTRA new photographers rights as long demanded by photographer groups new exception that addresses potential concerns temporary copies for technological processes new BitTorrent provision which establishes infringement for providing services via the Internet that a person knows or should have known is designed primarily to enable acts of copyright infringement new ephemeral exception as lobbied for by Canadian broadcasters new library provisions to allow for digital distribution (subject to digital locks) new distance learning teaching exceptions that encompass podcasts (subject to digital locks) Internet exception for education "YouTube" remix exception for user generated content that permits non-commercial use of works under certain circumstances new technology-neutral format and time shifting provisions legalizing common consumer activities such as recording television shows and shifting CDs to iPods (subject to digital locks) new backup copy provision (subject to digital locks) expansion of the exception for the visually impaired

Fair Dealing.  The government rejected a made-in-Canada flexible fair dealing provision as Mr James Moore looks like the anti-exception Minister.  Despite that there are many exceptions that address creators (parody and satire), education (education exception, education Internet exception), consumers (time shifting, format shifting, backup copies), and user generated content (USG exception).  This leaves innovative businesses without the benefit of flexible fair dealing.

Intermediary Liability.  The government has opted for a notice-and-notice system for Internet providers (ISPs).  The system is costly for Internet providers, but has proven successful in discouraging infringement.  It is also far more balanced than the U.S.notice-and-takedown approach or the three-strikes model that would result in terminating subscriber access (Which the US has been pushing for and is currently in ACTA).

Statutory Damages.  The new rules reduce statutory damages for non-commercial cases to as low as $100 along with a maximum of $5000.  The current fines are up to a $20,000 maximum.  There are still tough potential damages but the law distinguishes between commercial and non-commercial infringement.  The bill also provides the prospect of targeting sites that facilitate infringement with aggressive new penalties.

The Bad:

The digital lock provisions. The prioritization of digital locks is the choice of the U.S. DMCA and is now the choice of the Canadian DCMA.  In my opinion the Canadian digital lock provisions are worse than those found in the U.S., with fewer exceptions greater difficulty to "bend" the rules.  The Canadian DCMA provisions are virtually identical to the U.S. with a few exceptions, a ban on the distribution and marketing of devices (ie. software like Mac The Ripper and DVD Decrypter) that can be used to circumvent, and a presumption that any circumvention is an infringement (So all consumers are thieves).  The only significant difference between this bill and C-61 is the exception for unlocking cell phones.  So in otherwords all the good stuff gets nullified by the bad stuff like the backup copy provision would be illegal if you wanted to backup a DVD movie.  A DVD had copyright protection to keep you from making copies of the DVD you purchased.  A Norwegian programmer named Jon Lech Johansen cracked the DVD encryption so he could watch his DVD's on linux.  To have a look at a comparison of the New Bill (C-32) and the Old Bill (C-61) click here

What you can do!

Write your MP! Below is a Letter Template

Honourable {Your MP Name Here}
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6

CC: Honourable Tony Clement, MP, Minister of Indistry
CC: Honourable James Moore, MP, Minister of Canadian Heritage
CC: Honourable Charlie Angus, MP NDP Digital Affairs Critic
CC: Honourable Marc Garneau, MP, Liberal Industry critic
CC: Honourable Pablo Rodriguez, MP, Liberal Heritage critic;
CC: Right Honourable Jack Layton, MP, Leader of the NDP
CC: Right Honourable Gilles Duceppe, MP, Leader of the Bloc Québécois
CC: Right Honourable Michael Ignatieff, MP, Leader of the Opposition
CC: Right Honourable Stephen Harper, MP, Primer Minister

Date June {day} 2010
RE: Bill C-32 – An Act to amend the Copyright Act

Dear {Your MP Name Here}

This Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 2 June. I am pleased with some of its clauses; making iPods and TV show recording legal for the first time in Canadian history, and allowing for parody as fair dealings.

However I am particularly troubled by the absolute legal protection for digital locks. Please explain why it should be OK for me to copy my CD to my iPad, but not also my DVD. Effectively what this sort of blanket protection for Digital Restrictions Management does, is allow copyright owners to completely disregard every user right granted and acknowledged in this Bill. So users have expanded fair dealing rights. Except when copyright holders say they don't.

One step forward and two steps back, in regards to real copyright reform.

This does not find a balance between copyright owners and users rights. It completely emaciates users rights in favour of copyright holders. In recent years music publishers have been moving away from DRM technology in acknowledgement of its failings. This Bill however, will encourage them to re-embrace DRM so they can take advantage of the wide breadth of new rights this Bill offers them. If music, software, and book publishers all do so (as the movie producers already have with Blu-Ray and DVD) then there will effectively be no such thing as fair dealings any more in Canada.

I implore you to change the act so that it is NOT illegal to circumvent digital locks when done to enable acts that would otherwise be legal. Unless you do this, there is no point in even having something called fair dealings.

There are many other areas of the act that could be improved, as well as other timely reforms that should be implemented such as crown copyright, but this one is by far the most egregious, and should reasonably be considered a deal breaker by all MPs. I would be pleased to discuss this and other issues with the Act whenever you may have time to do so over the summer.

Kind Regards,

For more information you can follow me @trevortye on twitter, and @michaelgeist on twitter.

For more information about Copyright and The ACTA (which will affect copyright) visit http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

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