Harris July 24

COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS

SUBMISSIONS RECEIVED REGARDING THE CONSULTATION PAPERS

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Documents received have been posted in the official language in which they were submitted. All are posted as received by the departments, however all address information has been removed.

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Submission from Sandy Harris received on July 24, 2001 11:49 PM via e-mail

Subject: A first comment

I will likely comment in more detail after reading your papers more carefully, but a few things leap out of the page at first glance:

You suggest a new version of the Act should:

prevent the circumvention of technologies used to protect copyright material

However, the only act I know of that currently attempts to do that is the US DMCA, a flawed piece of legislation if there ever was one. I am completely horrified at the notion that anything similar might be enacted here.

Please look at the details of the DVD CCA case: http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/

In particular, the amicus curie briefs such as:

The ACM (Assoc. for Computing Machinery, the oldest and most prestigious professional association in the field) Law Committee: http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/MPAA_DVD_cases/20010126_ny_acmlc_amicus.html

A group of top computer science people: http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/MPAA_DVD_cases/20010126_ny_progacad_amicus.html

Any Canadian act must protect fair use, not give arbitrary privileges to copyright holders. For example, circumventing copy protection to get an excerpt to quote in a review must clearly be legal, since such quotes have been legitimate fair use as long as there's been copyright law.>/P>

Also, it must protect free speech, in particular open discussion of flaws in cryptographic systems, including those used for copy protection.

I have a T-shirt with the DeCSS code on it. The DVD vendors are suing the T-shirt vendor because the shirt has code on it:
http://www.copyleft.net/images/p1.gif
I do not want to see any Canadian law that would allow such a suit.