GTALUG Position on Bill C11?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Mike Kallies <mike.kallies-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| Are there other concerns in the proposed amendments in the copyright act?

DRM should not prevent otherwise authorised (by copyright legislation)
acts.  That's pretty simple and obvious.  But in the current weird
world, that's radical!

If DRM does prevent authorised uses, the work should lose copyright
protection.  After all, copyright is a bargain, and if one side breaks
the bargain, why should the other side be constrained by it.  Again,
this sensible position is probably considered radical.

Breaking DRM to perform otherwise authorised acts should be perfectly
legal.  I don't think that that could be considered radical.

Think of DRM as self-defence for copyright holders.  As a legal
defence, self-defence only works when you are defending your rights,
not claiming otherwise non-existent rights -- that's called assault,
robbery, or some other tort.

================

DRM, if it is effective, will effectively prevent works falling into the
public domain when the copyright term expires.  To prevent this
failure, DRM users should be required to put DRM unlocking tools in
escrow (or perhaps a new government institution).

Since the unlocking tools would only be used (and hence tested) long
after the producer has gone, it would be easy to place a sham tool in
escrow.  The escrow institution must have and use an effective test
protocol to prevent bogus tools being registered.

Many in our community think that the right to break DRM is sufficient
(but C-11 doesn't even allow that).  That's only true if DRM is easy
enough to break.  I'm not sure that DRM will always be easy to break,
nor should the obligation be on the users.

================

The only reason my proposals seem radical is they prevent the
land-grab that is contemplated by DRM proponents.  This land-grab has
not been announced, so it would be interesting to see how they frame
any objection.

DRM allows very fine-grained control of the use of works.  I think
that this is antithetical to conventional copyright.  The First Sale
doctrine shows this.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists