The Truth About Copyright Revision

In May 2004, a parliamentary committee recommended changes to Canadian copyright law modeled in part on controversial features of an American law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The committee characterized these changes as "responsive to the needs of all Canadians".

The Truth

The truth is that these proposed changes would drain millions of dollars from Canada's provincial education systems, threaten national security research and personal privacy, harm Canadian culture by enlarging the billion dollar Canadian culture deficit, and put Canadian business at a competitive disadvantage. The committee spent little time debating the issues, and ignored concerns voiced by public interest advocates. Facing growing pressure from predominantly U.S. interests, Parliament is moving rapidly to embrace dangerous new rules. If enacted, these rules will have a devastating impact on:

Education

Canadian schools currently spend millions of dollars each year on copyright licenses to provide students with access to educational materials. The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that teachers, students and schools do not have to pay for certain uses of these materials (including research, private study, and certain classroom instruction). Contrary to the Court's ruling and despite the millions of dollars schools already pay for copyright materials, the committee would require schools to divert millions of dollars more from education budgets - from students, schools and taxpayers - to pay for publicly available material on the Internet.

Privacy

Canadians value their personal privacy. The committee's proposals would undermine Canadians' privacy protections. In recent months, the Canadian recording industry has sought to identify Canadian Internet users based solely on deficient evidence of alleged file sharing. The proposed changes would outlaw the disabling of spyware that monitored how you listened to a song, read an e-book or watched a DVD. It would make it illegal to break locks on this content, even if your actual use of the content was perfectly legal. This would leave us no room to enjoy copyright works in private, free from the prying eyes of copyright owners. As Justice LeBel of the Supreme Court of Canada has noted, the Copyright Act should be interpreted to respect Canadians' privacy interests in their Internet-related activities within the home.

Freedom of Speech

Our Internet Service Providers should not be censors and the unwilling copyright police of the Internet. The committee is calling for a "notice and termination" system where, on the basis of untested claims and potentially without judicial oversight, copyright holders will be able to use computer generated notices to pressure ISPs to cancel Internet access for potentially thousands of Canadians, thereby blocking access to health and financial websites as well as email. Incredibly, Canada offers far more protection to child pornographers than to victims of false copyright infringement claims. While law officials need a judicial order to take down child pornography, the committee merely requires unproven allegation to allow the termination of allegedly infringing material. A similar system in the U.S. has proven both ineffective and dangerous, chilling speech and generating huge costs to ISPs and citizens.

Consumer Rights

Canadians spend billions of dollars each year on books, music, and movies. If Parliament adopts the proposed changes, large multinational corporations will be entitled to use technology to block small amounts of copying that copyright law traditionally permits, and your efforts to get around that technology to exercise your rights will be illegal. Our culture depends upon the ability to use and re-use creative work. Canadians should not be denied the right to fairly use materials for which they have paid. In the United States, legislation similar to that proposed by the parliamentary committee has outlawed attempts to access technologically controlled work. Canada must not establish rules that create similar restrictions.

The Culture Deficit

Statistics Canada reports that our copyright royalty deficit - the amount of royalties generated by Canadians abroad compared with royalties earned by foreign performers in Canada - has grown dramatically in recent years. For every $1 earned by Canadian performers outside the country, $5 flows out of the country. The parliamentary committee has recommended the ratification of international treaties that would increase foreign royalty payments leading to hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from Canadians to predominantly American interests.

Innovation

To compete in a global marketplace and to create new jobs and opportunities for all Canadians, business depends on laws that foster innovation. The U.S. copyright experience demonstrates that business rivals will inappropriately use these laws to create artificial monopolies and stifle competition. Should Parliament enact these proposals, small and medium sized businesses – the engines of our economy – will face the threat of copyright lawsuits as they seek to bring products to market.

Security Research

In recent years, U.S. authorities have jailed software programmers for presenting computer security research alleged to have violated copyright law. As a result, increasing numbers of computer scientists and academics live in fear of conducting security research. They now choose different career paths and global experts avoid entering the U.S. Former U.S. cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke has noted that few people realized that U.S. copyright law would have this "chilling effect on vulnerability research." In this age of global terrorism, our national security depends upon state of the art security research. Canada will never be secure if its top researchers cannot test information systems for security flaws.

Our Call

Do No Harm

Changes to Canada's copyright laws must be guided by the principle of "do no harm". Canada must not enact changes that threaten education, freedom of expression, privacy and security. It must not establish laws that harm small business and stifle innovation, or that cost Canadians millions of dollars.

Considered Copyright

The Canadian government must immediately stop proposed copyright changes until Parliament has heard from experts on education, security, privacy, small business, and consumer groups.

Canadian Laws Must Serve Canadians

Where changes to copyright laws are needed, Canada must adopt laws that serve Canadian interests first. Pressure from U.S. interests and proposals that primarily benefit foreign companies should be rejected.

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This page last updated: June 2, 2007

Webpage URL: http://www.cippic.ca/en/projects-cases/copyright-law-reform/truth.html