Thursday, June 19, 2008

I would like to begin this letter by stating that there are many ways in which the proposed bill to amend the Copyright Act will negatively impact the daily life of my family, but in the interest of fairness I will not make you suffer my natural absence of brevity. I have great respect for you Mr. Kramp and I was proud to see you stand up in the house and remind the Liberal party that by not voting, they are not representing their constituents. Though I did not vote for you, I am confident that you "actually give a damn" about your constituents and that you will take the time to read this letter and try to understand the concerns my family has regarding Bill C61.

First and foremost, I would like to point out that a single clause in the bill acts to completely undermines the entirety of the freedoms set forth in the rest of the bill, in regards to personal usage of data (such as making back up copies of purchased items or changing the format of purchased items). The section reads,

Section 29.21 (c) the individual, in order to make the reproduction, did not circumvent a technological measure or cause one to be circumvented, within the meanings of the definitions “circumvent” and “technological measure” in section 41;

Now the problem here is that exactly 100% of all DVDs that are sold have copy protection, as do many CDs, virtually all VHS cassettes, as well as most e-books, so there is no way in which a person will be able to actually backup or format shift media without breaking this law. So in essence, due to this one clause all this entire bill does is remove personal freedoms from Canadians, by making routine daily activities a criminal offense, while bolstering the profiteering schemes of the media industry.

Minster Jim Prentice has said, "the market doesn't use digital locks" in regards to CDs sold in Canada. First of all, this is not a truthful statement, as many CDs do actually have simple "digital locks". However, what is most important is that even if they do not use "digital locks" today, they most assuredly will use them the moment we Canadians will be liable for $500 or $20,000 per incident damages by breaking even the simplest "digital lock" to format shift or backup our legally purchased items! How on Earth can the Industry Minister ignore this fact? How?

With this bill, Mr. Prentice is giving corporations free range to have absolute control over what devices Canadians can use to enjoy media, such as movies and music. I personally feel quite badly for the hundreds of manufacturers who's products will become obsolete, because after this bill is in place there will no longer be any legal method of actually using the devices, so people will stop buying them (such as a non Apple iPod mp3 player, as only Apple sells songs that come in mp3 format in Canada!). What's more, is that this bill offers no consumer protection against things like self destructing digital media, where consumers pay full price for movies and music, but the media only lasts for a set number of days/hours/minutes, etc.

Clearly, the provision in Section 29.21, subsection (c) is not at all a balanced approach to copyright reform and I fear that it may be used against average citizens in such manner that these citizens will not have the resources to properly defend their personal freedoms, as set forth in "The Charter"; Personal lawsuits, unwarranted "discovery", confiscation of property (computer hardware, etc), and coercion to pay out of court settlements have been happening frequently in the United States since they enacted a similar provision in their Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I do not believe that is what we want for our people. Without adequate protection and strong industry regulation, Canadians will be at the mercy of the whims of media corporations, more so then they already are today. Sadly, many of these companies aren't even Canadian owned and operated and they have no vested interest in the long term quality and success of our society.

The second and final point I would like to bring to your attention is of dire concern and requires immediate action. After reading the proposed bill C61, I have found that it does not include a "prior to this date" exemption from acts of personal copyright infringement. This is a massive over-sight of colossal proportions and I cannot explain any more clearly how absolutely vital it is to address this concern than by saying,

"Stop what you are doing right now and address this concern, before all of us are sued"

Plain and simple: Stats-Can indicates that 70% of Canadians use the Internet, 97% of teens use the Internet, and I would venture an educated guess (I am a tech support agent) that 95% of Canadians own or operate a computing device that is capable of breaking copyright law. As such, the big media companies could literally mail ever single Canadian a letter telling them they have to pay up for their prior transgressions and guess what, we'd all be completely powerless to stop them! How does that make any sense?

Unless the law states that all acts of personal copyright infringement that took place prior to Jan 1st, 2009 are exempt from any civil or criminal suit as well as any damages, then all the media companies need to do is take a person's computer hard drive (or any storage device) and check it for files. Deleted those files already? Who cares, the program called R-Studio can recover files from drives that have been overwritten multiple times! As such, there is most assuredly no way to protect one's self from such discovery, short of physically destroying the hard drive by dismantling it and then smashing it into small pieces. Personally, I have old semi-functional hard drives in my attic that I have collected in the course of replacing people's drives for them and I have no idea what is on them, but because it is illegal to throw them in the trash, under this new law I will actually be liable for what ever is on them, should my home ever be invaded by the Intellectual Property Police. Again, how does that make sense? Please, for the love of Pete, bring this issue to the House of Commons. It absolutely has to be addressed.

Well, I wish I had more time to construct a more profession and less heartfelt letter, but time only permits so much as father! I sincerely appreciate your time and effort Mr. Kramp and even though I did not vote for you, I am happy to have you represent me in the House of Commons; You are a person of integrity and an admirable member of our community (please switch to the NDP for the next federal election – hey, you don't get what you don't ask for!).


Sincerely,

R. Bassett Jr.