Copyright Issues

From Pirate Party of Canada

Contents 1 Copyright as a Right 2 Length of the Term 3 Cost of Copyright Enforcement 4 Registration 5 Digital Rights Management

Copyright as a Right

Is copyright a right? And who's right is it?

• The name implies and many believe that copyright is the creators right to a monopoly
  • I (Odemia) suggest that no government sanctioned monopoly should be a right but instead a privilege
    • Or if it is a right that it is the right of the creator to earn credit and remuneration for their efforts just as it is the consumers right to be able to use the works they purchase in a reasonable way.
    • Going along with the idea of copyright as a right, a right is supposed to be so important that it is protected on ones behalf, and all rights of the same type should be protected equally.
    • Creators of all kinds must have equal accessibility to the protections provided by the Act. And the unbalance that sees large corporations using deep pockets to fund legal campaigns that individual creators could not hope to pursue must be prevented in Canada otherwise the Act is not about rights for creators but about privilege for the wealthy.

Length of the Term

The length of the copyright term is ridiculous. Nobody benefits from an extremely long term except for large content companies like Disney.

Some suggestions:

• 10-15 year term
• 5-7 year term, once or twice renewable
• Death does not affect the copyright term, simply transfers the ownership of the copyright to someone else - term of the copyright still holds. For example if the author of a book dies 3 years after the publication date and the copyright term is 15 years, the copyright transfers to someone else (we'll need to figure out how this is decided) for the remaining 12 years
• Artist's choice - the artist has a choice of allowing free non-commercial use

Cost of Copyright Enforcement

Only large companies can afford to hire lawyers to enforce the copyright. How do we make it so that the small individual producers can keep the large companies from plagiarizing their works?

• This has been refered to as clarity within the Copyright Consultations. The ability of all Canadians to understand the Act is imperative for it to be balanced in providing for Canadians that are increasingly consumers, producers and distributors all at once.

Registration

Currently there is no registration of copyright works in Canada (or in most of the world). This leads to a lot of the difficulty in understanding copyright

• A simple registration process would provide parity between independent creators and large corporate creators.
• A registry would also provide a simple mechanism for Canadians to identify works and determine their rights to them (is it copyrighted, creative commons, public domain)

Digital Rights Management

The recent consultations have seen a split in the terminology of DRM

• DRM (has come to mean meta data)
  • Obviously meta data is good it adds value to the files by making them easier to sort and search
  • Meta data can also add clarification to who and when the work was created further clarifying the owners rights to the work
• TPM (Technical Protection Mechanisms, digital locks, root kits, drm servers etc)
  • Some of these are obviously bad, root kits etc.
  • Some provide parental controls, why shouldn't this be allowed?
  • CD keys are not as bad as root kits etc but they can prevent legal backup copies

Suggestions for how to deal with DRM:

• Make it legal to circumvent DRM for content you own, like breaking into your own home when you lock yourself out.
• Make it illegal to circumvent DRM on content you don't own, like breaking into someone elses home.
• Generally keep the law out of DRM and let the market decide.
  • A problem with completely getting the law out of DRM is that if contracts are allowed to over rule the Act then customers are generally not knowledgeable enough to understand the full implications of DRM technology on their content.