Ground hog day

New bill, old shit. After many years I figure I am allowed to be a little cranky. Here is a rough draft for the letter.

I have now lost count on how many copyright bills have come and gone. I could go though the same old (but true) arguments that point out the pitfalls of digital locks but it would end up being a cut and paste affair like the plan to reintroduce bill C-32. I will instead point out what is new which is the hard evidence on how un-Canadian the bill the conservative government plans to reintroduce is.

Senior Canadian officials have privately told the Embassy that the federal government plans to hold public consultations on potential copyright legislation this summer. The government hopes to introduce a new copyright bill in the fall of 2009. Industry representatives are concerned that the government is dragging its feet on copyright reform and are calling for the USG to elevate Canada to the Special 301 Priority Watch List.

Addington said the Government had been accused, unfairly in her opinion, of drafting C 61 without public consultation. Therefore, the Government plans to hold public consultations on copyright policy over the summer. The exact form of these consultations has not been determined. Addington stated that the GOC would also use these consultations as an opportunity to educate consumers and "sell" the Government view. These consultations will likely be announced in May or June, she said.

Thanks to WikiLeaks the “made in Canada” bill is definitively shown to not be made for Canadians but for U.S. interests in sections. I am looking for a bill that reflects Canadians ideals which brings me to my question for members of parliament.

Why is bill C-32 being reintroduced as is and not changed to reflect what was learn during committee? What is the point of the committee if it is not to improve upon the bill or future bills?

Thanks for reading.

Goal

The first thing I always need to remind my self before I start a letter is think about what the goal of my letter should be. When it comes to a online consultation my goal is to mention as many things in as short of time as possible because who would really pay attention to a 10 page essay on digital locks in that setting anyways. When it comes to writing a letter to a MP my goal is to not look like a "radical extremist" and to convince the MP that I would be worth while in a meeting.

I think the fact I don't come off as a professional writer actually works out in my favor. Not being in the intellectual property field or information technology field gives me a Joe the plumber edge I try and use as much as possible.

Here is my rough draft. Once again feel free to point out typos.

Back in December of 2007 I only became active in copyright for one reason and one reason only. Digital locks are able lock people away from their own property. Amazon proved that point by having kindles remove, ironically, George Orwell's 1984.

Digital locks have had a long history when it comes to computers. Digital locks have compromised computers, invaded privacy, and left consumers with unplayable content. There are many instance where people have had to remove digital locks because of these problems. To me it has become clear that digital locks themselves and the tools that break them should not be legally protected. Bill C-32 protection of digital locks only exacerbates the problem of abusive digital locks.

Bill C-32's protection of digital locks also adds some more problems to the mix. With a few extra lines of computer code it can prevent a person from exercising their fair dealing rights. For example there is a exemption for backing up under C-32 that gets hamstrung because people cannot break a digital lock without the risk of statutory damages. The result is people are still not allow to backup their favorite DVD.

I could go on with talk about examples of how Bill C-32 will hurt industries and consumers by using examples from the United States but I feel I would be able to do so better in a meeting so instead I would like to talk about the good in Bill C-32.

The separation between non-commercial statutory damages and commercial statutory damages is a important division. This will prevent ridiculous statutory damages awards as seen in the United States with the Jammie Thomas trial. What is missing however is separating commercial statutory damages from non-commercial statutory damages when it comes to circumventing digital locks.

The technology neutral approach taken with Bill C-32 is a vast improvement over naming VHS and CDs by name. This improvement allows the bill to be more applicable in the future when new technology comes.

Allowing non-commercial user generated content is a important part of Bill C-32. This combined with the notice of claimed infringement system will prevent frivolous DMCA takedowns as often seen in the United States.

The expansion of fair dealing to include education, parody, and satire is a great step forward to creating a balance between creators and consumers. What is missing again is the fact digital locks are able to prevent these exceptions and by doing so throw off the balance between creators and consumers.

I am pleased to see that there was no attempt to extend copyright term lengths however I would have liked to see them shortened.

Overall Bill C-32 is a well written bill except when it comes to digital locks where no concessions have been made. I am looking forward to the committee process where hopefully the problem of digital locks being able to override most exemptions will be fixed.

Final Draft

I have finalized the letter I am going to go with. You will notice the posted letter on this blog is missing a fancy graph. If someone is interested in seeing it and the raw data feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment.

I now get to work on a new letter for the Digital Economy Consultation. *sigh* The things I do so I can smugly reply "why don't you do something about it?".

It has been 3, almost 4 years since I started being active on copyright legislation in Canada. During all those years I asked everyone where is the consultation with Canadians. It was the topic of almost every discussion on copyright law I had. There was a public consultation from July 20, 2009, to September 13, 2009 with over 8,000 submissions not to mention the round tables and town halls. The lingering question in my head is did anyone learn anything?

I honestly believe that people did learn some of the pitfalls of bad copyright legislation. Unfortunately I do not believe that knowledge has reached the Prime Minister's Office if current news has anything to say. I am now back to doing whatever I can to get the proper information to the right people in order to get a good bill tabled.

I ask for legislation that is based on evidence and Canada's needs. The evidence used to draft the bill needs to be properly vetted and open to public scrutiny. Too often organizations have a predetermined answer and do not let the evidence speak for itself. They instead cherry pick pieces of evidence that supports their claim and discard the rest. Copyright legislation needs to be based on evidence that speaks for itself and not evidence that has been cherry picked.

Copyright is not a natural right, but a man made one which is why we should not loose sight of what the purpose of copyright law should be when looking at evidence. The purpose of copyright law in the United States is “to promote the progress of science and useful arts” and seeing how the purpose of copyright law is not clearly defined in Canada we should table a bill based on the U.S. definition. We should definitely not table a bill whose purpose is to prop up failing business models or whose purpose is to appease foreign pressure.

A problem is that some of the numbers that are used to describe copyright infringement or counterfeiting are not based on any scientific study. For example an often quoted FBI release on July 17, 2002 states “losses to counterfeiting are estimated at $200-250 billion a year in U.S. business losses.” When Ars Technica got a response they found out the FBI had “no record of source data or methodology for generating the estimate and that it cannot be corroborated”.

Here is another example of a bad study as shown by Ars Technica

After commissioning a 2005 study from LEK Consulting that showed collegiate file-swappers were responsible for 44 percent of movie studio "losses" to piracy, the MPAA then used the report it bought to bludgeon Congress into considering legislation to address this massive problem. Now the MPAA admits that the report's conclusions weren't even close to being right; collegiate piracy accounts for only 15 percent of "losses." Oops. And that's assuming you believe the rest of the data.

The problem with these numbers is they are still used today. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in the United States is a self described “non-partisan research and educational institute – a think tank...[who] publishes policy reports, holds forums and policy debates, advises elected officials and their staff, and is an active resource for the media.” In a December 2009 publication called “Steal These Policies: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy” on page 3 is a regular who's who of questionable numbers including the previously mentioned 2005 LEK Consulting study.

What worries me is this organization brings poorly vetted obscured evidence to elected officials in the United States. I have to wonder what evidence Canadian elected officials are seeing when it comes to copyright law.

By looking at the DMCA in the United States you can see evidence of the chilling effects on free speech that bad copyright legislation can have. The Electronic Frontier Foundation released “Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA” in February 2010 and has 20 examples of how free speech has been chilled in the past. Instead of a simple list I feel the need to post an example that caught my eye in full.

Foreign Scientists Avoid U.S.

Foreign scientists have expressed concerns about traveling to the U.S. following the arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov. Some foreign scientists have advocated boycotting conferences held in the United States, and some conference organizers have decided to hold events in non-U.S. locations. In 2001, Russia went so far as to issue a travel advisory to Russian programmers traveling to the United States.

Highly respected British Linux programmer Alan Cox resigned from the USENIX committee of the Advanced Computing Systems Association, the committee that organizes many of the U.S. computing conferences, because of concerns about traveling to the United States. He also urged USENIX to move its annual conference offshore.

The International Information Hiding Workshop Conference, the conference at which Professor Felten’s team intended to present its original SDMI watermarking paper, chose to break with tradition and held its next conference outside of the U.S. following the DMCA threat to Professor Felten and his team.

If that is not damning evidence of how bad copyright legislation can chill free speech while simultaneously hurting the security research industry I do not know what is.

The last piece of evidence I want to leave with you is a graph of literary copyright registration per population as a function of time in the U.S. What it shows is how little effect extending copyright has on creating new works. In 1909 copyright terms lasted 28 years with another possible 28 years on renewal. Today it lasts the authors life plus 75 years or life plus 95 years if it was a work for hire. If the copyright terms extensions provided incentive to create new work there should have been evidence in the graph below. I do not see it.

*Cool Graph Goes here*I recreated this graph from Against Intellectual Monopoly using U.S. government data that can be found online.

If the newest copyright legislation looks like the last copyright legislation it means I obviously have not done a good enough job getting the word out on why the previous legislation is not supported by evidence and why it does not fit Canada's needs. If you feel that any of my examples are not clear or if you have any questions please contact me. The contact information is at the top of every page *excluding blogs*.

Thanks for reading.

Newest letter

I have now lost count how much I have written about copyright law. Well, here is my latest rough draft for a letter. Go my one reader! Rip apart my grammar and typos.

It has been 3, almost 4 years since I started being active on copyright legislation in Canada. During all those years I asked everyone where the consultation with Canadians is. It was the topic of almost every discussion on copyright law I had. There was a public consultation from July 20, 2009, to September 13, 2009 with over 8,000 submissions not to mention the round tables and town halls. The lingering questions in my head is did anyone learn anything?

I honestly believe that people did learn some of the pitfalls of bad copyright legislation. Unfortunately I do not believe that knowledge has reached the Prime Minister's Office if current news has anything to say.

I only ask for legislation that is based on evidence and Canada's needs. By looking copyright laws around the world while using Canadian's opinion we could create a gold standard in copyright legislation. My fear is that we will table a bill that caves in to foreign and big business pressure for reasons not based on evidence.

Copyright is not a natural right, but a man made one which is why we should not loose sight of what the purpose of copyright law should be which is “to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” What Canada needs is a properly tabled bill based on evidence that will help the aforementioned purpose not a bill based on fear, or corporation's agendas, or other failed bills, or even maximizing consumer spending. I will only accept a bill based on evidence and Canada's needs

In case you were wondering what caused my motivation feel free to check out Michael Geist's latest post. I was actually starting to believe in Tony Clement. I suppose in a way I still can. I will prepare to aim my dislike over the next copyright bill at James Moore. The ministers of industry are probably tired of me anyways.

ACTA Response

The Government of Canada is seeking the views of Canadians on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

Dear Mr. Grajkowski,

Thank you for your email dated December 1, 2008, regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

For any updates pertaining to the ACTA, as well as future public consultations, I invite you to regularly visit the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada’s Trade and Negotiations page (http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux). We continue to welcome views expressed by interested Canadians.

Sincerely,


Consultations and Liaison Division / Direction des consultations et de la liaison Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada / Affaires étrangères et Commerce international Canada

ACTA Concerns

The Government of Canada is seeking the views of Canadians on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

Michael Geist does not seem optimistic about the whole thing but I am going to be cup half full. I must admit it is going to be challenging to craft a coherent letter with the information that has been released so far.

The following is the first draft of my letter. Keep in mind I am not a English major. If you see any typos please leave a comment and I shall correct it.

Counterfeiting is a touchy issue and my concerns are with the ordinary Canadian consumer. My fear is that the "effective legal framework" is going to be over reaching and hurt business, artists, and consumers.

Strong intellectual property laws can hurt innovation though frivolous lawsuits and questionable patents. I find this is especially rampant in the tech industry. One quick look at Techdirt shows how intellectual property has been abused so far. My personal favorite is trying to patent the process of patent trolling. What needs to be kept in mind is intellectual property is a form of temporary monopoly enforced by the state with the goal of growing the economy and creating innovation. Having abusive intellectual property laws does not help that goal. I recommend intellectual property laws in moderation.

Any enforcement practice needs to respect peoples privacy. I am strongly against searching laptops at the border because I believe laptops to be a extension of the mind, especially in the business world. People should not be subjected to unwarranted searches under the ACTA.

Criminal enforcement needs to differentiate commercial piracy from non-commercial priracy as well having rules to protect the system from abuse. Without this separation lives can be ruined though expensive and long lasting lawsuits.

The ACTA should not target internet distribution and information technology. Any changes to that area can have far reaching and unpredictable effects which is why exhaustive public consultation is needed before even signing noncommittal treaties.

These are some of my recommendations and hopefully that will be taken into consideration.

Thanks for reading.

How to: Meet a MP

Somehow I have managed to get meetings with a few MPs so I might was well share some of my thoughts on how to get meetings. If anyone knows of a actual how to guide or have additional pointers please post it in the comments.

• Have some thing in writing and send it in before hand

It is best to have your thoughts in writing and send it in before hand. It organizes your thoughts and it will help prepare the MP for the topic your about to discuss. It is especially important for topics that are very specific or not popular.

• Make phone calls

It is better to make a request for a meeting by phone call instead of e-mail. I prefer to catch a person and not go to voice mail which means phoning during business hours. I also try and reference the piece of writing I sent in before hand. Remember, the receptionist is your friend so be kind.

• I believe that (my/every) MP should understand the effects of copyright legislation

This is my favorite line to use because I believe it and it gets passed the "I will pass your concerns onto..." line. As well, being the proactive person you are, you already did pass on your concerns to the person they suggested. Way to go.

• Be flexible

Seriously, MPs are busy people. If you have to wait 2 months for a meeting that is ok. Just ask the receptionist, your new best friend, when is the best time to phone back for a meeting. MPs set aside time to come back from parliament and meet with their constituents so take advantage of it.

• When in doubt do your best and be kind

Just the fact you took your time and are polite is usually enough to meet a MP or, at the very least, for the MP to seriously read your letter.

That is what I have figure out so far. Not bad considering I had nothing to go off of in the beginning.

Reply by Rona Ambrose

Dear Mr. Grajkowski,

Thank you for your recent correspondence to our office. If you are not satisfied with the response from Minister Ambrose, I urge you to contact the Minister of Industry directly to obtain more detailed explanations regarding your concerns. The contact information for Minister Prentice is as follows:

Minister of Industry
C.D. Howe Building, East Tower, 11th floor
235 Queen Street
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0H5
(613) 995-9001
Ministre.industrie@ic.gc.ca

Regarding your request for a meeting, we are unable to accommodate a meeting at this time.

This shall hopefully be the last time the name Rona Ambrose crosses my blog. I may never know where Rona Ambrose stands on Bill C-61. I do know where she stands when it comes to my vote.

Response to Rona Ambrose

Here is a couple quick notes. No, I do not actually own a Celine Dion CD although I am sure it is very good.

I do not expect to get any kinda of response from Rona Ambrose. If she really cared I would have got a proper response long ago.

I also do not expect a phone call from a scheduling manager. It is just one more "misunderstanding" from the office of The Honourable Rona Ambrose.

I really send this letter so I can exclaim "at least I tried". I also get the added benefit of having more cannon fodder against Rona Ambrose.

I do not claim to be above disliking MPs. Only Rona Ambrose managed to earn my loathing. Not even Jim Prentice earned that.

Without further ado, my letter.

Your response to my letter is very concerning. The response shows the lack of attention paid to my concerns and my fears in general. I would like to take a moment and explain why this response should be a embarrassment to your office. Hopefully, I can look forward to hearing a proper response as well as a phone call from the scheduling manager for a meeting (780) XXX-XXXX.

I would like to make a few quick points about the supposed clarifications. Your letter says Bill C-61 clarifies time shifting but it fails to clarify a key point. The bill fails to clarify how long I can keep my recordings.

Your letter says I can “copy legally acquired music onto other devices”. In the case of my 2002 Celine Dion CD, A New Day Has Come, your statement appears to be murky at best.

The fixed amount of $500 statutory damages appears to be a red herring. Most Canadians would fall under the $20,000 statutory damages per infringement because of the abusive digital lock provisions as well as the simple fact most programs that download files upload as well.

The educator copyright rules are complicated enough it takes copyright lawyers to figure it out. I very much doubt these rules will provide educators with a new way “to deliver course material and lessons” when considering the restrictions these new rules have.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a secretive treaty without public consultation. I fear the ACTA will be a bias treaty. I plead with you, in the name of democracy, that you help bring the ACTA treaty into the light instead of the cloak and dagger state it is currently in.

I agree that Amendments to Canada's Copyright Act are needed and are long overdue but that is no reason to rush though a bad bill. Time and care needs to be taken to make sure it is done right. I ask that you, Rona Ambrose, meet with me because I believe it is important that all MPs understand the effects Bill C-61 will have, both good and bad.

Rona Ambrose

Sometimes I question why I am so hard on Rona Ambrose.. then I remember I am her constituent. In theory she should at least try to see what her constituents think. This is a stark contrast to Laurie Hawn who has no reason to meet with me. I'm just some guy running around proclaiming himself to be Fair Copyright for Canada - Edmonton Chapter founder and yet he met with me as have others.

So, why have I gone off the "Boo Rona Ambrose" deep end again? Let me try to explain.

Here is a quote from James Rajotte's canned letter response to Bill C-61.

"For your information, Bill C-61 is at the second reading stage in the House of Commons. Debate at this level is over the principle of the bill rather than a specific examination of every clause contained in the bill...I support Bill C-61 in principle, but I am ready and willing to listen to your views."

I could go into detail and describe why I like this canned letter response to Bill C-61 but I think it speaks for its self. I have met with James Rajotte and I believe it when he says he is "ready and willing to listen".

Lets take a look at the canned letter Rona Ambrose sent out to me today.

"The bill clarifies that consumers will now be able to record television shows for later viewing (time shifting); copy legally acquired music onto other devices such as MP3 players or cellphones; and make backup copies of legally acquired books, newspapers, videocassettes and photographs onto devices they own (format shifting). Furthermore, the bill has set new limitations on statutory damages, so individuals would be liable for a fixed amount of $500 if they have infringed copyright for private use, provided that the material is not protected by a technological measure (TM or digital lock). Individuals may still be liable for other types of damages or remedies."

It reads like a freaking PR campaign. That letter is so filled with half truths it makes me rage. That is comming for a guy that almost never gets angry.

That quote is the reason why I meet MPs. I have to go around to make sure people understand the actual effects of Bill C-61 and shed full light on the supposed clarifications.

The Rona Ambrose scheduling manager has yet to contact me even though they say he/she would. I would still like a meeting just so she has the opportunity to see what I see in Bill C-61. I doubt it will ever happen though.

I am going to write a reply to that canned letter and post it here but I am unable to do so now due to my shear outrage.

Excuse me as I need to find a box of cute puppies stat.