Speak Out On Copyright

I've been meaning to write this for some time, and given that the deadline is fast approaching (the 13th!), I found an hour or two during the week when I was home recovering from my longboarding accident to get it done. Cat then went over it with her giganimous brain to help me weed out the run-on sentences and then Melanie gave it a second run and found the remainder of would-be improvements so I'm reasonably confident that it's post-worthy. I'll be sending it to my MP, the consultaiton itelf, and Speak Out On Copyright sometime tonight. For now though, I'm posting it here:

To whom it may concern--it has been brought to my attention that copyright law in Canada is finally being re-examined and that part of this re-examination includes a Canada-wide consultation in which respondents submit their positions on copyright law. As copyright is an issue of considerable importance to me, I offer the following responses to your 5 key questions:

1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernised?

   • Copyright law affects me in the same way it does everyone: copyright is about culture as a whole. All creative work is, in essence, derivative of the commons, and copyright is by nature a form of theft of these commons; it is a way to privatise a portion of our culture for personal profit.

     While I understand the need to compensate artists for their work, I feel that the current state of copyright is far too restrictive. In most cases, it favours those who own the copyright rather than those who created the content copyrighted. What's worse, these laws (and the ones initially proposed under C-61) further restrict the rights of the public to use and enjoy that content in our shared culture, as well as restricting our ability to contribute to the content, and by extension, to our culture.

2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?

   • The issue at hand is not about making a law that will withstand the test of time so much as it is about the unavoidable truth that the nature of copyright, and therefore how it applies to the public, is changing. File sharing is becoming rampant both in the business world and the Internet underground, and the picking of electronic locks is fast becoming mandatory to ensure the public's access to cultural content. The real question is, how will Canada adapt legislatively to a problem that by its nature is not static?

     No business has a "right" to profit: this is the foundation of a capitalist system. Now that the powers of the public have changed to allow us to make and distribute copies of media, the laws have to change to preserve the best interests of that public. Business will adapt--it always has--but only if we refuse to prop up failed business models. By this time next year the average storage capacity on a cellphone will be 8gb. That's the average size of a computer's hard drive when Napster first premiered. These phones will be able to swap files on a subway car or across international borders anonymously and nearly indetectably. This is the reality of where the technology is heading. No law or mandate can stem that tide. The law must adapt.

3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?

   • We need to adopt rational rules that work with the realities of media production and distribution in the new economy. First, laws against encryption breaking must be repealed, if only to allow people to play whatever media they want on whatever device they want. Allowing a media company to dictate the type of device a legally purchased instantiation of their product can be played on is a gross abuse of power. Clear lines must be drawn between content producers and consumers. Second, a five-year limit on non-transferable copyright is a key move for a viable 21st-century copyright plan. Copyright should only ever belong to the creator, and the rights distribution should never be exclusive. This would ensure that a creator's work would be personally profitable for a reasonable amount of time without restricting the liberties of the public to create and share derivative works. This may sound drastic given our existing copyright laws, but I would encourage you to have a conversation with an actual content creator about how their rights to their own content are routinely removed and hoarded by the copyright holder and sequestered from the public and the creator, often for decades.

4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?

   • Culture is improved by derivative works. In fact, it could be argued that all creative work is derivative. If we adopt the principles I outlined in #3, the result would be mountains of derivative works, all distributed around the globe -- content created by Canadians for the world. This is the single greatest benefit to copyright reform: the freedom to create, using elements from the culture in which we were raised.

5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

   • All of the above. If you want to increase Canada's cultural profile abroad, you need only give the public the right to create and distribute that culture. It's as simple as that. Enshrine the rights of creators in our laws and in so doing, prevent foreign interests from apppropriating and perpetually controlling those rights. Then after a reasonable time has passed, allow the public to use and share all creative works in imaginative ways, and save the trillions of dollars currently spent tracking and prosecuting people committing this inevitable "crime". Embrace public freedom; your grandchildren will thank you.