Canadians on DMCA-like Law: “DO NOT WANT”
It saddens me when I see all sorts of technology bills being passed by people that have no idea how it works. If a person is going to vote on something, they can at least have the decency to have a vague idea on how it works beyond Voodoo Magic. I’ve been watching America slide down a slope of the lowest common denominator voting on policies for everyone, and it’s frightening how quickly we’re becoming an Idiocracy.
That being said, Canadian citizens are doing a damn fine job mobilizing against a DMCA-like bill that’s been proposed in the Canadian Parliament. The fact that there’re local chapters, and a significant number of people on a petition, gives me hope that the Canadian politicians might actually listen to them. It seems like the Canadian citizens have learned, seeing what occurred when the DMCA was passed in the USA. The fact that they’ve chosen to actually protest for their freedom to use media they’ve purchased, instead of sitting by and hoping for the best, gives me another reason to pick up and move to Canada.
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I must be the only Canadian who isn’t against Bill C-61. All of the things that will be made illegal will be very hard to prosecute, and things that are currently illegal will no longer be. Little known fact: it’s illegal in Canada to record a television shows at all, but I don’t see the police knocking down peoples doors to confiscate their Tivos.
I also don’t see the problem with these laws. Lets face it, a company has the right to attempt to protect the material that they create, and dictate the terms of usage of their material. We may not like the manners in which they attempt to do this. The manners in which they attempt to do this might be downright stupid and counterproductive. In fact, they often are. That does NOT give us the right to hack their software or otherwise circumvent the protective measures. If you don’t like what a given company says you can do with their stuff, then don’t get their stuff, it’s really as simple as that. You don’t have a /right/ to have a certain song or program. The company that owns it says you can have it if you agree to follow certain rules.
Canadian copyright laws are archaic, and are desperately in need of updating to something that applies to the internet age. If you really have an issue with the current bill, I recommend you post suggestions as to what would be appropriate amendments to the laws. Without basing them around making it legal to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it.
Really, I’m getting to the point where I’m downright sick of the sense of entitlement that people have that they think it’s their right to do anything they want, and that their rights trump the rights of everyone else.
A clarification, since rereading my comment shows it to be a bit snarkier than I intended. I’m not trying to hint that you personally have a self-entitlement complex. I’ve read your previous posts on internet piracy and there’s some good information there. My point is simply that a lot of the people up here who are complaining about bill C-61 are doing so on grounds that they don’t want to have to worry about being punished for doing things they know are wrong. The bill isn’t perfect, but it gets a lot of things right, and the only way to improve upon it is by bringing up legitimate issues with it and not the mass screaming about ‘greedy corporations wanting to crush the little people’ that has been coming up.
Perhaps I’m a bit jaded at this point, but I’ve had to listen to a lot of people scream about how information should be free and digital copyright is the devil in one breath, and scream about how bad it is for sites like ebaums to profit off other people’s work in the other. Protecting the creators is important, even if those creators happen to be big businesses.
The problem as I see it is two-fold: 1) once you pay for something, you should be allowed to use it as much as you like. That includes putting software on as many computers as you damn well please. I’m not sure where the idea came from that this is a crime, but software companies need to rethink that shit. 2) Laws need to be written by experts in the field, or should at least be based on expert opinion. This is especially true here in the U.S. where we have a senator who thinks the internet is a series of tubes and a president who refers to … those sets of tubes… as the “internets.” I don’t trust our policymakers to know what the hell they’re talking about when it comes to technical issues.
Michele;
They’re basically just swapping out one set of unenforced laws for another. “Sure, we won’t bust you for having a technically illegal TiVo now, so we’ll make that legal, and just not bust you for circumventing DRM instead.”
My biggest issue with things like the DMCA and C-61 is that they aren’t specific enough. If they basically read as regarding commercial infringement, I would be fine with that. But they don’t; they make all infringement an equal crime, whether it’s someone making a hundred copies of a DVD to sell or a guy making a backup of a DVD he bought.
Tarin;
It equally bothers me when I hear the “Free Knowledge” movement. I’m all for “free knowledge” in the literal sense, mind you; but I’m also all for paying people for media. There’s a big difference between saying that everyone should be able to read Einsteins’ equations and saying that all created works should be free, always.
However, I think there’s an issue when, according to the reading of the law, I cannot make a backup of a DVD I bought. A legal backup, which is only rendered illegal due to the content provider using a purposely weak form of DRM which does little else but perform the function of being DRM that needs to be circumvented.
Say I buy Iron Man when it comes out on DVD. I love the movie so much, I decide to make a DVD copy of it and put the original on a shelf. Whoops, broke the law. Now, say I want to put a copy on my DVR so I can watch it whenever without pulling out a disk. Whoops, broke the law again. Now, say I want to encode it into a movie file to carry on my laptop, so I don’t need the actual disk when I’m on the road. I’m a three-time lawbreaker.
I’m all for giving corporations the right to choose how their products are used. However, I refuse to follow any guideline or rules which’re outright unjust. When I buy a DVD, I don’t make a copy for a friend; it’s only fair that if they want a copy, they need to buy one. But if I want to make a copy for myself, as a backup, then I don’t give a shit what says I can’t; I’m going to do it, and that’s that.
The major reason I’m willing to use personal discretion in that regard is because I’ve read articles and talked to people, and seen how absolutely money-hungry corporations are. Hell, the epitome of greed is one of the prime reasons that HD-DVD failed; HD-DVD could be packed with two sides, one HD-DVD and the other DVD, to give people the ability to buy both. And companies outright spurned it because they didn’t want to give two copies for the same price as one, even if that “copy” was on the same physical disk. Even though it’d get HD-DVD into homes more easily, due to being able to buy one disk and get the capabilities of playing both formats, the companies chose to disregard that and back a format with stronger DRM and less backwards compatibility.
I’m sorry, but when a company refuses to use something that could’ve been a trump card in the format wars due to demanding people pay twice, that says a lot about the company. And it tells me that they can’t be trusted to set sane guidelines for the use of their products. That doesn’t mean they don’t get paid; it means I pay them and then do whatever the hell I see fit and feel is right.
I don’t support piracy, but it has its’ uses. I’d rather have people pirating then shoplifting, for one. If I buy a $40 RPG book, for instance, and I want an electronic copy to keep on my laptop, I refuse to pay $30 for it after having bought the physical copy for $40. It’s the right of the provider to set that price, of course; I merely consider it highway robbery and don’t pay it.
The stronger a content-provider tries to keep customers in its’ fists, the more that’ll decide to take the free alternative.
Actually, according to Bill C-61, you would not be a three-time lawbreaker for what you just described. In fact, you wouldn’t be a one-time lawbreaker. Bill C-61 specifically states that you /are/ allowed to make a single copy for personal use for each device on which you play it. One DVD copy, one DVR copy, and one laptop copy are all legal, so long as a couple conditions are met.
A) You own the original copy
B) You are not renting out, giving out, or selling the copies made
and C) You do not circumvent security measures to do this.
Now obviously C is the issue at large here. But again, legally if you buy a DVD, you do not /own/ the movie. Buying a DVD is an effective contract with the producing company that says in exchange for the money you paid, you are allowed to do certain things with the movie that they own. Like I said, we may disagree with the terms that the companies set by way of DRM, but it is their right to set the terms (within legal limits) and our right to not purchase if we don’t like them. All bill C-61 is doing is setting down the legal limits of what the implied contract can say.
Talking about enforcing the laws, interestingly enough it’s not the government’s job to directly do that in this case. Copyright laws fall under the same general classification as contract laws, given that the ‘purchase’ of copyrighted material is actually little more than an implied contract. Therefore it is purely up to the corporation to determine whether the contract is being broken or not (and there are laws and limitations as to the lengths they can go to try and determine this), at which point they go to the government for arbitration. And bill C-61 is also putting stricter limits on what a corporation can demand as a settlement. It specifically caps (at a lower number than current laws) how much money you could be sued for to prevent exorbitant ’scare lawsuits’ like the RIAA tried in the US.
What does all this mean? It means that if you’re ‘making a single backup copy’ you are not breaking any laws unless you circumvent DRM to do so. If you /DO/ circumvent DRM, you are breaking the implied contract, but as a private individual with a single copy it is still impossible for a corporation to recoup the costs of investigating, much less taking you to court. Again, because this is contract laws we’re talking about, breaking them is not the same as breaking a criminal law where prosecution is a requirement. In contract law, prosecution is at the discretion of the offended party and determined by whether they believe the offense is great enough to warrant the bother. And I do believe that the RIAA has conclusively proven that the bother FAR outweighs the payoff if you go after individuals making private copies.
Actually, they’ve proven exactly nothing. The reason they can continue making money off their current tactics is because of the fact that courts don’t realize that an IP address doesn’t necessarily conclusively point to a single person, and let them file John Doe suits, which’re found in default judgment for the plaintiff. By the time the defendant is contacted, judgment has been ruled, and the majority merely pay the “discounted” cost.
It’s shady, immoral, and it works sadly. The actual cases that’ve gone to trial are a bit more hit and miss, thankfully. And yet people continue buying music. The PR may be a mess, but the mess is well-hidden. How often do you see it in a newspaper?
I will also admit, I haven’t looked over C-61 as closely as I have the DMCA for a few reasons. The majority being that…well, for me it’s an academic exercise.
Regardless of whether the government is supposed to enforce it or not(Which it isn’t in personal cases; only Commercial Copyright Infringement is a criminal offense), the government is setting erronous guidelines which companies are influencing and then abusing.
While you’re correct that what I stated above is a crime if I circumvent DRM…show me a commercial DVD anymore that doesn’t have it. CSS is DRM, and CSS is nearly ubiquitous on any DVD released anymore. Might be a bit rare on early DVDs, but it’s as common as casing anymore. You might as well say “It’s absolutely fine to make a single copy of a DVD for each device…as long as it doesn’t come with a label.”
And you’re absolutely correct that they have the rights to set what we may and may not do with purchased movies. And I have the right, legally or not, to dissolve such a contract when I find it ludicrous. CSS isn’t a protection system; it’s a convenient line that can be stepped over without having to think about it and gives them the right to sue a person.
My little brother likes movies. He also can’t take care of a disk worth a shit. If Universal Pictures thinks I’m going to buy The Scorpion King three times because he has issues taking care of it, they have another thing coming.
As a sidenote, the “contract” to which consumers enter into when purchasing a movie allows them a single backup copy, as we’ve both said. The DMCA, on the other hand, makes circumvention of DRM illegal even if I’m exercising my rights under law and contract. Meaning that Sony can sell me a DVD, say “No, no, it’s alright to make a backup copy, it’s your right as a citizen.”, then turn around and bring the law against me under the DMCA for circumventing DRM they put onto the DVD for little other purpose then to have that legal bolt hole.
The moment companies like Sony began the double-talk bullshit and worshiping the Almighty Dollar over consumers is the moment I stopped giving a shit what their legal department thinks is Alright. Companies need to make a profit, yes, but there’s a difference between making a profit and hanging your consumers out to dry because you gotta squeeze that extra twenty out of someone that has two DVD players and wants a copy for each.
Ultimately what I got from reading Bill C-61 is that it is actually designed with the idea of protecting the rights of both individuals and companies by clarifying what is and isn’t a breach of contract, and limiting what can be claimed as damages. If you make a copy of The Scorpion King and circumvent the DRM to do it, they can come after you for a whopping $500. And that’s the maximum they can even attempt to claim.
$500 won’t cover their investigation, much less legal fees. Now, if you make 10,000 copies they can hit you for 5 million, but I think we can all agree that the only people making 10,000 copies are people who are making them to sell.
Also, keep in mind that under current laws, they can come after you for a larger sum of money for making any copy of anything. Including taping something off the radio, or recording a TV show for later viewing. Everything in Bill C-61 is an extension of what individuals are allowed to do, not a restriction. It’s bluntly a proposition put in place to protect people like you and I compared to what we have now.
I’m not arguing that C-61 doesn’t do anything right; as you said, the maximum for damages scales well, and it clarifies certain matters regarding copying.
But that doesn’t change the ways in which it still falls flat, and those’re pretty damn big. They’re essentially handing us rights and saying “You can do those, as long as you don’t have to circumvent this nearly ubiquitous feature.” You might as well say “I’ll give you this brand new computer, but it’s a crime if you ever hook up a monitor, keyboard, and/or mouse to it.”
Meaning that, much like the DMCA, you have the right to legally create a copy, but it’s illegal to go about it. The right to copying is little more then a show at this point. It’d be like someone handing you a check for a million dollars, and it being illegal to cash it. It makes a nice talking piece, sure, and you can tell people “I have a million dollars”, but if you ever try to put it into use, they have a right to bring you to court.
It isn’t the point of “Well, they won’t bother coming after you.” Technically, you can apply that to *any* crime; I could get away with theft and murder, as long as no one finds out. It’s that, as written, a person who dares to copy a DVD they bought is liable for 500 bucks. Period. I don’t care if it isn’t cost-effective to pursue, because I’m more worried about what’ll happen if some poor schmuck gets into it then his chances of doing so in the first place.
C-61 is, in the technical sense, better then the DMCA. But that isn’t saying a lot. It still has the Catch-22 of “Sure, you can copy DVDs legally. But it’s illegal to copy DVDs with ubiquitous DRM.”
What they basically say is “You can copy Grandpa’s home movie he sent.” Which…can already be done.
Ultimately though, there’s very little that can be done about that. The current laws are that copying is illegal period, so it’s loosening them even if not as much as you would like. But if they go and outright say “It is legal here to break security measures” then you’ll find a lot of studios unwilling to bring their product up here, and international pressure due to the ease of piracy. From a legal standpoint, they /can’t/ reasonably give the green light to breaking security.
They could drop the security measures in the first place. It’s not like they’re doing anything.
I need to get a bumper sticker for my car that says “If Legal Backups are outlawed, only outlaws will have Legal Backups.”
Oh Ig, you’re living in a magical land where companies make rational decisions. Don’t you know that without DRM, nobody will buy music or movies anymore?! That extra five seconds it takes to crack security measures makes all the difference.
Yes, yes, I know. I had sat next to a smoky guy in McDonalds and thought I was typing that post into the rump of a Unicorn. God damn second-hand hallucinogenics.