Legendary Canadian copyfighter Michael Geist has just published a ground-breaking anthology on the future of Canadian copyright law, with contributions by 19 Canadian copyright experts. You can buy the book between covers at finer bookstores across the land, but of course he's released the whole book under a Creative Commons license, so you can download it for free too. All the royalties from the print edition are to be donated to Creative Commons.
As Canadians consider the anti-circumvention provisions contained in
Bill C-60, several lessons learned elsewhere bear repeating. First, anti-circumvention represents an entirely new approach to copyright law. while
copyright law seeks to balance creator and user rights by identifying the
rights and limitations on rights holders, tPMs, supported by anti-circum-
vention legislation, creates new layers of protection that do not correlate
with traditional copyright law.As noted above, Justice Binnie stated in Theberge that "once an autho-
rized copy of a work is sold to a member of the public, it is generally for the
purchaser, not the author, to determine what happens to it."6 Cases such
as Streambox serve as an important reminder that this is not always the
case, since activity that is lawful under traditional copyright law, may be
unlawful under certain anti-circumvention legislation. This change in the
law should resonate with the Competition Bureau since it challenges its
longstanding position that a hands-off approach to intellectual property
is warranted given its characterization of IP as pro-competitive.Second, there is considerable flexibility in how a country implements
its anti-circumvention obligations into national law. while the US DMCA
is the best-known implementation, the approaches in several European
countries, as well as those in the developing world, indicate that a country
can seek to maintain the copyright balance, avoid regulating technologies,
and foster a pro-competitive marketplace within the WIPO framework.Third, the US DMCA experience illustrates that the fears raised by
critics of the US approach have come to fruition. In only seven years, the
DMCA has become a heavily litigated statute used by rights holders and
non-rights holders to restrict innovation, stifle competition, and curtail
fair use. This has occurred in large measure due to the US decision to
strictly regulate anti-circumvention devices and to downplay the connec-
tion between TPM [DRM] protection and copyright.
(Thanks, Michael!)
