There’s a new copyright bill that was tabled yesterday in Parliament. It’s been in the papers, online news sources, etc. It can be found at http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=4580265&Language=e&Mode=1
Velvet Underground Goes Digital
Activities that are commonplace and have been legal in the U.S. for about 3 decades (longer if you consider the age of the code upon which they’re based, but counting since the fair use exception were clarified in Sony v. Universal, 464 U.S. 417 (1984)) will be permitted. These include time-shifting (the specific subject matter of Sony and Universal, a.k.a. The Betamax Case) and format-shifting. Time-shifting is the practice of recording a copyrighted broadcast and watching it later. One oughtn’t be faulted for assuming it to have been legal considering that the cable and satellite companies sell PVR-equipped tuners. Format-shifting is the practice of converting a copyrighted work from one format, such as CD, to another, such as mp3, for the purpose of consuming something you’ve legally purchased on another equivalent device (as in they are both playback devices and fulfill the same purpose). Again, one could have assumed this to be legal considering recent Canadian decisions (BMG Canada v. John Doe, 2005 FCA 193) that stated that the copyright levies on blank media were designed to compensate copyright holders for private copying, and the private copying exemption that existed already in the Copyright Act’s s.80. That said, format-shifting was still somehow considered illegal. These common acts will all be legal if Bill C-32 passes.
Here’s the thorn:
It will be illegal to circumvent digital locks placed by content distributors on content to which one has legal access in order to do those things that will become one’s statutory rights. Never forget that we have moved away from the copyright-as-censorship model and toward the model that regards copyright as a limited monopoly (for the purpose of a productive incentive) on what properly belongs in the public domain.
Bill C-32 is kind of like this:
(I apologize to farmers. I like food, both plant and animal; I like farms; and I don’t think farmers would ever do what I am going to suggest.)
Dear Public Domain also known as the Commons,
Here’s the food to which you’ve been entitled all this time. We know you had to steal to avoid starvation. Now we’re going to let you have food. Congratulations!
One thing, though:
We’re letting the farmers who make the food tie fishing line to the food. After you buy it, they can take it back. See, you’re not actually buying the food, but rather a licence to use the food under certain circumstances that the farmers choose. If you actually eat the food, it will be unpleasant if your teeth aren’t compatible with their string. (Remember the Sony rootkit scandal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal How about the warnings that the CD you just bought may not play on certain CD players since it’s non-standard…) It will be especially unpleasant when they rightfully take the food back, but you’ll survive. Until you starve again anyway.
This CD may not play in your CD player
If you eat the food and then pass it once you’re done with it, they can still take it back, which is very unpleasant. That string will let them stay aware of who consumes their food no matter where it ends up, which they say is important to them, even though you’re entitled to food – especially once you’ve paid for it.
Be aware that you are best off just swallowing the food whole. If you chew it to make it more useful to your particular digestive system, the string-teeth incompatibility problem is nearly guaranteed as it becomes tangled.
Do not, under any circumstances, cut the fishing line.
We know you paid for the food and feel entitled to chew it up, digest it, enjoy it, reap its nutritional benefits, etc. You are! But if the farmers choose to attach a fishing line at their whim and you cut it, we will get involved and punch you in the teeth. Hard. You’ll be lucky if you’re able to eat again. Don’t cut the line!
We know we just told you that we are going to allow you to eat and chew and digest now, but we’re handing control of your food, for all intents and purposes, over to the farmers. Unless you get in their way. Then, like we said, get ready for the big fist of the law (we know it’s supposed to be a civil matter, but the farmers told us they need our protection or everyone will start enjoying food willy-nilly).
After all, without the farmers, in particular the big industrial ones, nothing would grow anywhere ever. There wouldn’t be any plants or animals on the whole planet. It’s not like plants grow from soil on their own, or animals feed and reproduce on their own. And there’s no way non-industrial farmers could ever harvest and distribute that food!
In summary:
You can eat the food you buy.
Industrial farmers can tie fishing line to your food and take it back – even after you’ve digested it.
Don’t cut the fishing line or we’ll punch you in the teeth.
Love always,
The Ministries of Industry and Heritage.
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I remember being told that if it was illegal to buy something on cd and put it on your iphone and vice versa and couldn’t believe how ridiculous it sounded. I thought it was a GREEDY JOKE.
Interesting analogy. I realize that legislators are not often the best and the brightest. I concede that it is a vastly difficult and nuanced undertaking to mediate between the needs of artists, consumers, and commercial enterprises in order to maintain that proper balance between mobility of ideas and rewards for ingenuity and creative effort. However, this kind of licensing arrangement relies heavily on technological forms of security, and upon the legal system’s ability to comprehend and police the consumer’s treatment of those security devices. Making it a criminal matter is, in my opinion, wrong-minded. More importantly it is likely to inflame the sentiments of the large pool of copy-lefties and hacker types against the legislation. I believe such a system will only make things more difficult for people practising format change for a very short period of time before they are by-passed by hackers for the cause. The commercial enterprises will find their security measures breached, and the legal system will find enforcement of those breaches a practical impossibility. That is one of the problems with passing laws that criminalize activities that the demos does not think of as illegal, and that it regularly practices. Large-scale civil disobedience will always make such laws irrelevant and perhaps ridiculous.
However, this has consequences for the consumer as well. The music industry, for example, is adapting to widespread digital music sharing by altering their profit strategies. If you think you are hearing more heavily engineered, formulaic pop on the radio now than in any other decade, you are right. If you note that, more than in any other decade, merchandising and the sale of the artist as a “brand” are rampant, you are not imagining it. In short, what is now being rewarded within the big firm music sector is not creative musical effort: it is sound engineering and marketing savvy.
There is another type of music industry gaining momentum, however. It is empowered by lowered cost of sound production, and the availability of virtually free web distribution. Almost anyone can afford a home music studio, and many can afford a very good one. Music inspired by a desire to create a song (not by a desire to replicate a hit) is being made and distributed now more than ever before. You have to wade through a lot of crap, but the impulse to create music is alive and well, and artists can by-pass what Joni Mitchell called “the star-maker machinery behind the popular song.”
So let the big music machine make money churning out merchandise and licensing their “brand” of artist. They are unlikely to make the big returns they want off of music sales, and this legislation will not help them realize that greedy little dream, but they will still make money. And artists will still make music.
Looking at IP industries in general, I do not believe there are many instances where digital security has prevailed against a pool of motivated geeks and a body of civilly disobedient consumers. This statute is more likely to create motivation for its own violation than for compliance.
So you’re telling me that if I buy some bits from, say, the iTunes Store, that it will be illegal for me to rearrange those bits?
Where’s the “Add this to Facebook” link? Or the “tweet this” button?
Are you going to make me copy and paste?
Ian, I actually started looking into some buttons better than the Digg one I’ve got. The question is whether to go with one of those all-inclusive list/menu buttons, wordpress plugins, or stuff directly from FB/Twitter (so far, the WordPress plugins are looking best). Sorry about the cut-and-paste; does your iPad allow it? ;P
And yeah… if iTunes is still using DRM, it will be illegal to rearrange the ones and zeroes you’ve rightfully purchased. You’d have a greater legal right to buy an original Monet, cut it into squares, and rearrange the squares, than you do to copy the latest Paris Hilton DVD to your iPad.