Canadian DMCA Bill C-61: Second Letter to MP Wayne Marston

This is the letter that I sent to my Member of Parliment (MP), Wayne Marston on June 17th 2008, after the tabling of bill C-61.

The American DMCA has many faults, but one of the more serious faults found within is the so-called “anti-circumvention law”. This law essentially makes it illegal for Americans to bypass electronic locks, or “DRM”, on content they own. Such a law gives unlimited power to content owners, and strips any and all rights from consumers, including rights explicitly laid out in law. This is not a “fair and balanced” approach to copyright.

Before we pass a similar law here in Canada, we must first ask ourselves what the purpose of such a law would be? Industry groups advise that these locks are meant to protect against piracy, and that anti-circumvention legislation is therefore required to protect their intellectual property. If the goal is to prevent consumers from copying software, movies, and music, then we need pass no further legislation, for these acts are already illegal in this country (with the obvious exception of the private copying act of 1998). The act of copying such intellectual property is already illegal, and there is little sense in making it “more illegal”.

DRM has extremely dire side effects. DRM stands for “Digital Rights Management”, and that’s exactly what it does; it controls what Rights a consumer does and does not have over the media the consumer has purchased. But these are rights determined by the content provider, not by law, and the revocation of these rights becomes the province of private industry, which has already demonstrated a total disregard for consumer rights.

By enshrining digital locks and DRM in law, you ultimately give license to the content industries to write their own laws where copyright is concerned, because any rights given to consumers, even rights given explicitly under law, can be revoked by the application of a digital lock. Rights such as the “first sale doctrine”, the ability to enjoy content on the player of your choice, the ability to format shift media from one format to another; all of these are taken away by almost every existing DRM scheme.

Many DRM schemes, especially in the realm of computer software, do not explicitly enumerate which rights they revoke in a clear and transparent manner to the consumer. Many times consumers are not even aware of the restrictions imposed upon them until they attempt to breach those restrictions. Rarely are consumers trying to breach these restrictions with criminal intent. This bill stands to forbid Canadians from engaging in ordinary practices such as copying DVDs onto video iPods, unlocking cell phones for use with a competitor’s services.

The anti-circumvention provisions of the American DMCA are almost universally panned as being some of the worst legislation ever written. Please do not cripple Canadian industry, innovators and consumers with similar legislation. 

Section 41 of the Act, and references to it, should be removed or altered to ensure that Canadians retain the rights to use, transport, play, manipulate, archive, save and enjoy the digital works we have purchased, in perpetuity, regardless of whether there is DRM attempting to encroach on or remove those rights.

I want you, as my Member of Parliemnt, to represent me in the forthcoming copyright debate, and stop Jim Prentice from steamrolling a bill through Parliament without listening to Canadian voices.

If you haven’t already, write to your MP, and make sure you know where each other stand on this issue! What else can you do?