SHARE Follow this article on Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Bookmark and Share
Home » Blogs » Ahead of the curve

Putting Mr. Angus' private members Copyright bill in context: locks, lawsuits, levies and licensing.


On March 16, 2010, NDP digital issues critic Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) tabled Motion 506 to expand Fair Dealings as well as a private members bill Bill C-499: An Act to amend the Copyright Act (audio recording devices) which seeks to extend the existing Private Copying regime for audio recording to devices. The next day the Heritage committee tabled a motion supporting the extension of the regime to devices, indicating the support of the Liberals and Bloc for this policy direction.

While I fully support the motion on extending Fair Dealings, the impact of the private members bill is much more complex and needs discussion. This is what Mr. Angus intended. Mr. Angus doesn't expect the bill to be passed, but hopes that it will spark much needed discussion of our various alternative policy directions in Copyright. The timing is important as Industry Minister Tony Clement told The Wire Report that The Conservative government intends to introduce a copyright reform bill before Parliament’s summer recess,

Back in June and July 2008, soon after the Conservative government tabled their Bill C-61, I wrote a 4-part series of articles which detailed some of the issues with the most commonly discussed options: locks, levies, lawsuits or licensing.

I suggest that those who want to better understand the issue take a look at those articles. What is important to recognize is that the change to the music marketplace that Mr. Angus has proposed in his bill is not an ideal situation, but what he suggests is the lesser of the evils. While I am not a fan of this proposal, I consider it to be far better than what has been proposed by the Conservatives in their C-61 or (to a lesser degree) the Liberals in their Bill C-60.

Ideal would be if we had a well mannered music marketplace, but this hasn't happened. As a music consumer I have been limited to a subset of music that the copyright holders are willing to offer me for sale. Music copyright holders have tended to restrict access by computing platform (IE: demand that legal digital downloaders also be either Apple or Microsoft customers) or by geography (I see quite a bit of titles on eMusic that say that the music isn't available in my country).

After refusing my money, these music copyright holder then complain to the government that people might not be buying as much music from them as we did in the past. This is all that their statistics show, and there is little differentiation between copyright infringement, legal competition and market failures where people would like to buy but can't.

Given copyright holders have thus far refused a well mannered marketplace, we are left with a few evils. I'll start from what I consider to be the worst option, and move from there.

Locks: These are digital locks that tie music to specific brands of devices, and digital locks which lock out the owners of devices. This is by far the worst option, and yet it is the one most favoured by the "Conservatives" as evidenced by Bill C-61 and their public pronouncements since. It makes me question whether these "Conservatives" have any respect for property rights at all. The Liberals have indicated support for this option, although they aren't quite as bad as the Conservatives. The NDP, often articulated by Mr. Angus, is strongly opposed to this abuse of digital locks.

One irony has been that while the major labels are begging for legal protection for these locks, they have much to lose. It is the entity which holds the keys to these locks that benefit, and in the case of locks on devices that is the device manufacturer who holds the keys: not device owners and not content copyright holders. This excessive control granted to device manufacturers will allow these manufacturers to replace music labels as gatekeepers in the music industry. While the major labels rant about the comparably smaller threat from infringement, they appear eager to walk the plank by aligning themselves with the likes of Apple and Microsoft.

Levies: This is what Angus has suggested is the lesser of the available evils. I agree with those who say these levies are unfair, and do not consider it to be money rightfully owed to copyright holders. I do not consider this form of levy to be comparable to levies on commercial airplay of music which has a far better tie between the music actually communicated and the levies. I disagree with those who consider this a "tax" as a tax needs to be accountable to the people paying it, and the amount is set by elected officials. In the case of these levies are realistically only accountable to the collective societies and the amount is set by unelected commissioners on the copyright board. Both the Liberals Bill C-60 and the Conservatives Bill C-61 would have greatly increased levies as well, so it is not like the folks are against this system.

Lawsuits: This is where copyright holders sue people who are infringing copyright, the way copyright law was intended to work. If lawsuits required a minimum amount of evidence before they could be launched, and there were adequate penalties for false accusations, I would favor this option. Unfortunately dishonest copyright industry lobbiests work hard to require minimal evidence. We know that they love being able to sue single moms and dead people for alleged infringement, and know that the vast majority of citizens do not have the resources to defend themselves against even the most frivolous of false accusations.

It is unlikely that this option would last as dishonest lobbiest will claim that the government isn't doing enough on their behalf, even though it is the copyright holders that are doing nothing useful.

Note: Some of the links between IT World Canada articles broken when they changed Content Management systems. Listed below are some corrected links:

---
Russell McOrmond is a self employed consultant, policy coordinator for CLUE: Canada's Association for Free/Libre and Open Source Software, co-coordinator for Getting Open Source Logic INto Governments (GOSLING), and host for Digital Copyright Canada.


blog comments powered by Disqus