Core Dump

The internet is an integral part of our children’s education; it’s critical to our employment; it’s how we stay in touch with distant relatives. It’s how we engage with government. It’s the single wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. It isn’t just a conduit for getting a few naughty free movies, it is the circulatory system of the information age.

To understand just how disproportionate this is, consider the corollary: what if Peter Mandelson proposed a rule to terminate the internet access of any movie studio or record company accused of three baseless copyright claims against the public? We could go down to all Universal offices and data centres with a huge pair of boltcutters and snip its net wires at the junction box.

It would be a corporate death penalty. Families that receive this penalty — without a judge or trial — will face a similar terminal fate, cut off from the system that connects them to life and livelihood.

Labels: intellectual property, Internet, politics

I approached TRO first, sending them the score I'd written for concertina and voice, which contains many annotations specific to my purpose as well as modifications to the tune's melody and chords. A few weeks later I received a letter from TRO. "We are enclosing our music copy of I AIN'T GOT NO HOME," they wrote, "and request that you use the "words and music" from the enclosed copy in your book." The following page contained a photocopy of the melody line of Woody's lyric from what looked like a children's book, accompanied by a cartoon of a guy's butt protruding from the front door of a house.

As TRO was evidently unwilling to discuss the particulars of my arrangement, I decided, regretfully, to remove Woody's lyrics from the score.

I approached HFA next about securing a mechanical/digital license, hoping for a better resolution. Their website, HarryFox.com, boasts an automated fee calculator called SongFile, which represents over two million songs. The standard fee is 9.1 cents per copy up to 2,500 copies; beyond that, a non-automated license must be negotiated.

My previous album, The Devil's Dreamworld, has thus far been downloaded from the Internet Archive fifty thousand times. Were a similar number of downloads to accrue, at the 9.1-cent-per-copy rate, for my version of "I Ain't Got No Home," I'd owe HFA almost five thousand dollars, though my use will have generated no income for me.

Labels: intellectual property, music

Van Loan argues that the changes are long overdue, pointing to a kidnapping case in Vancouver earlier this year as evidence of the need for legislative change. In several interviews, he has described witnessing an emergency situation in which Vancouver police waited 36 hours to get the information they needed in order to obtain a warrant for customer name and address information.

While that makes for a powerful example, a more detailed investigation into the specifics of the case reveals that Van Loan's rendition leaves out some important details. Over the summer, I launched Access to Information requests with the Ministry of Public Safety, the RCMP, and the Vancouver Police Department, seeking further information on the kidnapping case.

Both Public Safety and the RCMP responded that they had no additional information to provide other than the transcripts of the minister's interviews. The Vancouver Police identified the case as a February kidnapping (not March as suggested by Van Loan). The suspect was ultimately arrested and the case is currently before the courts, therefore limiting the department's ability to provide much detailed information.

However, in an admission that goes to the heart of Van Loan's claims, a legal adviser disclosed that no ISP records were sought during the investigation. In other words, the case the minister of public safety has presented as evidence of the need for mandatory disclosure of ISP customer records never involved a request for such records and yielded an arrest using the current law.

Labels: intellectual property, politics, security

A few years ago I hosted a mini-series for CBC Radio called The Contrarians, a show about "unpopular ideas that just might be right". Each week I'd take a controversial opinion and try it on for size. Sometimes the show was serious, sometimes it was silly- I rarely agreed with the positions I took, but operated on the principle that no idea is so radical or offensive that we should be forbidden to contemplate it (if only to learn why we should discard it). The CBC brass was incredibly supportive of the project and I was given license to explore a lot of unorthodox subject matter. Topics included:

* *Multiculturalism doesn't work (we just eat each other's sandwiches).
* *Feminism isn't dead, it's just finished (take a bow, ladies- you won!).
* *It's a myth- Canadians aren't funny.
* *Copyright should be abolished.

I'd love to link to these shows now, but I can't. They were never posted online or offered as podcasts. I tried posting them on my personal website, and was instructed to take them down by CBC management. I was told I was violating their copyright. Every now and then I'll get an email from a teacher or listener requesting an episode of The Contrarians, and I have to explain that I'd be breaking the law to send one.

Let's put aside my personal frustration at having my work locked away. The real question here is, since CBC content is funded by the public, shouldn't the public own it? Or at least have access to it? Actually, the CBC archives are just the tip of the iceberg: the overwhelming majority of stuff made for Canadians with

Labels: intellectual property

Before addressing the consultation questions, I have two comments about process. First, thank you to Industry Minister Clement and Canadian Heritage Minister Moore for launching this consultation. As promised, it has been fair, transparent, and accessible to all Canadians.

Second, this consultation should be viewed as the start of an ongoing process to craft Canadian copyright law. Once a bill is tabled, it is essential that Canadians again have the opportunity to register their views through an open, comprehensive committee process. Moreover, Canadians should determine the shape and scope of Canadian copyright law. International treaty negotiations, particularly the ongoing Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement discussions, should not effectively pre-determine domestic reforms. The ACTA negotiations have generated considerable concern among many Canadians and the government should demand that those negotiations be conducted in an open manner with the release of draft text for public comment.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Labels: intellectual property

Some experts worry that a settlement this large could rekindle debate over the legitimacy of lawsuits like this one. Lobbyists in the U.S. tech sector have been pressuring Congress to crack down on small companies suing bigger companies over patent issues.

A penalty such as the one levied against Microsoft could become a rallying cry to push even harder for those reforms, says Eugene Quinn, a U.S. patent attorney and founder of intellectual-property blog IPWatchdog.com.

“Many [small] companies are suing them just to try and get a settlement,” Mr. Quinn says. “But a lot of times it is this exact dynamic, where a small company has good technology that is being infringed. There are a lot of these types of suits out there.”

Mr. Vulpe defends their decision to protect their patent rights, while dismissing the notion that ideas should be free for use by everyone.

“Innovation without patents is like fishing without nets,” he says. “It's great for the seals upstream, but not so great for the fishermen.”

Translation? “We want to get paid,” Mr. Owen says. “They're not going to use it unless we give consent. It's the right thing.”

Labels: intellectual property, Microsoft, Microsoft Word

# CRIA and CMPDA lobbyist Barry Sookman, in a National Post op-ed written with Stephen Stohn, labels Canada a piracy heaven while calling for "graduated response" (the euphemism for three strikes and a user loses Internet access for a year), anti-circumvention legislation, ISP liability, notice and takedown, secondary liability for sites like the Pirate Bay, and limited fair dealing expansion rather than a more flexible approach.
# In a second piece, Sookman and Glen Bloom are quoted as saying the consultation isn't needed, claiming that "endless consultation is useless", that Canadian law is an embarrassment, and that we should just get on with WIPO ratification.

But rather than deal with reality, Access Copyright, presents it as "us vs. them" with "them" outnumbering "us." The most stunning statement of all:

"It's a simple fact that users outnumber us. But Canadian users involved in the online debate are so adept at leveraging the internet and social networks to their advantage, there's a danger that your voices as Canadian creators and publishers will be drowned out by the chatter. "

Think about that fact for a second. Access Copyright is talking about customers here. The people who actually determine the real value of whatever content creators make. And Access Copyright is flat-out insulting them, by making them out to be an unruly mob that content creators need to fight. Copyright is supposed to be about what's best for society as a whole, in encouraging the production of more works. It should be a win-win situation. But here Access Copyright is stating flat-out that the desires of users to protect their own rights is somehow something that needs to be forcibly denied.

If you want to understand why these industries are dying, the evidence is right here. When you treat your customers as the enemy, don't be surprised if they go away. It's not because of "piracy" or "the internet." It's because these content creators are treating their best customers as anything but customers.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Access Copyright, the Canadian author's collecting society (a group that collects money from libraries for book lending and gives it to authors) is using its members' money to sabotage an enormously popular consultation on the future of Canadian copyright.

Previous to this consultation, the Canadian government twice tried to ram through restrictive, US-style copyright rules, refusing to meet with Canadian creators, net-users, libraries, educators, publishers or musicians. Now, after hundreds of thousands of Canadians came forward demanding public consultations and a balanced, made-in-Canada answer to copyright in the information age, Access Copyright has responded with an hysterical, dishonest call to its members to condemn the consultation and any notion of protecting privacy, access, fair dealing and other public rights in copyright.

The broadside includes this remarkable condemnation of "users" of information -- that is, readers, writers, teachers, scholars, fans, government, students -- "It's a simple fact that users outnumber us. But Canadian users involved in the online debate are so adept at leveraging the Internet and social networks to their advantage, there's a danger that your voices as Canadian creators and publishers will be drowned out by the chatter. Your interests need to be expressed as forcefully as possible, and it's up to you to get involved to make that happen."

Labels: intellectual property, politics

We should recognize that Canada was once a leader in the area. In the late 1990s, we became the first country in the world to ensure that every school from coast to coast to coast was connected to the Internet. Soon after that we launched the National Broadband Task Force committed to developing a strategy to ensure that all Canadians had access to high-speed networks.

In the years since that task force, Canada's global standing has steadily declined. Many Europeans countries have eclipsed Canada in its broadband rankings. The Telecommunications Policy Review Panel from a couple of years ago undertook a detailed analysis of the Canadian marketplace with the goal of identifying whether the market could be relied upon to ensure that all Canadians would have access to broadband. Their conclusion was that it would not be relied upon. The panel concluded that at least 5 per cent of Canadians — hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens — will be without broadband access without public involvement. Last week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, released its latest report on global broadband, and the results should be mandatory reading for anyone concerned with these issues. Canada ranked ninth out of the 30 OECD countries on broadband penetration. That is not great, but the situation becomes even worse once you delve into the details on pricing and speed.

First, Canada is relatively expensive, ranking fourteenth for monthly subscription costs at $45.65. By comparison, Japan costs $30.46 cents and the U.K. is $30.63. Second, the Canadian Internet is slow, ranking twenty-fourth out of the 30 OECD countries. It is truly a different Internet experience for people in Japan, Korea and France, where the speed allows for applications and opportunities that we do not have. Moreover, Canada lags behind in fibre connections direct to home fibre with 0 per cent penetration, according to the OECD. By comparison, Japan sits at 48 per cent, Korea at 43 per cent, Sweden at 20 per cent and the United States, which has been slow in this area, is at 4 per cent. Third, when you combine speed and pricing, Canada drops to twenty-eighth out of the 30 OECD countries for price per megabyte. In other words, as consumers, we pay more for less — higher prices, slower speeds. Fourth, in addition, Canada is one of only four OECD countries where consumers have no alternative but to take a service with bit caps. That means the service provider caps the amount of bandwidth that the consumer can use each month. In almost every other OECD country, consumers at least have a choice between providers that use bit caps and those that do not.

Labels: intellectual property, Internet, politics

I don't often ask readers to do things like this, but please, forward this post to people you know in the US, Canada and the EU, and ask them to reblog, tweet, and spread the word, especially to government officials and activists who work on disabled rights. We know that WIPO negotiations can be overwhelmed by citizen activists -- that's how we killed the Broadcast Treaty negotiation a few years back -- and with your help, we can make history, and create a world where copyright law protects the public interest.

Labels: intellectual property

It's not that these companies can't get their laws on the agenda, and not that they can't cook the process to make it run favorably for themselves. For example, when Canada was considering its own version of the WCT, the entertainment giants saw to it that the parliamentarians in charge of the process only talked to multinational entertainment giants, without conducting any kind of embarrassing public consultation. They wouldn't even talk to the Canadian record companies -- just the multinationals.

The proposed laws -- Bill C60 and Bill C61 -- were complicated and took a lot of explaining. But here's what didn't take any explaining at all: "Your government is about to introduce sweeping, controversial regulations to the Internet, and they won't talk with anyone except the jerks who are suing all those music downloaders in the States about it -- they won't even talk to Canadian record companies!"

This made the Canadian lawmakers who backed the proposal look like sellouts (which they were); made the laws look like conspiracies (which they were); and made the geeks who cared about this stuff look like heroes (which they were). The complicated story about the law became a simple story about the process.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Many submissions call on the CRTC to continue the regulatory exemption for new media, including the wireless industry, Google, telecom industry, the NHL, and the broadcasters. On the other hand, ACTRA and SOCAN lead the charge for a new, highly regulated Internet. SOCAN's vision is astonishing, calling for at least 51 percent Canadian content requirements for Canadian commercial websites. ACTRA calls for full Cancon rules for new media and wants the CRTC to licence new media undertakings, arguing that "the Commission should also require that those who are making programs available from Canada, through the Internet or to mobile receiving devices, for viewing at a time and place chosen by the user be licensed." Note that ACTRA also believes that user generated content should regulated under the Broadcasting Act.

Labels: intellectual property, Internet

The fundamental issue underlying Bill C-61 and similar legislation in other countries is how to balance the rights of users or consumers with those of rightsholders or producers. Restrictions on media and technology use are often trumpeted as protection for creative people such as artists and musicians, and demonized by opponents as regulatory barriers that create economic rents and prop up failed business models. The truth is somewhere in between.

It is important to note that "rightsholders" are often the businesses that disseminate content, as artists are often asked to turn over their rights to the media companies that represent them. Popular bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have moved experimented with offering music online for free, and Flickr lists over 86 million photos that have been given away under a Creative Commons license, a legal agreement much more liberal than standard copyright.

Labels: intellectual property

“If the government were to introduce essentially the same bill again, it’s going to run into the same kind of criticism,” Geist said. That criticism includes tens of thousands of Canadians who protested the bill through Geist’s own Fair Copyright Facebook group, as well as, strong opposition from a powerful business coalition comprised of corporate giants such as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp.

“We’ve also seen a crystallizing of opposition to the bill from the NDP and a fair number of Liberals MPs,” he added. “It would be prudent to take some of those criticisms to heart, and even if there’s no formal consultation before reintroducing the legislation, make an effort to implement some of the concerns that have been so widely expressed.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Of course, Bill C-61 did not strike the appropriate balance and tens of thousands of Canadians told Harper just that over the summer. Unlike the Liberals, NDP, and Greens, no Conservative has supported the copyright pledge, which now makes sense given this platform commitment.

The Conservatives' previous copyright-reform legislation, Bill C-61, which died on the order paper when the election was called, was released in June to a wave of criticism. While a number of organizations that represent copyright holders, such as the Canadian Recording Industry Association and the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, praised the plan, it was roundly criticized as unfair by consumer advocates, artists, privacy watchdogs, education groups and other businesses.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Labels: intellectual property, video

Today, Tachyon Books and I are launching my latest book, Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, my very first collection of essays. In it are 28 essays about everything from copyright and DRM to the layout of phone-keypads, the fallacy of the semantic web, the nature of futurism, the necessity of privacy in a digital world, the reason to love Wikipedia, the miracle of fanfic, and many other subjects. The book sports a very fine Introduction by John Perry Barlow, and was designed by typography legend John D Berry (and a fantastic cover designed by Ann Monn!).

I'm especially chuffed about John's superb design, because I'm giving the whole electronic text away in the hopes of selling more printed objects, and the fact that this is one of the best-looking books I've ever read really makes the case for owning the p-book as well as the e-book (there's an essay on this subject in the book, too, natch).

Labels: books, intellectual property

The New York Times, an AP member organization, refers to this as an “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt.” I suggest it’s better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word “privilege”) in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be. See also Virgin Media claiming the right to dictate to private citizens in Britain how they’re allowed to configure their home routers, or the new copyright bill being introduced in Canada, under which the international entertainment industry, rather than democratically-accountable representatives of the Canadian people, will get to define what does and doesn’t amount to proscribed “circumvention.” Hey, why have laws? Let’s just ask established businesses what kinds of behaviors they find inconvenient, and then send the police around to shut those behaviors down. Imagine the effort we’ll save.

Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.

Labels: intellectual property

Here's your chance to tell your Member of Parliament what you think. Kat sez, "Copyright for Canadians ) has a handy tool that makes it easy to email your MP about bill C-61. After you send your email, print it out, address an envelope and send a physical copy, too--no stamp necessary! Here's the address:

House of Commons
Ottawa, ON
K1A0A6"

Labels: intellectual property, politics

I'll have more to say soon, but the takeaway is that the DMCA provisions are worse than the U.S. and the consumer exceptions riddled with limitations as the government promotes a strategy of locking down content and launching lawsuits against Internet users.

And, indeed, this morning the bill was finally introduced. It's pretty much as bad as you would expect. It includes a DMCA-like anti-circumvention clause and fines of $500 to $20,000 for any unauthorized content you may have. Existing law already had similar fines, but the new law basically expands what you may get fined for. The law also does provide safe harbors for service providers (a good thing) including a "notice-and-notice" provision, rather than an American-style "notice-and-takedown" system (i.e., when informed of infringement, the service providers just need to inform the user, rather than immediately take down the content). Those make sense, but are drowned out by other problems with the bill. Prentice is pushing the angle that this bill is a "made-in-Canada" law, which is pretty laughable, since everyone knows that it was pretty much written by US industry lobbyists.

Even the supposedly "pro-consumer" parts of the bill (which weren't in the original version) have a lot of questionable fine print. And, of course, it looks like Prentice is using some procedural tricks to try to get the bill fast-tracked with as few opportunities to change it as possible. Hopefully, the expectations by some that this bill will be left to die come true. While there may be elements of Canada's copyright law that need updating, creating a mini-DMCA is hardly a step in the right direction.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Here it is, folks, at long last: Industry Canada Minister Jim Prentice is about to introduce his Canadian version of America's disastrous Digital Millennium Copyright Act tomorrow. In so doing, he is violating his own party's promise to seek public consultation on all treaty accession bills, he's ignoring the cries of rightsholders, industry, educators, artists, librarians, citizens' rights groups, legal scholars and pretty much everyone with a stake in this, except the US Trade Representative and the US Ambassador, who, apparently, have had ample opportunity to chat with the Minister and give him his marching orders.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

The fight over the Canadian DMCA is heating up as the Industry Minister Jim Prentice prepares to introduce one-sided, dangerous copyright legislation despite thousands of letters and protests against the bill. Nearly 40,000 people have joined the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group to fight the bill, but lobby groups and the U.S. government are responding with misleading opinion pieces and behind the scenes lobbying.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Opponents of the global march toward near continuous copyright and anti-piracy reforms have long cautioned against the "unintended consequences" of such efforts.

Concerns have often centered around the negative effect of reforms on consumer rights, free speech, and personal privacy.

Last week, Canada's top privacy watchdog, Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart, joined the fight. She warned against the potential negative privacy impact of Canadian copyright legislation that has yet to be tabled.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Labels: intellectual property

The board wanted to place a charge of between $5 and $75 on each new device, depending on the number of songs it could hold. Those fees, which are similar to the levies on blank compact discs, are designed to compensate the recording industry for music that is copied.

However, opponents said the fees are unfair because they imply that all owners of iPods are using them to transfer and listen to pirated music.

Labels: intellectual property

Labels: intellectual property, politics

"Piracy [music over the Internet or other media] for personal use is no longer targeted," said in an interview Christmas Hilaire, head of the federal investigations and questions of copyright theft 'author to the RCMP. «Aujourd'hui, c'est tellement simple de copier. "Today it is so easy to copy. Tout le monde est pris au dépourvu et on ne sait pas comment arrêter ça.» Everybody was taken by surprise and we do not know how to stop it. "

Dans ce contexte où le téléchargement illégal de musique, généralement en format MP3, est devenu un comportement généralisé dans la société, surtout auprès des jeunes usagers d'Internet, la GRC avoue donc que la traque de ce type de voleur ne figure pas «dans [ses] priorités». In this context, where the illegal downloading of music, usually in MP3 format, has become an overall pattern in society, especially among young Internet users, the RCMP says that the tracking of this type of thief does not appear in " [his] priorities. " «On s'attaque principalement aux crimes contre la propriété intellectuelle, qui ont un impact sur la santé et la sécurité des consommateurs [médicaments, appareils électriques, etc.], mais aussi à ceux qui touchent le crime organisé, a poursuivi M. "It addresses mainly to crimes against intellectual property, which have an impact on the health and safety of consumers [medicines, electrical appliances, and so on.], But also those related to organized crime, said St-Hilaire. Hilaire. Notre assiette est assez pleine avec ça, et malheureusement, le petit, on n'a pas le temps de s'en occuper.» Our plate is pretty full with that, and unfortunately, the small, it does not have time to deal with them. "

Labels: intellectual property

I always thought Scotty should have said "no" to the captain more often, especially when Kirk would ask for something completely outrageous that, more often than not, violated the laws of physics. But engineers don't like saying no to management, and poor Scotty would end up having to make the magic happen week after week, until even as a child I began to suspect that his skills had more to do with the scriptwriters than his deep understanding of the laws of the universe. Still, he did end up with a reputation as a miracle worker, which can't be so bad.

Trying to make Digital Rights Management (DRM) work in the real world is like asking engineers to do "Star Trek" style magic, rather than real engineering. DRM simply cannot work. For less technical readers who might be wondering what I'm going on about, DRM is the attempt to control copying on a digital file, or sometimes even to add a restriction on how many times such a file can be copied. It's usually applied to online music or movies, but it's never sold to the consumer for what it actually is, an added restriction on what can be done with something they've paid for. DRM is always explained as the "wonderful new technology that will help protect your medical records from thieves." The truth is, it can't even do that.

Labels: intellectual property, technology

Coke is a legitimate trademark to identify a cola brand. Are Opri and her ilk seriously arguing that I have to get permission from the Coca-cola company if I write a book where I have a character say, “I'd like a Coke, please.”? Surely you see the ridiculous implications here. The Supreme Court has criticized this attempt to abuse trademark law by claiming it as "mutant" form of copyright protection. However, this hasn't prevented special interests from trying to re-enforce their monopoly over language and communication.

Labels: intellectual property