There has been considerable debate about the appropriate scope for legal protection of TPMs under Bill C-32. I dealt with this issue in a speech I gave today at the Insight Conference: RIGHTS and COPYRIGHT, Bringing Canada into the 21st Century.
The questions I discussed were the following:
- Does Bill C-32 properly implement the WIPO Treaties consistent with approaches used by Canada’s trading partners?
- Does Bill C-32 permit circumvention of TPMs to permit copying for fair dealing, educational and other purposes?
- Does Bill C-32 have a flexible framework to permit new exceptions to be made by regulation?
- Can the WIPO Treaties be implemented by limiting protection to circumvention for the purposes of infringement?
- Should circumvention of TPMs for private copying purposes be permitted?
- Are private copying exceptions “user rights” that trump legal protection for TPMs?
- Do other jurisdictions permit an exception for private copying to trump TPMs?
- Would an exception for private copying that permits circumventing TPMs violate the Berne Three Step Test?
- Can the WIPO Treaties be complied with by permitting circumvention of TPMs for private copying?
- Does Canada have any trading partners that have private copying, no levy, and permit circumventing a TPM for private copying?
My slides are set out below.
For more information about the Copyright Modernization Act or Bill C-11 or copyright reform, see Change and the Copyright Modernization Act.
2 comments
Why should my rights to break locks in order to access my own media be taken away? Why should then be less important than the protection of locks in order to create artificial business models?
Who will compensate me for the loss of my rights with respect to accessing my media?
I have quite a large legal collection.
I know that I can create a more valuable platform for viewing my own media than any company will likely ever decide to sell to me. They will put their own self interest first.
Thank you for the comment. If a company decides it is not economically vilable to sell you products for every possible use for the price they want to charge, you can always not buy the product. There is no reason to think that vendors want to lock up content. The market will heavily influence licensing practices, as it did for music downloads which are now tpm free.