Michael Geist on Rogers' iPhone Plans

I'm travelling this week, but want to blog this story. I have specific thoughts about the real threat that wireless pricing and Bill C-61 have for Canadian industry, but for now, Michael Geist has written a great piece on Rogers' plans...

Michael Geist - Canadians Face Triple Lock on Apple iPhone

Michael Geist - The Canadian DMCA: A Betrayal

Michael Geist - The Canadian DMCA: A Betrayal

Brlliant

ArsTechnica examines "Made-In-Canada DMCA"

Ars Technica reviews the new Canadian Copyright Act (Bill C-61) and comes back with a distressing, albeit not entirely surprising analysis.

The review can be found here

What's great about the review is that although it most definitely has a point-of-view (e.g. "...those pesky details... make even the "consumer-friendly" parts of the bill a bit less friendly."), the approach they've taken is to be very quiet on the judgement calls. Focusing more on the on-the-ground realities.

The other point that this article brings home is that while this bill is, in part, about curbing intellectual property theft by providing steep provisions for both preventative deterrents and punitive restitution of infringement, the bulk of the creator protections revolves around criminalizing backups of personal DVDs and CDs (movies, software and music) and criminalizing circumvention techniques that include dvd "backup" software, unlocking cellphones, and the like. The article explains that under the new law, it would be:

"...illegal to circumvent DRM [digital rights management] or to provide circumvention services or devices... In addition, rightsholders can go after those who bypass or break DRM schemes, giving them more ability to tie up content and devices simply by adding a bit of encryption."

What this means is that Sony, for instance, is free to encode their movies so that they'll only play on their DVD players, and I as a consumer must go and buy a Sony DVD player to make it play, or purchase the movie in another format (at full price) to play on a different device. If you think this won't happen, it already has. Apple's fairplay DRM scheme ensures that music purchased through the Apple store will ONLY play back on apple devices at its original quality (you can burn it to a CD and then re-rip it, but it sounds awful).

Anti-circumvention means that I can't take my DVD collection and rip it to my iPod. It also means I can't take music CDs with DRM and rip them to my iTunes. Media and content portability is completely criminalized if the creators so wish it.

My other big concern (and it is a big one) is what this will do to the homebrew community in Canada. For an explanation of why this is important, check out my prior blog post on Homebrew.

As to what can be done, I'm not sure. For now, you can look at the Facebook group for Fair Copyright in Canada, or keep checking Michael Geist's Blog. Of course you can always look at the resources listed on Professor Geist's "What you can do" posting.

Bell Rings Itself

From The Globe & Mail's Jack Kapica:

Bell announced this morning it has opened the online Bell Video Store, which will sell and rent movies and TV shows, and it has already run into an issue that has little to do with buying or renting videos.

The moment the news hit, the reactions were loud and immediate. And they hit on the conspiracy theme: How can Bell throttle, or shape, Internet traffic while making it easy to selling and download huge media files?

The blog posting goes further, and is a great, illustrative read. I won't spoil it and heartily encourage a look-see.

Link

Michael Geist | 10 More Questions for Industry Minister Prentice

Michael Geist writes today:

Last fall, as Industry Minister Jim Prentice was preparing to introduce new copyright legislation, I wrote an article in the Hill Times posing ten questions to Prentice about the forthcoming bill. Many of the questions - which focused on issues such as flexibility in implementing international copyright treaties, concern about the bill from the privacy community, fears about the impact of the law on security research, and doubts about the constitutionality of the proposal - remain unanswered. Yet the six-month copyright delay has raised many more questions, including the following ten, which appear in this week's Hill Times:

These are hard-hitting, though-provoking questions. You can read them in detail here: Link

Canadian Copyright, From The Horse's... Pen.

h/t to Michael Geist - GREAT op-ed essay on Canadian copyright reform in today's Globe and Mail entitled Who Needs Copyright, Anyway?. Rather than being written by a member of the government, or a lawyer, or even a professor (sorry Dr. Geist), it's written by John Degen, head of PWAC - the Professional Writers Association of Canada.

"The panic merchants who continue to try to sell the idea of an epic struggle for control of our culture have an agenda functionally unrelated to how we all continue to interact with that culture. For the most part, they just want cultural product to be free - not free as [Lawrence] Lessig defined it, as in free of unreasonable access-constraints; but free as in we shouldn't have to pay for it. Name something we don't pay for, one way or another. We'll learn, and adjust."

It takes into account Lessig's Free (as in beer) vs Free (as in speech) concept, and delightfully brings it home, touching on fair use, piracy, and even the privacy fight! All in all, truly a must-read for those interested in these matters, both in Canada and abroad.

Link to G&M essay

Michael Geist | CRTC New Media Consultation

h/t to David Canton via Twitter...

Please add your comments about Net Neutrality to the CRTC's Consultations site.

Links:
David Canton's Commentary
Michael Geist - CRTC New Media Consultation

Copyright Rumours Swirling Again

h/t to David Canton via Twitter...

Michael Geist is indicating that the Canadian copyright reform measures that the Conservative government has been advancing is again in play. There are many points at issue here, including:

• A lack of transparency in the legal process that has the appearance of cronyism and capitulation to special interest (including the US government and US industry);


• A degree of hypocrisy on the part of the Conservatives (by refusing to 'ratify' the WIPO treaty as per Canadian law);


• A serious retraction of fair use that we already enjoy as Canadians (e.g. copying a CD to iTunes would become an infraction);


• Virtually no expansion of fair use to cover academic and personal use (e.g. recording a show for later viewing on a DVR or VCR is currently an infraction, and there is no provision in the 'reform' plans to provide relief for this);


• A copyright law that is heavily tilted in favour of private interest and industry, rather than truly fair use policy for all Canadians.

It's this last issue that is the log line for me... Overly protectionist copyright law has the net effect of harming society and industry as it seeks to restrict (artificially) the flow of information and innovation. One need look no further than Orson Scott Card's commentary on the J.K. Rowling copyright suit to see a prime illustration of this point.

At the end of the day, fair use is not about piracy (although apparently piracy has its merits too). Rather, fair use is about consumer choice, consumer rights, and protection from an industry that thrives on re-selling (sorry, licensing), the same materials over and over again, with no substantive difference beyond format.

The Canadian government has a responsibility to both citizens and industry. Dr. Geist has laid out a very clear, objective, and ultimately fair method for achieving that balance. It's critical that the minority Conservative government recognizes this.

Link to Michael Geist's Blog

Michael Geist on Canada's Wireless Crisis

Michael Geist's most excellent blog elucidates a point I made in a previous posting here; Namely, that the state of the wireless industry in Canada is a sad one, and that the lack of competition in the country is hurting our ability to innovate and compete on the world stage.

"In many ways, the iPhone saga merely confirmed what many Canadian consumers and businesses have known for some time. Mobile data pricing in Canada is among the highest in the world, creating a significant barrier to the introduction of new mobile services and causing many consumers to carefully ration their mobile use for fear of being hit with a hefty bill at the end of the month."

I was VERY surprised (and disappointed) to learn the following:

"The impact of uncompetitive pricing is felt beyond the consumer market. Last month, the World Economic Forum pointed to problems in the wireless market as a key reason for Canada's slipping global ranking for "network readiness" (Canada has moved from 6th worldwide in 2005 to 13th today). Canada ranked 75th in the number of mobile subscribers, trailing countries such as El Salvador, Kazahkstan, and Libya. It also lagged behind countries such as the United Kingdom, Singapore, Italy, Sweden, and Norway on mobile pricing."

Link

Private Industry: 1 - General Consumers: 0

Michael Giest has blogged this story as has BoingBoing.

Personally, I find this very disturbing. From Boing Boing:

"The supposedly non-partisan Public Policy Forum is holding a major, one-sided IP symposium on Monday. Invited are the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, former head of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Association, and other big-stick-swingers for American-style copyright disasters. But when copyright lobbyists discovered that noted copyright scholar Howard Knopf would appear on just one of the panels, they went berserk and pushed successfully to have Knopf removed, ensuring that dissenting voices would be minimized on the day.

I certainly understand that it's the prerogative of the Public Policy Forum as hosts of the panel discussion to invite those individuals that they wish; However, this move is in direct contradiction to their own policy and mission statement, which reads, in part:

"The Public Policy Forum's mission is to strive for excellence in government - to serve as a neutral, independent forum for open dialogue on public policy, and to encourage reform in public sector management."

Unfortunately, this decision to exclude a speaker who publicly planned to specifically speak on Canada's current policies on fair copyright, and moreover, planned to demonstrate where Canada had opportunities to improve its own standing in this regard, was bullied from the podium.

I'm not really surprised, just disappointed that a real debate seems unlikely. These actions on the part of both the other panelists and the PPF are endemic of the sort of one-sided bullying that has characterized so much of the net neutrality and fair copyright issue.

As an educator and a media producer myself, I'm deeply concerned with how my IP is used; However, with that in mind, I also want a free and open discussion and a debate that supports all sides of this issue, not one that can produce talking-points-inspired spin that can be fodder for pundits and news outlets alike.

Links:
Michael Geist
BoingBoing
Howard Knopf
Public Policy Forum