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.

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

Ars Book Review: "The Pirate's Dilemma"

Referring back to my post about the merits of piracy ArsTechnica is running a book review on former UK Pirate DJ Matthew Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism. Mason argues, among other things that the US was largely founded on piracy, and not just of the Hollywood variety:

"During the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution, the Founding Fathers pursued a policy of counterfeiting European inventions, ignoring global patents, and stealing intellectual property wholesale."

...Americans were so known for piracy that they were eventually branded Yankees, from the Dutch "Janke," slang for a pirate.

The article takes a very centrist perspective on the matter, and follows up with an interview of Mason. One of the more interesting ideas put forward is a likening of the eponymous "Pirate's Dilemma" to the "Prisoner's Dilemma" from AI game theory. A paradox of market interests emerges and a grid begins to form, one where a circumstance of limited choice emerges and pirates/industry now move inside this artifice according to prescribed actions. It's not only a paradox, it's mostly a zero-sum effort. Mason suggests that the antidote is to have industry play against the pirates in the market (where they're making money) as opposed to the courts (where they're spending money and losing valuable goodwill and brand equity).

ArsTechnica balances this carefully, weighing the greater good against the interests of private enterprise through the lens of a Pirate's Dilemma:

...While piracy may be good for those who don't have to pay for something, it's less immediately clear how it might benefit the broader economy. And how could it help the very companies who are being hurt by it? Here is Mason's answer, one worth quoting at length.

By short-circuiting conventional channels and red tape, pirates can deliver new materials, formats, and business models to audiences who want them. Canal Street moves faster than Wall Street. Piracy transforms the markets it operates in, changing the way distribution works and forcing companies to be more competitive and innovative. Pirates don't just defend the public domain from corporate control; they also force big business and government to deliver what we want, when we want it.

It's an argument worth considering. Would we have iTunes, eMusic, Amie Street, and the Amazon digital music store without the pressure brought by the pirates? It's hard to say definitively, but... how much innovation would the labels have allowed without... KaZaA, Gnutella, and especially the original Napster?

As we begin to see open source content become a viable reality, and as pirate-like punk DIY finds an increasingly welcoming marketplace, the labels and the studios will increasingly have to compete, not with the disruptive influence of free pirate offerings, but with free, premium content operating under different monetizing models. I wonder if they'll be willing to pay to copy those models once the prove viable, or will they simply take them and use them for free?

Link to ArsTechnica Review
Book @ Amazon: The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism