Historical precedent repeatedly shows that when there are fewer restrictions on the exposure, apprehension, distribution, and redistribution of public intellectual manifestations, competition and investment bloom. There are multifold examples of this in Lawrence Lessig's book “Free Culture” (http://www.free-culture.cc/).

When intellectual manifestations are understood in the context of our living society, the notion of ownership becomes entirely awkward and anti-social. To really allow the notion of ownership contained within the phrase “intellectual property” to function, we apply it as though speaking of discrete physical items. Consider that the moment an intellectual creation is manifested in our society it irrevocably enters the living loop I describe society as. So, followed to its ultimate ends, in order for ownership of “intellectual property” to be practically implemented, we eventually would require that creators be isolated from society. The only way that what is intellectual can really be owned is to isolate its creation entirely from influence contributed by our living society and from likewise influencing our society. Once it's loose, it propagates in idea if not physical forms. But such an implementation as isolation makes the notion of ownership useless and the concept of “intellectual property” both nonsensical and untenable.

None of that however, means that we cannot recognize, attribute, and celebrate those people who originate or otherwise manifest their ideas and creations in our society. Nor does it mean we cannot harness those manifestations and the energy behind creating them in interesting and lucrative ways. I think it's essential to distinguish between ownership and creation, which current copyright laws do not seem to do effectively.

Competition and investment with respect to our intellectual manifestations ought to be considered as a separate issue from most of the other questions in this consultation. We have to recognize that competition and investment are wholly dependant on a living society. They require new inputs to society from creators as well as desire from those in society that would apprehend the intellectual manifestations. In order to foster competition and investment, the focus of modern copyright should ensure the well-being of the living loop of society I described previously.

[updated 2009-09-13 12:43]

A: We are completely swamped and information-overloaded already with all the competition and investment so reducing the copyright terms to 10 years would be a good way to cool off all this competition and investment a bit so we can get on with really living our lives instead of by media procuration.

[updated 2009-09-11 05:59]

I think the best way to promote competition and investment will be to ensure net neutrality where large companies do not receive preferential treatment.

Canada needs to be a bold and forge its own path without backing down because it will upset American lobby groups.

[updated 2009-09-10 06:54]

From TorrentFreak:. 10 Most Downloaded Films

http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-on-bittorrent-090907/

"The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘District 9’ tops the chart again this week followed by ‘Bruno’. ‘Monsters vs Aliens’ completes the top three.

This week there are four newcomers in the top 10, including ‘District 9’ that was downloaded over a million times on the first day it was released.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise."

Note: ONE MILLION ....

[updated 2009-09-07 18:18]

To foster investment, one needs to make the environment more certain from legal perspective. The Act should be simple to interpret by an average person so that it can be applied efficiently by new start-ups deciding to try new business models.

Strong public domain drives competition between works in the public domain and works under copyright, this gives an incentive to give something better to your intended audience.

It is also important that the law is respected by everyone. Today’s total disrespect of copyright by everyone else but creative industries is because the law is unfair to everyone else. Repeated copyright term extensions are a form of public domain avoidance and this violates the contract between creators and society where the society expects works to become public domain. If a contract is violated, it will be resiliated by the other party, the society: this is why we see a total disrespect of copyright today. Additional restrictions like legally protecting Digital Restrictions Management consumer control, “approved devices” vendor lock-in and other unfair business practices also shift the balance from the consumer and will not give the law more respect.

In order to foster competition, the Competition Bureau should have powers it needs to investigate unfair business practices like Digital Restrictions Management consumer control and device lock-in and get teeth to punish violators. Because copyright is a monopolistic privilege, anticompetitive actions resulting from it should be also part of Competition Bureau's mandate

[updated 2009-09-04 02:16]

1. firstly the notion that competition is necessarily a good thing needs to be examined? Perhaps cooperation across Canada would be more advisable.

2. Secondly, investment will follow good ideas, and the ownership of them. So some form of private property as applies to idea is necessary if we expect the private sector to participate in this. In the case of R&D there has been precious little of this. so we cannot expect the multinationals to respect our country or to invest here when they can dump American, British, Australian or French content on us. There must be a requirement that cultural players in the Canadian market are active in the market in the development of media, cultural products, etc. This means that the CRTC rules on Canadian content need to be tightened for all forms of distribution of content. It also means that in an ipod environment, Canadians need to be given reasons to participate in Canadian culture even if only as consumers.

[updated 2009-08-28 21:17]

It appears that everybody is very guilty. There is way more criminality in CanCon, SOCAN, RIAA’s corporations, and the marketing of education to schools, than there is in file-sharing.

So there is no way lawmakers are going to get it right.

It would be great to abandon copyright law.
Let human rights and freedom reign for a few years to see if that would clarify where big brother’s intervention might actually help.

[updated 2009-08-24 07:49]

Stricter copyright laws will only work to hurt competition. Canada should work to foster home-grown talent to make Canadian stories and art desired on global markets. In order to do that, Canadians need to be free(er) to create without fear of lawsuits and injunctions from foreign copyright holders. Canada's creative voice is increasingly in the hands of foreign corporations, serving their foreign needs instead of Canada's.

Reforming Canada's copyright law the way the Conservative Party and industry lobbyists want would do more harm to competition than good.

(Also: Since when do tourists go to foreign countries for their exotic copyrighted material?)

[updated 2009-08-18 02:03]

By having clear, readable copyright laws, one fosters an understanding on limits. Having fair limitations that err more to the side of content creators, and being able to use material for fair use, fosters creativity and innovation. This brings talent to Canada, as artists will have the freedom to create and express themselves.

There should be 3 seperate ways which creative works should be legally utilized. Commercial usage (For Profit), Public or Creative use (Not for profit) and Private use (Not for Profit or public display). This distinction is really quite simple.

Commercial usage: If money changes hands, or the user receives money through advertisements, etc... a license needs to be obtained.

Public/creative use would be where a person will be using a work publicly, such as Youth groups having a free movie night, or for usage by non-profit groups and charities. Purchase of license should be required. The creative part of this classification would also cover mashup artists, and musicians who distribute their music for free (Hobbyist musicians). credit to Original content providers would need to be required, and special license must be granted if an agreement for bypassing the limitations of the law is used (ie: if a legal sample has a time limit, but special rights were granted to allow more than the legal sample size).

Personal use is exactly that - Personal. Anyone can do whatever they want so long as they don't make it public. File sharing should be included here, because there is no money changing hands. If an unlicensed work is performed in public, that is the violation of copyright. No public displays of the work.

This will allow content consumers to have free reign in their personal business, as any law that would prevent a private user from copying files in this day and age, would be unenforceable.

This will also allow content creators to receive royalty off the public use of their music. By requiring public broadcast to pay for such fees, combined with a blank media levy 9fairly distributed unlike it is now) to compensate for personal use, One would create a progressive environment where we could lure the most creative artists and feed our economy with Canadian talent.

[updated 2009-08-11 19:46]

News Corp announced last week that it will charge fees for all its news websites. It is getting out of the free information business. Rupert Murdoch predicted that all major media would shortly follow suit. I agree.

The next day, the Financial Times announced a similar policy.

Free, ad-supported content does not generate revenues over costs and will therefore shut down.

Canada should be leading the way in strengthening copyright protections for online content. This will make Canada attractive to cultural industries.

For example, Vancouver is emerging an a global cluster of innovation and excellence in New Media. This emergence in undermined by Canada's weak anti-piracy legislation.

Iron-clad copyright legislation in Canada will drive investment and innovation in our country.

[updated 2009-08-10 04:15]

I would like to submit my submission to the 2003 consultation on the Competition Act as part of this consultation. Since I recommended that the Competition Bureau become involved in Copyright consultations, I believe that this also suggests that those reviewing copyright should be in contact with the Competition Bureau.

http://www.flora.ca/competition2003/

This was a competition policy focused submission that was a follow-up to my submission to the Section 92 review of the copyright act.

http://www.flora.ca/copyright2003/

The key competition issue is legal protection for so-called "technical protection measures" claimed to help copyright. This is part of the policy laundered 1996 WIPO treaties which some politicians believe we should be ratifying in Canada.

The digital locks on content are a form of "tied selling" between the locked content and "authorized" brands of information technology. The digital locks on our devices (also implicated by DMCA style anti-circumvention laws) create lock-down such the owner of the device can not make software and other choices, causing considerable competition problems.

Understanding the two locks: http://www.flora.ca/documents/digital-ownership.shtml and http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/

Neither lock should be legalized (IE: should be considered violations of competition and other laws such as property law), and should definitely not be legally protected under copyright or other law.

[updated 2009-08-06 14:37]

Crown Copyright.

The Government should give up crown copyright. There are two parts to crown copyright:

1) The obvious part.

When the Government publishes something, copyright in that publication lasts 50 years.

2) The not so obvious part.

What happens to material that the Government doesn't publish? The way section 12 of the Copyright Act is normally interpreted is that unpublished material has permanent crown copyright. Unpublished government material is the only thing in Canada that receives permanent copyright protection. So unpublished government material from World War II and further back is still protected by copyright.

Statistics Canada and many other government agencies publish valuable information that Canadian individuals and businesses want to reuse. Our tax dollars have already paid for this, as long as we acknowledge the source why shouldn't we be able to reuse this information without getting Government permission?

Crown copyright allows the Canadian Government to control its publications and information in ways that should be unnecessary in this day and age.

Getting permission from the Government to use crown copyright is byzantine. Many government employees don't seem to know who to refer people to get permission. Government departments differ widely in what they will allow and how to get permission. It is far more straightforward to go to a private publisher and get a yes or no, then the Federal Government.

Relinquishing crown copyright will allow more competition for business that use government information and stimulate investment.

[updated 2009-07-31 17:24]

It is important that any changes copyright legislation encourage and support creation of new electronic devices that are capable of playing the copyrighted items. The legislation needs to prevent copyright holders from dictating or controlling what devices the material can be played on.

Some companies are putting DRM restrictions on media and then only allowing players to be developed by themselves and there allies. This makes it very difficult to develop media playing devices. If I buy a song from the iTunes store Apple shouldn't be able to tell me that I can only play that song on apple hardware. The copyright (or competition act?) should be amended to specifically excluded this possibility. So anyone who wants to build/market a itunes player is allowed to do so without having to negotiate a deal with the content providers (ie apple)

Furthermore any digital material that receives copyright protection in Canada should (at least in theory) allow for it to be played on opensource devices.

[updated 2009-07-25 09:01]

Reduce the length of the copyright term and eliminate crown copyright.

Ensure that fair dealing always overrides DRM (digital locks) and that the tools required to unlock digital media and digital devices are always legal when used for legal, non-infringing purposes such as to enforce fair dealing rights or to format and time shift for accessibility.

[updated 2009-07-24 20:16]

Sadly, in your opening statement, you've already disclosed who you are here to support. You ask how we can strengthen industry (competition, investment, and high-paying jobs), but what about "What can we do keep Canadians free to enjoy our art and culture?"

The arts have been unnecessarily commercialized. If someone can find a way to make money off it by selling a product that people want to buy, great - but it should end there. The government should not be using tax-dollars to help industry extract money from the population (especially not one as profitable as the entertainment industry).

Even if we are crazy enough to believe the idea that industry will suffer without government intervention, artists will create art whether there is an industry there to make money off it or not. Arguably, the quality of art would likely improve.

So what can government do to keep Canadians free to enjoy our art and culture? The answer is PERSONAL USE. Any copying / viewing / listening for personal use needs to be legal.

[updated 2009-07-23 01:38]

Copyright laws that make it illegal -- or even difficult -- to format-shift, or to break DRM will result in customer lock-in to one company's data formats or playback devices. This is a detriment to a free, competitive market. To allow competition to thrive, customers need to be able to switch from one provider of goods or services to another without fear of criminal or civil prosecution. If users are afraid they will be unable to format-shift their content in the future, they will be less likely to buy content now.

[updated 2009-07-22 17:48]

Let's step back a bit and ask ourselves why patent and copyright are so different. Forget about the Berne convention, Paris, PCT and WIPO for a moment. Even though it takes a lot of effort and money to invent, and even more to produce the invention, patents are difficult to get, require maintenance fees, go into the public domain automatically relatively quickly even if everything is done correctly. Even so, all sorts of restrictions are possible, including mandatory licensing. Non-residents are typically treated differently, and protection in one country does not guarantee protection in another.

Copyright, on the other hand, is easy to obtain, protects the author without effort or cost, and the work requires very little effort to produce and distribute in a lot of cases, and lasts several times as long.

The same reasoning that applies to patents, that exclusivity reduces the economic benefit to the country in exchange for compensating the inventor, that knowledge must advance, that ideas shouldn't be suppressed, that derivative works are how knowledge advances, that competition is better than monopoly and so forth, also apply even if to a lesser extent to copyright.

The balance between the greater good of allowing free access to knowledge and creation and the requirement to restrict it to allow the creator to recover their investment must be re-balanced. In this day and age, how long does it take to recover an investment? Three generations of heirs? Surely not. Would artists refuse to create if they were only protected for their lifetime and the lifetime of their heirs but not the lifetime of the third generation? Would artists have fewer employees and affect the country's wealth? Surely not.

By this same token one must wonder why the Crown needs copyright, or even patent protection for that matter. Does the Crown really need to be compensated to attract investment and employment? Would public servants produce less if their reports could not be sold monopolistically? Would MPs not speak and spend less on research if Hansard were not copyrighted? Clearly the motivation for Crown Copyright is not any of those that you will find in this consultation, and this is therefore an inappropriate way to achieve legitimate Crown objectives.

On many occasions, when doing research for clients or for articles, I found that the Canadian government had no process to release data short of Access to Information, while the US government invariably releases all data for the asking. American firms and all levels of government have better access to information and can make more informed cost-effective decisions as a result.

[updated 2009-07-22 15:41]

How do we ensure competition and investment? Allow market forces to guide the market, rather listening to the crybaby content industry lobbyists demanding copyright reform to protect their dead business models.

When things are going their way, they say "leave it alone, let the market do its job", and as soon as the market swings away from them, as it has over the last decade, they change their tune and say regulation and beefed up laws are required. Howabout instead of protecting their dead business models, we encourage other people and other companies to come and do business?

All they need is the incentive to do so. A lifetime + 50 years copyright term is FAR more than mere incentive to create, it's a bloody centuries-long monopoly to publishers. How does this promote competition? It must be fixed.

How do we expect people to be successful and contribute to the economy when their information and technology is locked down.

Ensure that everybody is on a level playing field. Prohibit anti-competitive practices such as DRM and digital locks. Those are meant to combat piracy but they are only used to corner markets and restrict customers. DRM and digital locks are the enemies of competition and innovation.

Protect and expand fair uses and noncommercial uses of intellectual works.

Information is not property.

[updated 2009-07-21 20:07]

Stop backing American corporations and lobby groups over Canadian citizens when dealing with copyright laws.

[updated 2009-07-20 23:47]

That paragraph is so leading. Do you expect us not to be critical thinkers? Who falls for this tripe?

"It is important to have a modern copyright framework that strengthens..."

This implies that our current copyright framework is weak and not "modern". In which ways does the authour think our copyright framework is weak?

As for the discussion question on fostering competition and investment, investment will come from the quality of the works we produce. And if the amount we export to the US is any measure, quality is good. Competition? Competition is rampant. It is primarily between the new media interests and the old, with the old currently losing and thus looking to be propped up by new legislation.

[updated 2009-07-20 16:52]