Jun 29
New copyright ideas
Okay, so I’m finally getting in on the Bill C-61 bashing. Kind of. I’ve actually read the bill… and everything you’ve heard is true. A few wonders I found, in 45 minutes no less:
- It allows for one-time recording. Yes, thats right. One-time. All those VCRs, DVRs, TIVOs, and DVD Recorders would now be illegal. And of course, there is no taping allowed if there is a “Do not tape” flag on the content. Which adds to the complexity of the items, as well as confuses consumers when the product they bought to tape Canadian Idol doesn’t do what its supposed to!
- Librarians that send out any digital copyright data, say, a paper on the rates of Amazonian Killer Bee reproduction, that content must be deleted in some way in five days. Yes. Five days. Now, our overworked and underpaid librarians need to become lock masters.
- It also now allows moral rights to be signed away. Except I check wikipedia, and discover that it could be waived before, but it is now officially part of law.
- Only one “legal” copy of content per device. If you buy a CD, and rip it, you must now destroy the CD. If you bought some music, and burn it to CD, or put it on a thumb drive, you must delete it from your computer. Thats right.
- There are “rights” given in the bill… except if there is any form of technological lock or “do not copy” flag on it, you now have no rights. No rights to protecting your privacy, no rights to backup and protect what you legally bought, no rights to use as you see fit. There are provisions for encryption and virus research, privacy protection, and content backup… so long as none of the content is copyrighted. Or protected with a technological lock. And you can’t distribute any information ON circumventing technological locks, or any software. That makes my dvd-playing linux illegal!
- No fair use mentions. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Fair use is effectively abolished, which makes the several rulings on fair use, well, illegal.
Those are just a few points.
So, I’ve been thinking about this issue, and I’ve got quite a few thoughts,which I’ll post later.
References and helpful links:
- Bill C-61 in its entire tabled form
- Online Rights Canada
- Copyright for Canadians
- Michael Geist -Law Professor, and constant guardian of our rights and freedoms
6 Comments so far
Excellent Blog. I’ve been reading along and just wanted to say hi. I will be reading more of your posts in the future.
- Jason.
re: “Only one ‘legal’ copy of content per device.”
I’m actually liking this clause, simply for all the loopholes that it opens up. If previously I would have had to show that my iPod is full of CD “backups” by, perhaps, showing the original CDs; now I can claim that all of the said CDs were destroyed, as required by law.
I’m also thinking of a new P2P _legal_ scheme, based on the above clause. Preload the system with, lets say, 10 copies of some song. Yes, I went out and bought 10 copies of the same CD… they all got destroyed afterwards, with no evidence remaining. The law told me to do that. Now the system is setup in such a way that when a song is transferred from one node to another, the original looses the access to the content. If the process does not introduce additional active copies into the system, it should (at least theoretically) be compliant with the law.
Now in terms of making it practical, instead of downloading and erasing full files, the content will be encrypted/decrypted with time-sensitive keys (with a mechanism to expire and respawn). A key must be obtained to unlock the content, but without the key the content is effectively not there. Basically the idea is that no more than the initial legal amount can be played at any one instance of time.
Another way to look at the scheme is that it optimizes the use of idle content. If you own an entire CD, full of 10 songs, you only play them one at a time. So while you are listening to that first song, the other 90% of the content could be played to anyone else.
Does this seem viable?
Except that under the law, it would still be illegal. There is still the fact you are transferring songs YOU bought, to other people that didn’t buy them.
As well, there was a very good discussion on Slashdot a while back, about an owner free filesystem, similar to what you propose. Technically-wise, your scheme works… the songs are not there. But legally wise, even encrypted, the songs are still there. Even with a one-time pad, or steganography, the song still exists. Think of the song as having a color, denoting it as a legally bought song. In terms of the law, that color persists no matter what form the file takes. Even if you use a process that created a file identical to random noise, that legal color still exists. I know it makes no sense. None. But its the way the law works. Unfortunately, no it does not seem viable, due to the way law treats digital files. But it makes sense, because using your reasoning, I can cut and paste bits of a song in a random order with real-world tape, and claim its not the same song. But the legal color persists, to prevent such… workarounds.
I like the thinking, and its a good idea… except it doesn’t work.
-Tyler
Well if we have enough bandwidth, the files could really be deleted after each use. Though we are in Canada, not Japan, so the scheme of retaining encrypted content was an idea along the lines of hyper-localized CDN cache. Where the key could be thought of as the entire content, just really well compressed
As for the transfer to other person — that should be circumvented as a “$0 sale on a condition of return of ownership within an agreeded upon timeframe”. Which is just a fancy language that enables one to borrow a book from a library. If Bill C-61 also makes libraries illegal, we’re in for one hell of a ride.
Better get a pcHDTV HD tuner right now, before all recording equipment that ignores the broadcast flag is outlawed.
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