This is yet another post in my Bill C-61 series.

Previous entries:

• New copyright ideas
• The conservative view on Bill C-61
• Fair use provisions (Personally, its not my best writing. I may go back, and edit it a bit one day. If I do so, I’ll archive the previous version of the page somewhere else.)
• Futility of technological locks

So, faced with the impending problems of the bill, what can be done? I am by no means an expert in legal matters, nor am I a hippy that wants everything for free. (Anyone that accuses me of that will be summarily ignored. Its a blatant straw man, and I do not debate strawmen.) As a disclaimer, here are my interests: I believe in freedom, and rights for the consumer. I believe that consumers should come before companies, each and every single time. And yet, I plan to run a successful business upon graduation, that will be dealing largely with artists, and with producing content that will be consumed.

My beliefs and interest are as both a proponent of freedom and rights and as a soon content creator and copyright holder. I can see, and understand both sides of the issue, both sides of the debate, and this is frankly, the toughest divide that has been faced by law.

How exactly do you ensure the content creators are fairly compensated for their work, while still allowing consumers the freedoms and rights they need for innovation and progress to occur? That is our question. How do we do this, in a way that is not susceptible to lobbyist manipulation, to shady legal tactics, that does not unfairly impact the income of content creators?

The first issue I can see is that content creators do not want to sue their fans. As an artist, would you want to sue the people that take pictures of your work? Would you, as a software programmer, want to sue someone that found your work genuinely useful? And would you as a consumer, want to be sued for enjoying and promoting someone’s work?

However, they do in fact want to, and should, sue those that commercially benefit from spreading their work. If a person or entity spreads someone’s work for the express purpose of profiting from it, without permission or license from the content creator, then they should be on the hook for each copy that they sold. If it can be shown that such a punishment would not deter, or has not deterred them in the past, then the courts can apply higher fines and punishments. Assumed in all of this is a legal injunction to stop producing and spreading bootleg work. Those that knowingly import and sell bootleg copies of works would also be subject to this provision.

What about people that have no commercial intent, but the scale of their actions did or may have a negative affect on a content creator’s income, they should be given light fines, and again an injunction. Those fines go straight to a fund that encourages and supports Canadian artists and content creators. It must be noted however, that satire, criticism, education, or parody, should all be protected. They are an essential part of art, commentary, and of progress.

And finally, we must address fair use. Consumers should have the right to move media to any medium they want, even give songs to their friends and family. Such a scale does not harm the content creator, and has been shown to encourage it. If you hear a song on the radio, and like it, the odds are you will buy it in stores or download it. We live in an age where when you hear a song you like, you can within minutes have a licensed copy on your hard drive. If a friend has a cool song, and reccommends the album, you are more likely to buy it.

There are of course, those that would never buy any music, or movies, and will always download them. Those people constitute a small majority… and this is an important caveat, if you make it easy to buy and use the content legally. So long as its easy to buy, most people will buy instead of download. But that is beyond the scope of legislature.

Consumers should also have the right to appropriate clips(of a certain length that does not harm the profitability of the content creator’s work) and music for their own productions, so long as it is for non-commercial purposes, and they provide attribution.

There of course, is a bit of a difficult issue, however, in a global internet and global economy: works in other countries. I admit, that I do download episodes of animes shows. However, I only download what is not available for sale in Canada. If I only had some way of buying it, or giving money to the creators, despite the fact they operate in a different country, I would! And my situation is mirrored by several million other people, across the world. If only we had a way…

It would be incredibly revolutionary, and something almost universally support by the voters, (hint hint politicians), is if either a crown corporation that provides or legislation encouraging and subsidizing services that would enable users to pay money for copies they downloaded elsewhere, and the money goes straight to the content creators, minus banking fees and costs to run the company. This would support the companies whose work we enjoy, while giving citizens a pass on downloading content that is not available anywhere but on P2P sites.