[LINK] A Canadian author's perspective on "radical extremism" and copyright

[Kim Holburn]

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/23/a-canadian-authors-p.html

> Cory Doctorow at 10:33 AM Wednesday, Jun 23, 2010
>
> As the Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore has declared war
>
> <http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/23/canadian-heritage-mi-2.html>  
> on copyright reformers who object to his plan to bring US-style  
> "digital locks" rules to Canada, I think it's worth spelling out  
> what my objections, as a Canadian author, are to his plan (my books  
> are distributed across Canada by the excellent HB Fenn; last year I  
> won the Ontario White Pine Award for best book; as I write this, my  
> novel For the Win is on the Canadian bestseller lists).
>

> Minister Moore has proposed a law that would give near-absolute  
> protection to "digital locks" that control use, access and copying  
> of works stored on a computer, mobile device, set-top box, etc. This  
> is nearly the same policy that the US has had since 1998, when it  
> brought down the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (actually, the  
> American version is slightly better, since they've built in a  
> regular review of the policy). In the intervening 12 years, we've  
> learned two things about digital locks:

>  1. They don't work. Even the most sophisticated digital locks are  
> usually broken in a matter of hours or days. And where they're not  
> broken, it's mainly because you can get the same works by another  
> means -- rather than breaking the iTunes lock, you break the easier  
> Zune lock (or vice-versa), because you can get the same songs either  
> way.
>
> So digital locks don't stop piracy. All they do is weaken the case  
> for buying music, movies and books instead of ripping them off --  
> after all, no one woke up this morning wishing there was a way to do  
> less with her music. So how could adding a digital lock make a paid  
> product more attractive than the free version?
>
> 2. They transfer power to technology firms at the expense of  
> copyright holders. The proposed Canadian rules on digital locks  
> mirror the US version in that they ban breaking a digital lock for  
> virtually any reason. So even if you're trying to do something legal  
> (say, ripping a CD to put it on your MP3 player), you're still on  
> the wrong side of the law if you break a digital lock to do it.
>
> Here's what that means for creators: if Apple, or Microsoft, or  
> Google, or TiVo, or any other tech company happens to sell my works  
> with a digital lock, only they can give you permission to take the  
> digital lock off. The person who created the work and the company  
> that published it have no say in the matter.
>
> So if you buy $1,000 worth of digitally locked books for your Kindle  
> or iPad, the author and the publisher can't give you the right to  
> move those to another device. That means that not only are you  
> locked into the Kindle -- so is the copyright holder. Authors and  
> publishers who decide to stop selling via a digitally locked  
> platform have to take the risk that their readers will abandon their  
> investment in proprietary books in order to follow them to the next  
> device.
>
> So that's Minister Moore's version of "author's rights" -- any tech  
> company that happens to load my books on their device or in their  
> software ends up usurping my copyrights. I may have written the  
> book, sweated over it, poured my heart into it -- but all my rights  
> are as nothing alongside the rights that Apple, Microsoft, Sony and  
> the other DRM tech-giants get merely by assembling some electronics  
> in a Chinese sweatshop.
>



-- 
Kim Holburn
The Pinchgut Press
http://www.pinchgut-press.com.au
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