Protecting copyright with blockchain?

I've been reading articles discussing how blockchain can be used to "protect" the interests of copyright and patent holders.  While I agree this technology would be helpful, we need to recognise that this is a philosophy of "protection" that is the opposite to technological measures such as encrypted media.

Blockchain provides a decentralised database technology, ensuring that records that have been added can't be faked, removed, etc without detection. While blockchain provides a level of authenticity and immutability.of the data not seen before, we are still talking about an enhanced database technology.

I've discussed the flaw in copyright law a few times, which is the outdated interpretation of Berne Article 5 used to claim that there can never be formalities with copyright such as registration.

Blockchain would be a great technology to use, along with modernisation of copyright law, to solve problems ranging from the orphaned works problem to the "not available for sale" problem which I believe is the root cause of a majority of copyright infringement.

Without the modernisation of copyright law, these technologies won't be all that helpful.  The technology would only provide a small benefit for copyright holders who are already visible, while the major problems in copyright law are with works where the copyright holders and licensing options have been kept hidden.

Does public transit "prove" private vehicle ownership and driving is inappropriate?

If you haven't already read it, please read my earlier article where I discuss a layered model for road transportation, and I try to clarify that "technological protection measures" (TPMs) are actually a restriction on who is allowed to drive (IE: author software for), or choose drivers for, communications technology.  I strongly believe there are conversations that wouldn't even happen if we were talking about cars rather than computers.

Once you have a similar understanding of the communications technology being discussed, and the most appropriate transportation technology analogy, you can begin to see just how inappropriate some of the statements made about communications technology sound.

When I was a witness in front of the C-32 committee I gave a version of my "I'm holding up four things" talk I had already given in multiple settings (See: Protecting property rights in a digital world).  The intention is to clarify that when discussing TPMs there are potentially 4 things that have owners (the media, the copyrighted work stored on media, the access device, and the authors of the software on the device), and that focusing only on one of them (the non-software copyright owner) risks inducing infringement or effectively abolishing the property and other rights of the other 3 owners.

I am an example of someone who has all 4 ownership interests: I own media, I am a copyright holder for non-software works, I own devices, and I author software.


One of the most vocal opponents of my attempt to protect the rights of all 4 classes of owners owners is John Degen (See: Making a living as an author vs. off of authors.)  When he was a witness in front of the Senate committee studying the renumbered C-11 he discussed technology as well, but in a way that sounds quite silly for those of us who understand the technology and the relationship to creators.

Mr. Degen: This morning Mr. Henderson referenced a couple of times real world situations and a lot of the panic that goes into extreme situations that might happen. This is a Kobo eReader — not a commercial for Kobo — and I have a bunch of books on it. Let us say I was studying these books in a university environment. I have Moby Dick, that great Canadian classic up here. Let us say I was studying Moby Dick. On this piece of technology, Moby Dick is locked. It is within the Kobo propriety locked system. It cannot be transferred to a Kindle, for instance. They do that for definition within the marketplace. There are fears out there that were I to be studying in a classroom environment, the lock would impede my fair-dealing rights to research and private study. I get around that completely legally, and without breaking any locks, by using paper and a pen. I read what is on the electronic device and I make my notes for research and private studying. I am, in effect, copying what is in the text and I do that perfectly legally. That is more likely what will be happening in classrooms. The extreme fears about digital locks locking students away from information are completely unfounded.

If I provide a transportation technology translation of this intervention, you will see why what Mr Degen said makes no sense.

Fictional person: This morning people expressed panic about what might happen if individuals are no longer allowed to have the keys to the locks on their cars, choose drivers, or drive vehicles themselves.   I came to this committee this morning by OCTranspo.  This is a locked system where the vehicles are owned by the city, and the city employs all drivers.  There are other privately run systems such as Greyhound Canada, a subsidiary of British transport company FirstGroup, that owns the vehicles and hires all the drivers.   There are fears that if individuals couldn't drive vehicles or choose who drives their vehicles, that it would restrict their travel. The fact I got here by OCTranspo is proof this is not the case.  In fact, if these private and public sector transportation systems didn't exist I could have walked to the committee hearings. The extreme fears about non-owner locks on vehicles or prohibitions against choosing drivers or driving ones own vehicle are completely unfounded.

There are many reasons to be dismissive of what Mr Degen claims.

While he makes his living elsewhere (staff at Professional Writers Association and later Writers Union, and at the Ontario Arts Council when he spoke to committee), he is focused near exclusively on textual literary works.  His suggestion he could read the text on screen and do fair dealing research using pen and paper sounds as silly as someone suggesting all witnesses to all committees could have walked there.   While I live within walking distance of the federal parliament, most Canadians (including Mr. Degen) do not -- and while some creative works are only text, others are not.   His words were dismissive of the rights and interests of the vast majority of Canadian creators.  The Copyright Act regulates activities for works which are nothing at all like text literary works, and it is for these other works that many of the worst controversies arise.

Rather than a reason to dismiss concerns about technological measures, his comments are actually a reason to dismiss claims about the alleged effectiveness of technological measures at reducing copyright infringement.  For the works in which fair dealings research doesn't require unlocking, copyright infringement also doesn't require unlocking.  Someone who actually wanted to infringe the copyright on a textual work only has to re-type it.





Mr. Degen doesn't have an interest in driving his technology, or having any say into who does the driving.  I personally don't have a drivers license, but I still care about who is doing the driving when it comes to transportation technology. I think there is a big difference between a privately run transit system where a private corporation decides all the policy, and a publicly managed transit system.  I believe all passenger transportation systems, public or private, should be government regulated.  The fact Mr. Degen held up a device with unaccountable and non-transparent private policy suggests he might not even care about these important distinctions.


While it is his right to not care who controls technology, it is not valid for him to claim his lack of personal interest is a reason to dismiss other peoples interests or seek to diminish or abolish their rights.



What Mr. Degen describes is different than the OCTranspo example because passengers haven't been mislead to believe they own the bus.  In the case of the Kobo people are being dishonestly lead to believe they are "purchasing" something, but where they are not given the keys or allowed to change the locks on what they have been told they "own".  If this was an honest business relationship where the vendor wanted to retain control then they would have retained ownership, and Mr Degen's Kobo would have been rented.  There would have been a transparent rental agreement laying out all the conditions. Whether it is the enforceability of the rental agreements for things you don't own, or the legal protection of digital locks you apply to things you do own, it is dishonest and possibly unconstitutional to claim this is a matter of federal copyright law rather than provincial contract and property law.  Without clearly understanding the relationship is closer to a rental than purchase, privacy and other rights aren't being appropriately protected.  Far from being the subject matter of copyright law, technological measures are being abused to bypass many other laws and regulations.


The communications technology we are discussing is the same technology used to create and disseminate works.  Revoking the ability of owners to independently control or have a say in who controls their technology doesn't only impact audiences, but greatly impacts creators.   If some unaccountable and non-transparent third party has the ability to disallow in software (what controls the devices) specific creative works to be distributed, or even created in the first place, this can have a critical impact on culture.

This is why I believe that protecting technology property rights is a prerequisite for protecting creators' rights, and also why I consider those who are opponents to technology property rights to be opponents of creators' rights.

We wouldn't even be having this conversation if we were talking about cars rather than computers.  If Mr. Degen were talking about transportation technology he would have been appropriately laughed out of the committee.


I am a long time creators' rights advocate, focused on technology property rights. I believe fellow creators need to take a closer look at how communications technology works so that they can tell who are allies and who are opponents to protecting their rights.

We wouldn't even be having this conversation if it was cars rather than computers!

Section 92 of Canada's copyright act indicates:

Review of Act

92 Five years after the day on which this section comes into force and at the end of each subsequent period of five years, a committee of the Senate, of the House of Commons or of both Houses of Parliament is to be designated or established for the purpose of reviewing this Act.

1997, c. 24, s. 50; 2012, c. 20, s. 58.

On December 13'th the following was included in a motion by Bardish Chagger Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism:

(c) the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology be the committee designated for the purposes of section 92 of the Copyright Act; and

This indicates that in the new year that the INDU committee will be reviewing the Copyright Act.

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I was actively involved in the process last round.  I joined the process in the summer of 2001 when I heard that Canada was contemplating adding "technological protection measures" to our Copyright Act.  Software authors already understood the harm from the anti-circumvention aspects of the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In an earlier article I discuss a layered model for road transportation, and that "technological protection measures" (TPMs) are actually a restriction on who is allowed to drive (IE: author software for), or choose drivers for, communications technology.

While I don't have a drivers license or drive a car, I have been driving computers since 1981.  The rights of computer owners to drive their own computers, or choose their own drivers if they don't have the skills themselves, should be understood as fundamental a right as driving automobiles already is to the rest of society.


I had to get involved in this policy discussion, even though it never made sense to me that we were even having the discussion.  I acknowledge that technology, whether transportation or communications technology, can be abused in breaking the law.  While this has always been true of vehicles, there has never been a serious policy discussion about disallowing vehicle owners the right to drive their own vehicles, or disallow them to choose their own drivers if they didn't have those skills.   The only reason we were having this conversation is because policy makers, similar to the general public, lack adequate literacy on communications technology which we all take for granted for transportation technology.


While the section 92 review was announced in the summer of 2001, it wasn't until October 2003 that submissions were due.  My first formal submission to that process is available through my website.  In the summer of 2001 I started a discussion forum called "canada-dmca-opponents" which grew into the Digital Copyright Canada website.


I spent considerable time from 2001 through the passage of Bill C-11 in 2012 active in that area of policy.  This included only accepting part-time jobs so that I could participate.  When I started my current job in 2011 I only accepted an 80% contract so that I could attend every Bill C-32 and Bill C-11 committee meeting.


While my focus was on the rights of technology owners, false claims were often made about my views on copyright.  It was frequently suggested that if I was opposed to TPMs, the only possible reason could be because I didn't believe authors should get paid.   As a software author myself this was a ludicrous suggestion, and yet even some of the most sympathetic journalists would falsely claim I was an "anti-copyright crusader".

This would never have happened if we were talking about cars rather than computers.  Someone claiming that the only reason someone wants to drive their own car is because they wish to break the law or are a criminal would be appropriately laughed out of the room.   Unfortunately when it comes to technological measures, few recognize just how ridiculous it is.


It took me years to realize just how low technology literacy is within policy circles.  Most of the conversations about TPMs come from the belief that it is something applied to copyrighted works, and that these measures allow decisions to be made (can copies be made, under what conditions, etc).  This is similar to believing that a paperback book is sentient, and can come alive and autonomously run away if the reader of the book tries to do something the book doesn't like.  I have come to refer to this as the "Harry Potter" understanding of TPMs.  While purely based on fiction, this is the most common misunderstanding of TPMs.

If we were talking about cars rather than computers, people with such a low literacy of the relevant subject matter would not be considered experts or be allowed to dominate the debate.


I wish the review of the Copyright act would be about Copyright law.

I've learned quite a bit by speaking with fellow creators and creator groups, and have knowledge of the wide variety of market changes each group is facing.  In nearly all cases there are legitimate changes in which intermediaries are involved in the relationships between creators and their audiences.  While there are many intermediaries crying fowl at these advancements, the vast majority of the changes I've observed are positive for creators and should be encouraged.  In many cases when there are infringements, these are infringements induced by the harmful business practices of specific intermediaries: they are infringements that could be handled with an "inducement" regime for contributory infringements, rather than the incorrect focus of the "enablement" policy that was added as part of C-11.


I am forced again to focus on TPMs this round of Copyright Act review.  While it may be true that some copyright holders use TPMs, it has no more place in Copyright law than a National Energy Program has simply because some copyright holders use electricity.

I look forward to a future when the Copyright Act only has Copyright related provisions in it, and we can finally have a proper conversation about modernizing copyright law that isn't tainted by being dominated by non-copyright related discussion.

Hiding OSI layers leading to policy failures: Net Neutrality, Encrypted Media, ...

I've regularly written about the OSI model for digital communications.  I'm increasingly concerned that policy discussions that hide these layers are leading to policy failure.  I see this in the odd rhetoric coming out of the USA on network neutrality, which is the same country that originated the policy failures around technological protection measures.

When I learned about digital networks in the late 1980s this included the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model which describes the different interoperable layers that  digital communications enables.  This is in contrast with analog networks which were purpose built and inflexible.  Each layer in a digital network is built upon other layers, starting with the physical layer that describes specific electronics all the way up to the application layer which is the layer closest to the user.

When discussing communications technology people often make analogies to transportation technology, since most people have a greater understanding of transportation technology.   The problem is an poor and inflexible analogy has become dominant.

A comparison is often made to shipping via boats and rail, where a primary policy is common carriage.  This analogy suggests digital networks only have one layer much like the older analog networks, wiping out the flexibility both in terms of technology and policy which digital networks enable.  This flattening of layers also causes policy confusions which wouldn't happen if the layers were exposed through a better transportation analogy.

A layered model for road transportation

In 1994 the federal government formed the Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC). Discussing roads and highways is an appropriate analogy to communications technology as it exposed the layers and complexity of the network, even though road transportation is still less flexible than digital communications networks.

A simplification of layers built on road infrastructure might be:

• Road infrastructure.  This is comparable to the physical network layers.
• Vehicles run "Over The Top" of those roads.  This is comparable to physical devices connected to the communications network.
• Drivers control the vehicles.  This would be comparable to software authors, where software is the instructions that drive digital devices. (Note: It is software that differentiates between TCP/IP and other networking protocols.  ISP's are businesses that run their own devices and provide transport of packets encapsulated within TCP/IP.)
• Passengers and parcels which would be placed in/on the vehicles for transport.  This is comparable to the applications which use the network (two way or one-way audio/video/text/etc communication) 

With transportation the roads are a mixture of municipal, provincial and federal management.  Private roads including driveways connect to publicly managed infrastructure.   While publicly owned vehicles exist, private (corporate and individual) vehicle ownership far exceeds public.  Individual citizens are allowed (in many ways actively encouraged) to personally own and drive vehicles.

If we use this road transportation analogy to go through various policy discussions the failures becomes more obvious.

Technological Protection Measures

While Canada formed IHAC, the USA formed the National Information Infrastructure working groups. Bruce A. Lehman chaired the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights which during 1995 came up with a disastrous concept:  if it was possible for vehicles to be used to transport something illegally, then private citizens should not be allowed to drive vehicles or choose drivers.  Since immediately outlawing private drivers would have been too controversial to pass, a mixture of law and market forces would be used to indirectly achieve the goal.

• Vehicle manufacturers would be granted the right to impose drivers, and it would be made illegal for the vehicle owner to fire that driver and chose their own. While a private citizen might be allowed to "own" a vehicle, they are not given the keys to the locks and it is made illegal for the owner to change the locks.
• Destinations would be given the legally protected right to deny access to any person who did not provide proof that they arrived using an "authorized" vehicle with the manufacturer imposed driver.  The ability to access these destinations would serve as a market force to impose manufacturer determined drivers onto the majority of the population.

Mr. Lehman and his supporters may claim they were only trying to reduce unlawful activity, but it should be obvious that the harm to the economy and society as a whole of this type of policy greatly outweighs the alleged harm he was claiming to reduce.

This is the essence of the policy which Lehman tabled, was policy laundered through WIPO in 1996 when the 1995 bill didn't pass within the USA, and which later became the controversial part of the DMCA in 1998.  Canada included this harmful policy in Bill C-11 which inappropriately provided legal protection for "access controls" (IE: ties between content and specific devices/software, and non-owner locks on devices), even though this was not required by the WIPO treaties.  An even worse variation of this harmful policy was included in the TPP, and I will be surprised if the USA doesn't try to push this as part of the NAFTA renegotiation.

Network Neutrality

Imagine a country where a tiny subset of retail outlets owned all the roads. Governments and lobbiests would claim that there was "competition" in road infrastructure if home-owners in a specific city were able to choose between connecting their driveway to the Walmart roads or the Loblaws roads, where these roads favoured in subtle and not-so-subtle ways the ability of people to access some destinations over other destinations.

Companies like DHL, FedEx and UPS might be allowed to exist, but would be disparagingly called a "wholesale" market of the services of Walmart and Loblaws, rather than recognizing shipping as a different type of service than vertically integrated road owners which might also own their own vehicles and do their own shipping.  (Digital Example: Companies like Techsavvy are claimed by the CRTC to be part of a "wholesale" market, even though their TCP/IP routing service is built on top of the same physical infrastructure).

While all surface transportation related services are built "over the top" of the physical layers, the "over the top" terminology would be abused to refer only to competing services.  Even if you wanted to buy the identical item from Metro or Loblaws, the purchasing from Metro would be called "over the top" while the purchase from Loblaws would not.  The nearly identical service offered by Loblaws/Walmart would be regulated differently (or prohibited) if offered by a competitor (Digital Example: Bell's IPTV service branded as FibeTV is regulated as a cable service, even though our Copyright Act explicitly disallows this type of new media retransmission without separate permission/payment).

In a road neutrality debate the US Department of Transport chairman might claim the fact that so many people get entertained at Cineplex theaters is somehow "proof" that road neutrality already doesn't exist, so what tiny amount of minimal regulation currently exists should be repealed.



This may read as utter nonsense that no government would ever allow, but this is essentially the situation we are in today with communications networks. Incorrectly regulated convergence allowed the incumbent phone and cable companies to gain all the benefits of the OSI layered digital networking.  It now doesn't matter which physical connection (coax or twisted pair) comes into the home or business, the same services can be built on top such as two-way voice (previously called telephone), one-way video (previously called Cable TV), and many other applications.  Just as Walmart now sells food and Loblaws sells clothing, "phone" companies sell streaming video and "cable" companies sell two-way voice.

Policy Solutions

While common carriage has a place in the policy mix, it needs to be thought of as one small policy lever among many -- and only applied to services at specific layers of the communications stack.

As we have nearly always done with transportation technology, structural separation of communications technology is required.  I've come to the conclusion over recent decades that anything less than structural separation will be as effective as deck-chair rearranging on the Titanic.

The model we use for roads was created at a time when it was understood that roads were the infrastructure upon which much of the economy and society was built.  It is entirely inappropriate for the ownership or control of the similarly critical infrastructure for the new economy to be in the hands of a small group of private sector entities.   As with roads the different levels of government might hire private sector contractors to do much of the work, but the ownership and control must rest with the public sector.

We need open competition in the other layers.  The need for foreign ownership rules only apply to the physical infrastructure, which I've already suggested should be managed by the public sector. Other layers are already recognized with transportation to not need those restrictions: while there are Canadian automobile manufacturers, people are allowed to purchase foreign designed and manufactured vehicles.  The same should apply to digital communications products and services that run "over the top" of the government managed infrastructure.

Private citizens must have the right to own their own vehicles, and choose their own drivers for these vehicles including being their own driver if they have the skills.  With digital technology the equivalent is the right to own their own devices, to choose their own software, and to author their own software if they have those skills.   Laws which legally protect non-owner locks on devices, or allow content providers to impose specific device manufactures/software, should be repealed immediately.

The Ministry of Communications needs to be restored to federally mirror for communications what the federal Ministry of Transport handles for transportation.  This is a ministry that was abolished in 1995, at the time when convergence was being mismanaged.  The CRTC is currently inappropriately administered through the Minister of Heritage, who is in a conflict of interest with specific types of communication entities.  The pre-convergence Telecommunications and Broadcasting Acts are in critical need of modernization or replacement.

We as a society have always subsidized arts and culture, which are not always able to be adequately privately funded. While public arts funding should clearly exist for works created to be distributed by communications networks (such as scripted video programming), this should be done through direct accountable public funding and not through cross-subsidies between layers of the communications network.  There are too many ways to get cross-subsidies wrong and for governments to be manipulated: much of the current discussion around a so-called "Netflix tax" is a dishonest misinformation campaign initiated by vertically integrated companies like Bell, Telus and Rogers (often through the TV stations/studios and other media they own).

It should be understood that incumbent vendors will not be happy with any policy corrections. The increasingly extreme policy proposals coming from Bell, Telus and Rogers are to be expected as they are dealing with an existential crisis.  Required structural separation and free market competition would put many of these outmoded companies out of business.  This should be understood as a good thing, not something to minimize or delay, as structural separation will lead to a more innovative economy and society.  It really is a win-win scenario for nearly everyone, and is as critical to our future as governments building and maintaining the road infrastructure has been for the industrial economy.

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Google Doc version (Which you can print or download a PDF from).

Heritage Minister and Department must reduce barriers between creators and audiences

While many participants in the "Canadian Content in a Digital World" consultations are focused on funding issues, real support is needed from the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Department of Canadian Heritage to reduce barriers that exist between Canadian creators and their potential audiences.

While some people would prefer we all sit down and watched broadcast television like we did in the old days, the industry is moving forward in ways I discussed earlier in Canadian Content Creators harmed when Netflix claimed to be a "broadcaster". I noted how people are moving to online content libraries away from broadcasting. While this is a major improvement over broadcasting, there are still barriers between creators and their potential audiences.

While I can hope the Minister and Department will help, I also ask that they do no further harm. A number of policies that have been proposed previously, as well as some brought up during the consultations, put up more barriers rather than reducing them.


On Monday I had a short twitter exchange with Christopher White, writer and director of I Fall Down (2013), that is typical of the types of problems I see.

My #cdnfilm is now on Amazon Prime. 400+ M Potential audience. Didn't cost a $. There are no barriers. https://t.co/wlaGSTtCmC #DigiCanCon pic.twitter.com/9kUPehMz3Q

— Christopher White (@CWhite20XX) November 21, 2016

Lets pause here for a moment before we go down the rabbit hole.

This is a great-news story that this movie has been made available to a wide audience, without costing the creators anything for the additional publishing, and without needing to ask someone else's permission.  At this level of the conversation there really are no barriers, and I hope more creators will follow Mr. White in trying to make their content easily available.

I have heard great things about Amazon Prime video as far as ease of use and device compatibility. On the link Mr. White provided is a large list of devices which the video can be accessed with. While it didn't list all my devices, it is available on enough that I could access.

Well.. If only I didn't live in Canada that is.

While Amazon Video is available in the US, UK, Germany, Austria, India (soon) and Japan, it isn't available in Canada.

Except, of course, when you search for "Amazon Prime video Canada" you will get a good list of VPN services that will give you a US based Internet address to then access the service as if you lived in the United States.

This is another level of inconvenience which some users are willing to put up with, although because of pressure primarily from exclusive regional distributors (that's primarily Bell for Canadians) there has been a lot of attempts to block VPNs from Canadians trying to access services like US Netflix.

I don't for a moment believe this is a technical limitation, as Amazon adding the number of users that Canada represents to their service wouldn't be noticed as far as the increased load is concerned.

All I can believe is that there are regulatory barriers or other red-tape with dealing with Canadian governments, most likely policy under the jurisdiction of the Department of Canadian Heritage, that is in the way of this service being launched in Canada. Amazon has a Canadian subsidiary that provides many of the other retail and product shipping services that US Amazon does, but Amazon Prime for Canadians is currently a fixed fee service for faster shipping (I am a member, and much of what I buy is DVD video content).

Unfortunately, instead of working with Amazon to eradicate any barriers to allowing Canadians to easily purchase access to Mr. White's movie, DigiCanCon conversations have been in the opposite direction. There are those who want to put up barriers to anything they don't deem "Canadian" enough on the distribution side, ignoring the fact that the existing "Canadian" content distribution companies (largely owned by BDUs) have shown no interest in entering or competing in this marketplace.  The "Canadian" companies want to drive people backward to Cable, not offer services people (creators and their fans) want.

These people are fine using computers produced by companies not headquartered in Canada, and a host of other products and services with our Free Trade partners, and yet they expect content distribution platforms to be treated special.

Department of Heritage officials suggested that making the use of VPNs to cross-boarder shop for legal content should be made illegal.   This is the opposite to the types of policies Canadians need. Canada should be enacting and enforcing laws to ensure that online video distribution services are not allowed to region block any more than was previously done with DVDs.  Using VPNs to access US content delivery services should be made redundant by ensuring the same content is available equally on these services in both countries.

Back to Mr. White.  I mentioned that Amazon's video service isn't available in Canada, and asked if he considered Google Movies and TV (A service I now regularly use) as an alternative which does work in Canada:

@russellmcormond Have to go thru an aggregator ($1000+) for Google Play. Paid that to get it on iTunes Canada https://t.co/3BxsqDIsls

— Christopher White (@CWhite20XX) November 21, 2016

Just as Mr. White has to choose between different services to make his movie available on, there is a limit to the number of devices someone can own in their home to access content.   While I own many devices, none of them are compatible with iTunes.

While most video distribution services aren't owned by a hardware manufacturer, iTunes is and they have a tendency to try to tie the use of one of their products or services to another of their own products and services.  This means that the number of compatible devices is the lowest of any of the popular content distribution systems.

This should be my own business which devices I own, as long as I have one of the popular ones supported by the vast majority of services.  I do own a number of popular devices, and there are few video services that don't work on at least one of the devices I own, with services like YouTube and Netflix working on the most.

Since Apple is a popular brand within the arts community in North America, you sometimes get the surprised answer when they meet someone who isn't an Apple customer.

@russellmcormond You have a blog, Twitter account & specialize in hardware/software, but no access to iTunes?

— Christopher White (@CWhite20XX) November 21, 2016

I am someone active in technology law. I see software as the rules that a computer obeys, much like laws are the rules that humans obey. I believe that for the general public to understand software and software authors they need to make analogies between to policy and policy makers. It is not the field of engineering that is the closest example for understanding the impact of software on society, but political science.

For more, please read Lawrence Lessig's "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace."

I tried to shortcut this conversation on twitter by suggesting that saying "All I have to do is become an Apple customer" to access content comparable to saying "All I have to do is join CPC".

To which Mr. White replied:

@russellmcormond Not really. It's more like if you bought a Betamax rather than VHS & said there's no access to content.

— Christopher White (@CWhite20XX) November 21, 2016

And further down the rabbit hole we go :-)


To understand how to apply the Betamax example to technology used to access content distribution services we need to discuss the computer marketplace more closely.

Betamax was a proprietary format offered only by Sony, while the VHS technology was widely licensed to multiple vendors to create VHS recording, editing and playback devices.  Standard market forces applied, and it should be obvious when a single company tries to compete with a multi-vendor economy that the economy will win.

With computer technology the situation is more complex as there are a number of different markets involved.

The desktop computer market has stayed relatively stagnant between the late 1990's and now. Depending on how you count (and there are wide discrepancies) and if you broadly look over the entire period, you find about 70% run on Microsoft Windows (of a variety of flavors), about 10-15% on MacOS (a variety of flavors, older versions incompatible with new), and the remaining being "other" that included things like IBM's OS/2 in the 1990's and later some small inroads with a variety of Linux and Unix desktops.

In the Internet server space things are quite different.  What started as mostly the domain of Unix saw some growth of Microsoft Windows on the server, but the largest force became Linux which took over the vast majority of Unix and left Microsoft as a distant second rounded to around 10% with only a small fraction of "other".  As Microsoft is a big player in the server space with Microsoft Azure cloud services, this month they joined the Linux Foundation.

In the mobile space Apple took the early lead, but like Sony they didn't license their technology. Google built an operating system based on the Linux kernel called Android which it released fully Open Source.   While Google still leads the development of their version of Android, any company (or group of individuals) is able to build their own compatible version of Android, build their own applications and distribute without anyone's permission, as well as build any devices.

This is what Amazon did with the Amazon Fire product line, which is a stack built on Android that includes tablets and Amazon's own Appstore for Android that competes with Google Play's App store.

Set-top devices have taken a similar route as mobile, where Linux dominates and other environments are fighting for small percentages.  There is also a growing number of manufacturers building Netbooks that run ChromeOS.  While these devices are replacing desktops and laptops for some people, they fit more into the mobile space than the desktop/laptop space.

While some people still use desktops and laptops to access content, most will use mobile platforms to control streaming to things like a Chromecast (or a growing variety of similar devices), or set-top devices, connected to their television.


Applying the Betamax example it is clear that Apple is similar to Sony as Apple doesn't license their technology to third parties. The most openly licensed platforms are the Linux-based marketplaces.  While there are some niche markets where Apple is still the most visible, the global marketshare has Android above 80% with Apple's iOS retaining about 13%.  As this market matures many people are assuming that Apple's iOS will go the way of Betamax.

So, as far as Betamax vs VHS is concerned Mr. White got which-is-which backwards.

This is a level of detail of computer history, current marketplace analysis, and always uncertain marketplace predictions that Canadian content creators should never be expected to think about.  They should never be forced to choose between which audiences will be able to access their content, or have the risk of making the wrong choices between competing technologies/businesses/etc.

Can't all content delivery platforms be available on all devices?

We didn't pursue the conversation this far on Monday evening, but it is the next logical question.  Why does it matter what brand of device I purchased when accessing a content delivery platform?  It didn't matter what brand of TV I bought to watch TV, or what brand of radio.  What makes digital content delivery so different?

For this you need to know the history behind "encrypted media".

With the digital transition on the (some wished distant) horizon in the late 1980s and early 1990's the larger content industry players went to the larger technology companies and asked if they could do some technical thing to digitally encoded content such that it could be accessed by audiences who paid for it, but that it couldn't be copied.

Anyone with adequate technical knowledge knows this isn't possible, as a computer being able to access something means it is making copies in memory and other places -- accessing and making copies are the same thing, and if the computer owner decided to save a copy this was a legal and not a technical issue.

Unfortunately a few technology companies with ulterior motives offered what they convinced the content industries was an answer to their question. Two of the three most visible are familiar names: Apple, Macrovision and Sony.

What they proposed is that content would be encrypted such that you needed a decryption key to access the content, and then the key would be embedded within hardware and software where the manufacturer rather than the device owner was in control.  This was seen as a powerful business model by Apple and Sony who would not be selling general purpose computers which obeyed the commands of their owners, but "selling" devices that obeyed the manufacturers commands. (See:  Another meaning for DRM: Dishonest Relationship Misinformation) There is considerable benefit to the vendors to be able to do this, restricting features that would normally already exist and have the ability to sell those features back to the "owners". (See also: Perspectives on computer security and encryption from Apple, the FBI and I : Apple)

While there has yet to be any evidence that "encrypted media" reduces infringement, and considerable anecdotal evidence that it increases infringement, the proposal worked.  Many non-technical people don't even recognize that what the content industry likes to call "copy control" is actually "computer control" (IE: a question of whether the vendor or owner controls the computer).

Some people believe that content alone can make decisions, and don't understand how encrypted media impacts the computer control question. Digitally encoded content cannot make decisions any more than a paperback book can come alive and chase the reader around the room (I call this the "Harry Potter" understanding of encrypted media).

Many governments around the world have passed laws to legally protect what they call "technological measures", allowing Apple and Sony to point fingers at copyright holders and the law whenever someone complains about anti-owner restrictions on devices.   At the moment most copyright holders demand "encrypted media" be used for all content distribution services, forcing this on all content delivery platforms as well as all the devices that are legally allowed to access those services.

It is this encryption, and the requirement that the correct decryption keys be embedded in the device (hardware or software), that ties specific content delivery platforms to specific brands of devices. These are not technical limitations, but business model and legal limitations.   Nearly all audio and video these services distribute are in well understood common audio and video file formats which all devices can understand.

If not for this encryption, and the harmful laws that seemingly protect it, third party applications could be authored to make every popular content delivery platform compatible with every popular device.  It would only be the obscure platforms or obscure devices where authoring applications would be up to the device manufacturer or content delivery platform provider.



As a software author, my ability make a living is dependent on computer owners being able to make their own software choices in order for them to be able to choose my software.  If hardware manufacturers, rather than owners, make those choices then my livelihood is put at risk -- to a greater extent than any imaginable amount of copyright infringement could.  While this is obvious to me, the same risk exists for cultural creators as powerful hardware manufacturers and content delivery platforms may also dictate things to them (what their content can be about, how much they can charge, what audiences they are allowed to reach).


If you are concerned by these things, including believing that all content delivery platforms should work on all devices, you might do some of the things I have done including:

• I spent more than a decade starting from the summer of 2001 until the passage of Bill C-11 actively engaged in the Copyright revision process to ensure that politicians, other policy makers, and fellow creators know about policies threatening technology property rights
• I boycott the products and services of some of the most visible companies that sparked this problem, including Apple and Sony. Macrovision keeps changing their name to hide, likely because they are controversial even within the content industry.  This was no change for me when it comes to Apple which I had already been boycotting for other political and legal conflicts, but it was the end of my being a Sony customer.

I recognize my earlier analogy between Apple and a specific political party isn't a good one.  I've met many MPs in person, largely because of this area of policy, and they work together and have far more in common than the public political theater would suggest.  I believe MPs sitting in the House of Common across all political parties have far more political views in common than I have with Apple.

All of this is a legal and political controversy that Canadian content creators should not need to be aware of.  The Minister and Department of Canadian Heritage should be aware, and should be looking at all these issues to (wherever possible) reduce barriers to creators maximizing their potential audiences.

---

If any Liberal MPs are reading this, the policy change to avoid the "encrypted media" problem is to tie anti-circumvention legislation to actual infringement, as well as only protecting "use controls" (as discussed in the WIPO treaties) and not "access controls".

This was the Liberal party position during the C-32/C-11 hearings.

If implemented correctly it would allow Canadian App developers to author compatibility applications, which along with laws to protect us from inappropriate region controls would go a long way to solving critical barriers Canadian content creators have in reaching Canadian and foreign audiences.

Backward laws around technology ownership make self-driving cars more dangerous

Canadian born science fiction author Cory Doctorow writes many excellent articles which try to wake people up to the real technology debates we should be having, recently discussing self-driving cars.  He makes the appropriate link to what I call "dishonest relationship misinformation" (DRM), which some incorrectly call Digital Rights Management due to a confusion on how technology works (they believe it is the interests of copyright holders being protected, when it is the rights of technology owners being revoked).

I always like to extend the discussion beyond questions about whether owners should be treated as threats to asking why we can't move away from these unethical questions to making the obvious ethical choice.  We never need to treat owners in an unethical (even if temporarily legally protected) way if we clarified who owns what.

If a vehicle is owned by a taxi company or municipal transportation authority, it is obvious that its passengers should not be legally allowed to modify the vehicles software.  There is no moral issue here, and the passengers know they are passengers whether there is a human or computer driver.  If they don't trust the organization providing the transportation, they can change transportation methods and/or lobby government to provide adequate regulation of these industries. Governments can properly regulate these industries to ensure passenger and public safety, just as they always had in other transportation industries such as airlines that have had driving assist for a very long time. These devices can also be more easily secured from unauthorized remote control given there is no reason to try to hide unauthorized software from the devices owner. The law can provide owners incentives to secure this technology, rather than backward laws making it illegal for owners to secure their own technology.  Ownership is clear, security is clear, regulations are clear, and the passenger can clearly understand their relationship with the mode of transportation they have chosen.

If a car is sold to an individual, and yet a third party (whether government or the manufacturer) wants to retain control, then we get into the very dangerous territory that Cory is discussing.  Terrorists breaking into the security of (by law required to be insecure) vehicles and using those remotely controlled vehicles as part of an attack is an obvious scenario for self-driving vehicles.  While we won't be counting the costs in lives lost, this does not mean we should ignore other technology.   The devices we use to communicate must also be treated with respect, even when they are multi-purpose and can be used for banking transactions as well as watch movies.  The same clear ownership options exist with communications as well as transportation technology.

What the entertainment industry has been duped into asking for, the legal protection of device manufacturers retaining control over devices sold to individuals, has established costs to society that go well beyond the theoretical (and unproven, un-demonstrated) benefits that copyright holders believe it has.

I consider the moral question to be simple:  We must modernize laws to make it clearly illegal for someone other than the owner of a device to be in control of that device.

Whenever someone asks for something different you should be asking about the morality of that individual or industry given they had a moral choice to make, and yet decided to be promoting the immoral option.  There are reasons why the entertainment industry was lobbying against anti-malware laws. Those industries want to run software in a way that is undetected by the owner of the device in order to verify that their content is not being "stolen".  But, this is precisely what malware does when it it steals passwords.  There is no moral difference between the entertainment industry malware from that written by credit card thieves.

I discussed these pro-infringement organizations in my submission to the parliamentary committee studying Bill C-11. 

Only once we modernize the law to properly handle basic technology ownership can we rationally approach dilemmas such as the Trolley Problem.

See also: An honest expansion of cinema into the home, Another meaning for DRM: Dishonest Relationship Misinformation,  "Digital Lock" language from the technology owners perspective

Trans-Pacific Partnership would lock Canada into Harper's mistakes

The following is the text of a letter sent to our Prime Minister, my local MP, and a few key ministers.

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The Right Honourable Justin P. J. Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Copies to:

David McGuinty, M.P., Ottawa South (my riding)

The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Minister of International Trade (asking for feedback on TPP)

The Honourable Navdeep Singh Bains,  Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (Non-owner locks on digital technology has great impact on this portfolio. Industry Minister listed as responsible for Copyright Act currently tainted with problematic policy)

The Honourable Kirsty Duncan,  Minister of Science (Support for problematic policy largely comes from science fiction belief of how technology works.  Policy needs scientific evidence based review)



Prime Minister Trudeau,

We met at your constituency office in July 2010, and you tweeted my summary of the meeting to your followers: https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/19273983682

We discussed the then Harper Government copyright bill, with my emphasis being on the technological measures aspect of the Bill.   While I believe Harper made some serious mistakes in that part of the bill, I am writing you today to alert you to the fact that section article 18.68 of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lock Canada into Harper's mistake.

When talking about technological measures, what people often call "digital locks", it is important to understand that there are two locks and not one.

A lock on copyrighted works, nearly always in the form of "encrypted media", cannot do much on its own. Contrary to the common science fiction belief, copyrighted works can not "come alive" and decide to do things (to be copied or not, to self destruct after rental period, etc).  What encrypted media can do is try to tie the decryption and use of the media to devices that are "authorized" by the copyright holder.  Rather than this being a copyright issue, this is a competition law issue (section 77 tied selling) which has all the economic and other harm that requires competition law.

The more critical issue is that, while there are legitimate business arrangements available, the only devices that ever get "authorized" are locked in a way that treats owners as an intruder.  In no other aspect of our lives do we allow third parties to lock owners out of their property, and this should be explicitly prohibited with digital technology.  Discussing copyright in this context is a distraction as the relevant issues include property rights, software transparency and software accountability.  When discussing this policy I would often mention privacy and other human rights infringing telecommunications equipment, medical devices, online banking and retail, and technology used for voting.  More recent issues to add to the list are driverless vehicles, drones, and the Volkswagen emissions scandal. There have been demonstrations of intruders remotely disabling a Jeep while it was on a highway.

Non-owner locks on devices also disallow owners installing software that would extend the useful life of hardware, allowing hardware vendors to force premature hardware upgrades, which has a great impact on the environment.

As more and more aspects of our lives, including basic issues such as transportation, communications, privacy and public safety, are intermediated by computers we must enact legislation that protects software transparency and accountability.  Technologies such as encrypted media abused to tie the ability to access creative works to non-owner locked devices must be legally prohibited, not legally protected as under Harper's bill C-11.  Non-owner locks on devices must be legally prohibited, as owners and others can't have unjustifiable barriers to doing independent software audits.

There is a shorter-term fix to Harper's mistake:  The WIPO treaties never required Canada to enact legislation against "access control" technological measures, but instead required "use control" where the prohibition against circumvention had a direct tie to copyright infringing activities.  This is as it was written in the Liberal Bill C-60, and must be the direction Canada moves.  Unfortunately the TPP calls for "access control" technological measures, which must be rejected.  Canada needs to be actively working with our trade partners to move away from any support for "access control" technological measures, aggressively rejecting claims from extremists who are opposed to (or deliberately oblivious to) technology ownership, software transparency and software accountability.

The technological measures section of the TPP is in addition to article 14.17 which opposes basic software transparency and accountability, and which Stewart Baker (first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the USA's Department of Homeland Security) also suggests is "a bad topic for a trade deal" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/11/06/cybersecurity-and-the-tpp/

The Harper government's promotion of the TPP was simplistic: Free trade is good, this is free trade, so therefore it is good.   The policies I oppose will reduce competition, increase barriers to trade, and reduce accountability for government procurement -- all policies which have no business being included in something alleging to be a "free trade" agreement.

I live in Ottawa South, and work on Wellington Street close to your parliamentary offices.  I can be made available to any minister, member of your caucus, or their staff, to discuss this issue further.

Russell McOrmond
[address removed]

Please share with your colleagues as this policy also has serious implications for other portfolios including Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Public Services and Procurement, Health, Transport, and National Defence.

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Note: I quote Stewart Baker in the introduction page for the Petition to protect Information Technology property rights

A (non)Copyright question in a Canadian federal election 2015 quiz.

On Monday many co-workers were circulating around a links to political quizzes.  I was asked what I thought about one that included a copyright related question, and if I was happy that Copyright was considered important enough to be part of one of these quizzes.

I would have been excited, except that what I found was one of those non-copyright related issues which people commonly lump in with copyright law -- including governments who add these non-copyright related issues to copyright acts.

The issue is so-called "digital locks", which when applied to content in the form of encrypted media are a competition law issues (Tied selling) and when applied to devices and software is a property law issue (IE: non-owners applying locks to things they don't own).

The wording of the question and the available answers were:

Should the government allow digital publishers to place locks on their content (MP3s, etc)?

Yes

No

Let the free market, instead of the government, decide

Yes, locks are critical to protecting artist's revenues

Add your own stance

I of course clicked "Add your own stance" and said "No, these locks should be considered illegal tied selling under competition law.  There has been no proof that these technologies benefit the interests of artists."

• I obviously disagree with the unjustified "Yes"
• Saying "No" over-simplifies the question and allows the presumption in the question that this is an issue that only or even primarily affects "digital publishers" and thus they should be the only ones involved in decision.  The impact to software authors and hardware owners is far greater than the impact to "digital publishers" - and in all cases the impact is negative (Beneficiary is hardware vendors).
• Statutory monopoly laws are a massive government intervention in the market, so the pseudo-libertarian folks can't have it both ways.  Other than those with an orthodox ideologically blinded view on statutory monopolies, most recognize a need to have anti-trust/competition and other laws balance the statutory monopolies granted by government in copyright, patent and related laws.
• I have yet to see evidence that encrypted media (digital locks, access controls applied to multimedia files) protect rather than threaten artist's revenues.  Most analysis that claims benefit are based on incorrect understandings of how the technologies actually work, and thus lead to incorrect conclusions about the impact.

The Bill C-11 FAQ contains quite a bit of information on digital locks and the real-world issues around them (Rather than the Harry Potter fictional understanding most non-technical people have of digital locks).

Harper locking Canada into failed Clinton-era policy at root of software-based corruption

Most people have heard about the emissions scandal where Volkswagen was caught hiding the fact that they were deliberately breaking the law.  This specific issue is minor when compared to the inevitable fatalities which will result from vehicles that allow remote control, or medical devices where the person whose life is being maintained by the technology aren't allowed to independently audit what and whose instructions it is obeying.

Harper amended the rules for a caretaker government this election so that his minister can continue pushing forward controversial policy which would lock Canadian law to disallow the required transparency and accountability of the very rules which govern everything from transportation and communications to medical devices and in some cases elections.

While the "copyright" aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are being covered elsewhere, there are non-copyright aspects embedded in the leaked Intellectual Property Rights Chapter that regulate the general transparency and accountability of software.

Unlike the 1996 WIPO treaties which tie what are now called "use controls" to copyright infringing activities, article QQ.G.10: {Technological Protection Measures} of the TPP mandates legal protection of access controls.  The TPP is based on the USA's DMCA which is based on the failed Lehman report from 1995 during the Clinton administration. While Bill C-11 also protects access controls, this is a critical mistake by the Harper government that a future government will need to fix.  Harper is aggressively pushing Canada into the TPP which will require that a future government get permission from TPP "partners" to finally fix these problems.

Access controls are controversial for a number of important reasons:

• Access controls and other non-owner locks on software and hardware reduces the transparency and accountability of the rules that govern these devices.  Technology owners are disallowed from making their own independent software choices, as well as doing their own or having trusted third parties do software audits.
• Access controls applied to multimedia content (more commonly known as "encrypted media" outside of policy circles) are used to tie access to culture to specific brands of access technology, pretty much always technology where the hardware and software has non-owner locks to disable auditability.  This type of tied selling is known to be harmful to the economy (is included in most anti-trust or competition policy), but also impacts cultural rights embedded in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• These policies allegedly relating to "copyright" are being applied to technology which intermediates most aspects of our modern lives.  While there have been expensive court cases to create narrow exceptions for uses of devices unrelated to copyright, most businesses (and even fewer individuals) don't have the financial resources to fight court battles to protect basic property and other rights.  The harmful impacts to the economy go well beyond copyright related industries, and the harmful impacts extend to issues surrounding health and safety, privacy, and national security.
• There has been no credible evidence to the claim that these controls reduce copyright infringement, and considerable evidence to suggest they induce infringement
• Creators of cultural works are as dependent as audience are (if not more) on having control of their own technology, and thus these non-owner locks on technology harm creators' rights

The cost to taxpayors alone of Harper doubling-down on this failed policy cannot be understated.  As one small example, the Canadian Forces are hiring people to hack into vechicle control systems (See: Cyber Security of Automotive Systems (W7701-166085/A)) to do basic auditing, but given the illegitimate claims of exclusive rights this taxpayer funded audit will not likely be widely published. The only reason why taxpayers have to foot this bill, rather than the costs being distributed across other interested and skilled device owners is because of this Harper policy.

It is sad that Harper even promotes his reckless behavior during the election, trying to pull the wool over voters eyes by claiming the TPP is "trade" policy rather than the harmonization of non-trade related policies --- often untested policies, or where the policies were proven failures in countries where they were tested.

Harper suggests people should vote for him and his nominated candidates because of their record on the economy and on security. This policy is one example among many where Harpers record indicates failure.

Inevitable fatalities when owners don't (and increasingly not legally allowed to) control digital technology.

I've been writing about technology property rights for years, and how it must be the owner who controls digital technology and not any third party.  I've given examples of unaccountable ballot-less voting technology, and medical technologies, and driver-less vehicles. It seems I should not have been limiting the warning to driver-less vehicles.  Negligent automobile manufacturers have tied entertainment computers (which includes wireless hotspots/etc) to on-board computers that control critical functions of the vehicle, something I believe they should be held fully liable for.

An article in wired magazine Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It discusses a negligently designed Jeep Cherokee which enabled remote access to air conditioning, radio stations, wind-shield wipers (blurring vision of road), and even the transmission.  While these are dangerous enough, this was only the access that was demonstrated to the reporter -- the full scale of the negligence of Jeep may be much worse.

This type of remote control is the type of thing which politicians are asking for all the time, under the pretext of "lawful" remote control which is just as counter-productive to reducing crime as inadequately monitored "lawful access".  The reality is that if a government authorized "intruder" is allowed third party access and control to technology, this same back-door (or in some cases front-door access) will always be able to be abused by non-government authorized "intruders".  Once you allow access that isn't authorized by the owner, then you have given up any ability to control the device from any non-owner authorized intruder.

This is also a good time to remind people that the problem is not the "unauthorized" third party attackers, so blame should never be put on the people who exploit the negligence of manufacturers or politicians.  The blame must always be put on the manufacturers and politicians who are deliberately making the world less safe, and with continuous warning from technologically literate citizens and witnesses at committees they can't claim they didn't know.  What they don't know is what they have deliberately refused to understand, or where they have trusted technologically illiterate lobbyists and lawyers who are simply not qualified to have been witnesses in the first place.

It is frustrating to watch, and fatalities from the decisions these politicians are making are inevitable.

Doctor Who fans must wait or be forced into an "infringe or be infringed" decision by BBC

The following is a comment I added to a Kasterborous editorial: iTunes, BBC? Really?

This is not a question of money for me — I have spent $thousands$ in recent years on my love of Doctor Who, and I’m more than willing to pay extra to get early access to these episodes before the DVD’s come out. Unfortunately BBC didn’t give me that option, so I will need to either wait for the DVD’s or get the episodes from an “unauthorized” source.

I am not a customer of Apple, nor will I ever be. I’ve spent more than a decade of my life as a political activist in support of IT property rights. As I discussed in a recent submission to the Canadian government on this issue http://c11.ca/brief , Apple is one of the worst infringers of IT property rights. They also actively lobby for legalizing and legally protecting infringements of IT property rights.

While Apple is a direct infringer, inducing people into infringing situations puts the BBC in the same league for those of us trying to protect these property rights as ISOHunt and PirateBay does for copyright infringement.

I agree it is great news that these stories were found, and great news that the BBC decided to make individual episodes available before they have completed the DVD sets. It is clearly bad news that they decided to make an exclusive distribution deal with such a highly controversial company.

I can understand people who may opt out of allowing their own property rights to be infringed, and instead infringe the copyright of others — DRM has never reduced copyright infringement, and in nearly every anecdote I have heard of has encouraged people to infringe copyright.

BTW: The “International” iPlayer is a similar failure by the BBC. Having this be Apple infringing devices only excludes those of us who use computers that are owner-secured rather than controllable by third parties. I am more than willing to pay a subscription fee to access iPlayer in Canada, but BBC hasn’t yet offered that to me at any price.

We live in a time where the importance of cyber-security will be increasing, and yet all these direct (by apple) and contributory (by BBC) infringements of IT property rights only decreases security by creating back-doors where non-owners control computers.

Protecting IT property rights not a short-term calling

I've been asked over the last decade how my activism will change once Canadian legislation that includes Paracopyright passes. Will my activism be finished, and will I admit "defeat" if a bill abrogates the government's responsibility to protect IT property rights?

At one level this could be a question about whether I will honour the law, which isn't really a fair question. Conservative MP Lee Richardson (Calgary Centre) suggests my honouring the law is optional, saying "If a digital lock is broken for personal use, it is not realistic that the creator would choose to file a law suit against the consumer, due to legal fees and time involved." I suspect the fact one of my early submissions to the government in 2001 involved documenting my circumvention of a TPM for an otherwise lawful purpose suggests that I will continue to do the same.


The more important answer is to state that our activism can not discontinue, and any passage of legislation is only one stage in an ongoing process. The United States provides examples where possible legislative wins can turn around in the courts, which suggests we will need to remain active to seek to turn any legislative losses into wins in the courts or later legislative wins.


A twitter/Google+ exchange with Jason J Kee, Director of Policy and Legal Affairs at the Entertainment Software Alliance of Canada, provides an example of this issue. Mr Kee's association includes game console manufacturers as members, with some game console manufacturers and mobile computer manufacturers being the least respective of IT property rights. Given some of his members want to legalise and legally protect activities which infringe upon the rights of technology owners, our biases in how to look at these policies will be quite different.

He challenged a suggestion I made in a Google+ posting that the USA's technological measures provisions have a tie to infringing purposes. I pointed to my reading of the DMCA which includes the following after defining access control technical measures in Title 17, § 1201, includes the following:

(c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected. — (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

(2) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish vicarious or contributory liability for copyright infringement in connection with any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof.

(3) Nothing in this section shall require that the design of, or design and selection of parts and components for, a consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing product provide for a response to any particular technological measure, so long as such part or component, or the product in which such part or component is integrated, does not otherwise fall within the prohibitions of subsection (a)(2) or (b)(1).

(4) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products.

This is a pretty plain language suggestion that the legislators intended limits and exceptions to copyright to not be trumped by technological measures.

Mr. Kee suggested that I'm "ignoring 10+ years of jurisprudence under the DMCA which does not support your assertion #C11", "Most recent MDY v Blizzard, where 9th Cir confirmed no nexus b/t circumvention & infringement 1.usa.gov/dN3wbX #C11"

What he pointed to was "MDY INDUSTRIES v. BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT" appeal decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.


In this case the court ruled that "for a licensee's violation of a contract to constitute copyright infringement, there must be a nexus between the condition and the licensor's exclusive rights of copyright." They then ignored the section of the DMCA I quoted above, and suggested that there should be no nexus between an access control and any rights or limitations in copyright. They went out of their way to ignore or reinterpret other court decisions and statements made by legislators to come to a specific decision.


We could discuss how courts are political entities, and how this Democrat dominated court is interpreting protectionist policies originating in the Clinton/Gore National Information Infrastructure Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights.

The take-away for Canadians should be that after Bill C-11 is passed, the law will continue to change. We should not resign ourselves into believing Canada will follow the USA in increasing the enabling of IT property rights infringement. It is just as likely that things will go the other way.


The MDY INDUSTRIES v. BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT case is in my mind a clear example of a TPM being abused to enforce contractual obligations, where one party to the contract is given excessive control over the other. In Canada there have been a number of law professors who have called attention to this issue, going as far as to suggest that this "poorly veiled attempt by the Government to strengthen the contractual rights available to copyright owners, in the guise of copyright reform" may be unconstitutional. Contract law is provincial jurisdiction, and any Paracopyright provisions that extend beyond activities that are the subject matter of copyright may be struck down by Canadian courts.

In my mind, any abuse of a technology that disables law abiding computer owners to control their computers for lawful purposes is an infringement of IT property rights. It is possible that provincial governments and courts will be called upon to clarify this aspect of tangible property rights, and weigh in favour of technology owners. They may not only strike down any legal protection of these abuses of technology in federal Copyright law, but may create legislation to legally prohibit it. This may allow owners to be able to go after infringers, providing the level of protection to technology owners that Bill C-11 alleges to provide for copyright owners.


Ensuring that these infringers won't get away with their dishonest activities when it comes to our governments, our courts, and our computers will require that we remain active in fighting to protect our rights. Setbacks at one time do not mean we should give up, and laws and interpretation of those laws change all the time.

Are paywalls a Copyright issue?

We should answer the question of whether a paywall is a copyright issue, before we dive into the question of the importance of this question for the debate around the Paracopyright provisions in Bill C-11.

I am familiar with paywalls from the perspective of both a user and a provider of such services. I will offer two specific examples of paywalls to illustrate the issues.

I have been a paid subscriber to The Hill Times since 2005. This is an example of a service that offers some access to anonymous browsers on the Internet, but offers advanced services (full access to search through considerable archives, access to all new articles, etc) only to paid subscribers. You use a simple username and password to log in to prove you are a subscribe.

My current job is as a software author and system administrator for Canadiana.org. We offer anonymous access to some content, while other content is only available to paid subscribers. All the content is in the public domain, so copyright isn't relevant to our service. What is being paid for is access to this content as a method to fund the work we do in digitizing and organizing this information. We have individual and institutional subscribers, with individual users able to subscribe quickly making use of a simple PayPal payment system. While institutional subscribers are given access based on their internet address, individual subscribers use a simple username and password to indicate they are a subscriber.


These two services equally use of a paywall to differentiate between anonymous access and subscribers. While The Hill Time is offering access to copyrighted works, Canadian.org is not. From a legal standpoint these paywalls should be treated the same, with each being offered the same level of legal protection against people who might want to gain unauthorized access to our services.

There has been suggestions from some people that paywalls are inadequately legally protected in Canada. This is often being claimed by proponents of the Paracopyright ("digital locks") provisions in Bill C-11. I don't know for certain whether paywalls are offered adequate legal protection under existing Canadian federal or provincial laws, including whether existing criminal code is sufficient.

I will state that the Copyright act is exactly the wrong law to provide this legal protection. It would make very bad law if legal protection for a paywall was dependent on the specifics of what is offered behind the paywall rather than protecting all paywalls equally and fairly. While I agree with the suggestion that paywalls should be offered legal protection, it must be in the correct law.

While it is true that some copyright holders make use of paywalls in support of their businesses, it is also true that even more copyright holders use electricity in support of their businesses. Suggesting that legal protection for paywalls must be in C-11 makes about as much sense as suggesting that a national energy strategy must also be included in Bill C-11.

The question of whether paywalls are a copyright question came up in a twitter conversation where a proponent of Bill C-11 style Paracopyright was trying to be critical of Postmedia for considering paywalls. He was trying to suggest this conflicted with other articles on the Globe and Mail which were critical of the Paracopyright provisions of Bill C-11.

I hope it is obvious that there is no conflict with supporting, subscribing to or even providing paywall services and being strongly opposed to the Paracopyright provisions of Bill C-11. My primary motivation for my involvement in the copyright revision process is as an opponent to abuses of these provisions to infringe owners rights which Paracopyright provisions may enable.

Trying to conflate different issues like this is a common political tactic of those trying to promote these provisions. They take a non-controvercial technology like paywalls, claim that this is all that is meant by "technological measures" or "digital locks" in C-11, and then try to shove under the rug all the opposition to these highly controversial measures.


What most stakeholders are asking for is that any Paracopyright contained within Canadian copyright law should be tied strongly to otherwise copyright infringing acts. This is what the two 1996 WIPO treaties were calling for, given they are tied to "technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of " copyright related rights "that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law".

The further protection for "technological measures" added to copyright law strays from copyright infringing activities, the easier it is for providers of these technologies (the holders of the keys to these "digital locks") can abuse these provisions to circumvent laws including (but not limited to) contract, e-commerce, property, competition, trade as well as copyright.

One really has to wonder the motivation of those who want legal protection for "technological measures" added to copyright law to have little or no connection to otherwise copyright infringing activities. In some cases it is a lack of understanding of the underlying technology.

In some cases there may be ulterior motives. Some companies may want their circumvention of existing laws protected by beyond-WIPO Paracopyright provisions. There are some popular hardware brands in the game console, cell phone and other mobile computing space which have been outright hostile to the property rights of technology owners. Some of the representatives of these hardware manufacturers, including some representatives of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, have made some of the most extreme claims.

Will you explain why DRM is bad?

I was asked on twitter to explain why DRM is bad.  Given I have spent more than a decade talking about this topic, you would think there is a simple twitter-length answer: but there isn't.


Whether you believe the acronym expands to Digital Rights Management, Digital Restrictions Management, or Dishonest Relationship Misinformation, it doesn't define a specific technology or technique.  The acronym is used to refer to non-controversial technologies such as databases describing content and eCommerce websites, to highly controversial things such as digital locks which lock out the owners of what is locked.


We can't entirely avoid using confusing terms, as people will immediately say "Aren't you talking about DRM" when you want to speak about specific harmful activities.  It is very useful to be clear whenever the time is available.


When some people are concerned about DRM they are concerned about the inability to loan electronic books, or to exercise their fair dealing rights.  While that is peripherally interesting to me, and I agree with some and disagree with other of these ideas, my main concern is impacts which are entirely outside of copyright.  I am happy to discuss (including in comments below, or on the Digital-copyright.ca site) copyright related topics, but for the purpose of this article I am going to talk about things which are unrelated to copyright.


The two techniques I have been fighting against are anti-interoperability locks on content, and non-owner locks on devices.


I believe it should be obvious why having a lock, digital or otherwise, which locks the owner out of what they own is wrong.  In our society most people have at least a minimum of respect for the concept of property rights, and believe that if locks exist it should be the owner that controls them.  Locks should certainly never be allowed to be abused to lock the owner out of what they own, and our laws should protect the owner against such scenarios.  I would be happy to discuss this more if people want, but I am honest in saying that I can't understand why people demonstrate such a lack of respect for or understanding why governments property rights in these discussions.


It shouldn't matter if what is locked is our homes, our cars, or our computers: we should never allow for digital exceptionalism where we ignore basic property rights if the property happens to be digital technology.


The anti-interoperability lock on content ties the ability to access the content to specific brands of devices.   This is harmful in a variety of ways, including being what I consider to be a textbook example of tied selling as described in section 77 of our competition act.   Governments have competition and anti-trust laws for a reason, and again we should not throw away this body of law simply because the tied selling includes something digital.


I don't believe that copyright holders should have the right to decide what brands of technology I use, or what features should exist in the technology that is created and sold.  That said, those who support this policy should recognize that in the vast majority of real-world scenarios it is not the copyright holder that controls the keys to these digital locks.  It is the vendor of the DRM system, a technology company, that controls the keys.  Any digital lock, analog or digital, protects the interests of the key-holder and not necessarily the owner.  I have observed many copyright holders switch their position from being in strong support of technological measures being added to copyright law to being strong opponents once they realized that they as copyright holders would not have the keys or any real-world control over these digital locks.


More important to me, these anti-interoperability locks tie people to non-owner locked devices, something I believe should be prohibited in law.  My primary issue in this debate is the protection of the tangible property rights of technology owners.  Even if it were copyright holders that held the keys to the digital locks on their content, and even if there was a shred of evidence that these locks reduced copyright infringement (most evidence suggests increases), I would still disagree that this justified the legalization of non-owner locks on our devices or anti-competitive behaviour that encouraged the use of non-owner locked devices.




While I believe that these two controversial locks should be prohibited in law,  Bill C-11 (and C-32 and C-61 before them) provide legal protection for them.   While these bills are called "An Act to amend the Copyright Act", the digital locks provisions are not related to the subject matter of copyright law.  In fact, these digital locks have been and will continue to be abused to circumvent the contours of existing laws including contract, e-commerce, property, competition, trade and even copyright.


We have a long way to go in this conversation.  In my mind anyone who respects contract, e-commerce, property, competition, trade, and/or copyright should be opposed to "technological measures" being added to the copyright act.  Legal protection for "technological measures" must be added to the correct law in order for them not to be abused to circumvent the law.


If a technical measure is protecting contracting terms, including a copyright license agreement, then the legal protection should be in provincial contract law.


If a technical measure is protecting electronic commerce, then the legal protection should be in provincial e-commerce law.


And so on...


Hope this helps, and sorry that there isn't a twitter-sized response to this question.  There is a lack of clarity in what the acronym means, which add to the confusion that most of the impacts of adding "technological measures" to copyright law have nothing to do with copyright.