[free-sklyarov] Why the DMCA is a bad law

Andrew Lawrence ausage at ausage.com
Sun Jul 22 12:59:59 PDT 2001


The following is an excerpt from a rather long letter I am composing to my 
Member of Parliment concerning a planned revision to the Canadian Copyright 
Act.  While there is a distinctly Canadian flavour in wording, the arguement 
is I believe valid and can be applied to copyright laws anywhere, especially 
the DMCA.

<quote>
First, I believe it is important to state the purpose of the copyright. 
Quoting from "A Guide to Copyrights" (January 200), published by the Canadian 
Intellectual Property Office, "Its purpose, like that of other pieces of 
intellectual property legislation, is to protect owners while promoting 
creativity and the orderly exchange of ideas."  This I believe is a noble 
goal.  Writers, musicians, scientists, et al, should be rewarded and 
encouraged to create so that our society can enjoy and benefit from their 
works as much as possible. Unfortuately, I find that in Canada today 
copyright has been transformed into "intellectual property" and then, in the 
words of the motion picture and music publishers, into "our property".  
Copyright is no longer a creative incentive to our society, but a means of 
acquiring wealth for a few large, mostly foreign, corporations that now 
control the publication and distribution of "intellectual property" worldwide.

This is a trend that I believe any revision to the Copyright Act should be 
tailored to reverse.
</quote>

For Americans, change the quote to the appropriate article of the US 
Constitution, I'm too lazy to look it up, change Copyright Act to DMCA and 
Canada to US and remove "mostly foreign" from the last sentence.

Other Nationalities are on their own...

PS:

Copyright 2001 Andrew Lawrence.  Permission to copy, change, adopt, reject 
and claim as your own is granted to anyone and everyone.





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