[kwlug-disc] Bad ruling, bad proposed law ...

[John Van Ostrand]

----- "Khalid Baheyeldin" <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:
> Yet another attempt to enact DMCA-like legislation in Canada.
> This is the third attempt, by my count.

Canada is obligated, as a member of WIPO, to adhere to the WIPO Copyright Treaty, article 11 (http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/trtdocs_wo033.html#P87_12240) requires:

"Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law."

Obligations to international bodies, as we have seen with how the US ignored the UN earlier in this decade, are loose. Given that international organizations, are usually, in one way or another, controlled or manipulated by US interests. There may not be any significant consequences to reneging on at least this one article.

We can argue the term "effective", since methods like DVD's CSS are too weak to be effective, we can argue that the authors are not authorizing this type of restriction, or we can argue that first sale laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine) trump this entirely.

-- 
John Van Ostrand 
CTO, co-CEO 
Net Direct Inc. 
564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 
Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 
Fx: 519-883-8533 

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