[Cdn-DMCA] DirecTV

[Alan DeKok]

Ian Goldberg <ian at cypherpunks.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 09:03:00PM -0400, David F. Skoll wrote:
> > The DirecTV folks at the Ottawa consultation meeting did not look
> > very happy when they left the room.
> 
> Do tell?  :-)

  They had nice charts saying that 68% of people they sent notices to
moved the "illegal" content to Canadian ISP's.  They then said they
were upset because only 3% of Canadian ISP's complied with their
take-down notice (under the DMCA.)

  Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said he
agreed that was a bad thing.  3% of Canadian ISP's obeyed the
notification, when it had no basis under Canadian law!

  He went on to say that Canada is a sovereign country, and that the
purpose of this hearing was for us to determine what WE wanted the law
to be.

  The DirectTV people were somewhat upset about that.

  I also had a comment directed to them, saying that "As DirectTV has
found, any and all technological protection measures can be
circumvented.  Therefore I do not believe that they should have any
protection in law".

  There may have been other comments to DirectTV that I don't recall
right now.


  The overall tone of the meeting was interesting.  The "users" of
material were strongly against further restrictions on their use of
legally obtained materials.  The "creators" of work were vociferous in
their anger towards people making illegal use of their works.

  There is a discord in the arguments, they're not talking about the
same thing.  The "users" appeared to understand the difference, but
the "creators" didn't.

  There were a few angry comments about the recent Supreme Court
decision (Thiberge?).  Some artists/whatever reps were upset that the
Supreme Court allowed owners of legally purchased material to do
things to it that the creator didn't want them to do.


  There was also a lot of talk from the "creators" about access
controls.  They wanted more access controls, and they wanted to
have more control over access and use of their materials than the law
allows.  They didn't know or care that some people might have a
problem with this attitude.

  Alan DeKok.
--
For (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and
links to other related sites please see http://www.flora.org/dmca/