[d@DCC] Forming an organization

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

I'm generally in favour of forming an organization, although I'd like to
see just what its official goals will be before I declare that I'm willing
to join and support it.  On naming, I basically like "Libre Culture
Canada" except that "libre" feels like it should come after its referant,
since it's not really an English word, and would come after its referant
in French.  "Culture Libre Canada" sounds better to me, but I'm still not
100% convinced that is the best possible name.  A significant reason is
that "culture" isn't really what I'm interested in.  I'm interested in
protecting the existence of user-programmable computers, which would be
outlawed if the media cartels had their way.

My most important goal is for Technological Protection Measures not to get
any legal "teeth".  Closely related to that, I want reverse engineering to
remain legal.  This mailing list was first incarnated as "Canada DMCA
Opponents" and I suggest that that's still our common ground.  I'm not so
much interested in trying to reform the music industry's business models
or redesign the term length of copyright - I just want to be able to
continue my own activities as a computer hobbyist, which include writing
media software that answers to nobody but the user.

I skimmed a bunch of back issues of Heritage Committee evidence today,
trying to catch up, and was rather disappointed to see that TPMs, their
protection, and (especially) the arguments AGAINST their protection, went
almost totally unmentioned.  The Heritage Committee and its witnesses
remarked on the huge outpouring of EFF-inspired form letters back when
that happened - but then went off on the file sharing and economic issues.  
That's not what those letters were about; those letters were saying 
"don't import the DMCA to Canada".  They were about TPMs and ISP
liability.

Liability, especially for linking, is another Very Big Issue for me, and
it similarly went almost totally unmentioned.  As far as I'm concerned
those are the *big* issues that should be at the *top* of priority lists.  
I'm afraid that instead we're going to get bogged down in subtleties of
economic issues that really don't interest me, and the TPM protection and
linking liability points will end up being decided by default, and badly.

So, to the people forming a new organization: seduce me!  Convince me that
your organization will make TPMs and linking liability its number-one
priorities.  Then go convince the legislators that those are hot-ticket
issues...
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/

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