User:John64/FSOSS Paper

John Ford's FSOSS Paper

Open Source and Copyright Policy

This talk was done by David Fewer of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. He was speaking about how open source development is affected by copyright law. The Canadian Software Innovation Alliance is an organization that encourages government to continue to support the Canadian open software industry which allows Canadian developers to have a competitive advantage to American developers. The main point is that copyright is not only for compensation of authors but to ensure the public has access to the innovation. Jacobson vs. Katzer was brought up as an case where open distribution was upheld in a US IP Court. Licensing and copyright has limits. The three things which require access to others copyright are license enforcement, reverse engineering and interoperability. Copyright protects expression, not ideas which is an important divide. Reverse engineering is essential for people to learn other people's idea. Copyright is for the implementation where patent law is focused on innovation and invention. Interoperability requires some form of reverse engineering. There is a fair dealing exception, and specifically an interoperability exception which allow for necessary activities. The CSIA which David represents is worried about the dangers of anti-circumvention laws. These laws protect the technologies which protect content, for example DRM or CSS. This is the third layer, the first is copyright and the second is a technological tool. The first proposals for these styles of laws are now in motion in government. The CSIA laws says that we should not create a liability for accessing information for legal purposes and if there is a layer, there must be exceptions to support the open source model. These anti-circumvention are very likely to severely hinder competition. Reverse engineering, security research, interoperability, protection of copyrights, the development and acquisition of tools and technological neutrality. The CSIA also believes that fair dealings should be expanded to counterbalance new restrictions. Technological neutrality ensures that there are no specific locks which are required. David believes that fair dealings should reflect real life, not the letter of the law. The benefit of society should be held more important. Source and author is essential in ensuring fair dealing applies.

We are currently in a very important situation with Bill C-61. Luckily because of the government's dissolution the bill was removed, however the conservation government has mandated to re-introduce this government. The Canadian version of the DMCA this bill represented the most extreme copyright laws. This bill would create two layers of copyright laws in Canada, one general one and one for technology. This bill had no exception for license enforcement. There was a bill in parliament a few years ago which was much more fair, targeting only non-fair actions instead of over reaching conditions. Copyright is supposed to be a framework law, these new copyright laws are undermining this. The conservatives did not say they would push the bill through as is. Currently we do not have any anti-circumvention laws in place, however, the new government has included this bill in their election platform.