Julianna Yau’s blog

I finally finished my copyright inquiry letter The Honourable Andrew Telegdi, P.C., M.P. for Kitchener-Waterloo, The Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry and The Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage. It took a surprising amount of time to make it a concise, one-page letter. Here’s the bulk of it:

When I initially started this letter, it was to urge the government to take care with the upcoming copyright legislation, with synopses on items which need careful attention. With everything which has happened to the copyright issue since early December, I am now writing instead to urge the government to launch a public inquiry into copyright.

Never before have so many Canadians been individually impacted by copyright, nor has the legitimacy of copyright been so fervently challenged by creators and non-creators alike. The issue of copyright is no longer one which impacts only the creative community. Ever since the introduction of personal recording devices into the consumer market, users have been challenging the limits of their rights¹ and creators have been fighting to maintain theirs, while producers and other supporting entities of creators scramble to keep things status quo.

In the past two months, I have taken a step back from all of the politics of copyright with the intent of finding some root causes². Through this exercise, I have found that many of the roadblocks preventing the creative, legal, consumer and political communities from reaching any internal or collective agreement stem from the inability to keep the various issues separate.

One of the few points upon which people have been able to agree is the need for a public inquiry into copyright³. The UK has been pro-active and launched a public consultation of their own on January 8, 2008⁴. Canada needs to follow the example set by the UK and take a leadership role in shaping copyright reform to the needs of all citizens, rather than following the US model by including the interests of only those who can afford the most time and money to invest in lobbying.

Footnotes:
1. See, for example, the case of Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) or any one of the recent cases involving peer-to-peer sharing.
2. http://blog.juliannayau.com/category/deconstructing-copyright/
3. Printed copies of the various blog postings have been included for your convenience as samples of the consensus across persons who represent different perspectives on copyright.
4. http://www.ipo.gov.uk/about/about-consult/about-formal/about-formal-current/consult-copyrightexceptions.htm
A copy of the press release has been included for your convenience.

The postings printed for footnote 3:
http://www.creatorscopyright.ca/op-ed/2007-12-10/modest-proposal-copyright-inquiry
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2007/12/royal-commission-on-copyright.html
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2006/11/parliamentary-committees-and-copyright.html
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2007/10/craig-parks-on-canadas-copious.html
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1536&Itemid=125
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2502/125/
http://johndegen.blogspot.com/2007/12/royal-commission-on-why-were-all.html
http://www.jeremydebeer.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=195
http://samtrosow.ca/content/view/23/1/

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