Copyright Lobby Wants Canada Out of TPP Until Stronger Copyright Laws Passed

An anonymous reader writes "'The U.S. government just concluded a consultation on whether it should support Canada's entry into the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations.' The TPP raises significant concerns about extension of copyright and digital locks, so that might be a good thing. However, Michael Geist reports that the IIPA, which represents the major movie, music, and software lobby associations, sees this as an opportunity to force Canada to enact a Canadian DMCA and to implement ACTA."

Re:Bye Bye America

[GeckoX]

Oh if only our current government had the balls to do this. Historically you'd be spot on.
Unfortunately there's zero chance right now. Bush North, er, I mean Harper, already has us bent over with our pants down for this. He tried forcing through a DMCA style bill through both terms in minority and thankfully failed. He has no such restrictions now however and it is only a matter of time before this happens.

Re:Can't have it both ways...

[FireFury03]

Personally, I'm torn on whether there needs to be any copyright at all. On the one hand getting rid of all copyright would allow publishing houses to return to the days where they take an authors work and publish it without paying him a dime. On the other other hand, maybe that would be better handled by non-disclosure contracts and standard civil law.

I can't see how copyright can be replaced with non-disclosure contracts (especially in an age when copying is cheap and easy). Lets take your example of the relationship between author and publisher:
The author spends many man-hours writing a book and requires financial compensation from it so he can afford to live (the alternative is that he gets a job and only writes in his spare time, which I'm sure most people would agree would probably be detrimental to the amount of quality literary works being produced). So the author approaches a publisher and signs a contract saying they will pay him for the work. This contract may stipulate a lump sum, an amount per copy sold, or whatever, that's unimportant. The publisher produces the book, sells it, takes a cut of the profit and hands some cash on to the author. Another publisher buys the book from a high-street shop, scans it and starts printing copies themselves and selling them at a lower price. The original publisher can't shift their stock because they can't afford to sell as cheaply as the new publisher since the original publisher is bound by their contract with the author. The copying publisher has no contract with anyone, so is free to do what they like - in your "no-copyright" world, there are no laws to prevent them from doing this.

Essentially, your proposal to use NDAs in place of copyright suffers from the same flaw that prevents DRM from working - at some point you have to make the works available to end customers, and at this point someone can copy it (whether that simply be someone giving a copy to a mate, or a printer publishing 100,000 copies that undercut the original publisher).

The only way I can think of this being enforcible through normal contract law is by also requiring every consumer to also sign an NDA. The practice of requiring consumers to sign away their rights (such as software EULAs do) has the danger of licences progressively taking more and more rights (the consumer is already used to signing a contract, they probably don't read it and don't notice what rights are being revoked). There would be no room for negotiation, so if you don't like it your only option is to do without entirely.

in today's fast paced technological world maybe copyright needs to be no more than a few years after first publication.

I certainly support the idea that copyright shouldn't be as long as it currently is, but I don't think that "today's fast paced technological world" has anything to do with this. Morally, why should the author of a book receive less in a "fast paced technological world" than in years gone by? Its true that technology makes it easier for people to copy and therefore of the people reading the author's book a lower proportion will have paid him for it(*), but this is a reality of what *does* happen rather than what *should* morally happen.

(*) Note that whilst copyright infringement means a lower *proportion* will have paid, it does not necessarily imply that a lower *number* will have paid. Copyright infringement is actually quite good advertising. Anecdotally: I illegally copy music. If I like a song I tend to buy the CD, so the bands which produce music I like actually benefit from my infringement.

I'm increasingly becoming concerned that copyright must be abolished lest we put more people in prison for the crime of enjoying without paying.

I certainly don't think that copyright should be abolished. It serves a useful purpose (not least, it allows licences such as the GPL to work). However, the governments need to stop bowing to the wishes