Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights
 

We are a growing industry coalition representing Canadian businesses affected by Canadian Copyright reform. It is the primary objective of the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights (CCER) to represent our member companies and to act as a communication conduit between policy makers at both the federal and provincial levels of government. The CCER seeks to keeps its members informed of policy changes that will affect current and future business models. The CCER seeks to provide Federal policy makers with input to ensure a fair and balanced approach to copyright reform.

CCER members are unanimous in their concern over anti-circumvention provisions that may be included in proposed Copyright reform legislation. Our members strongly oppose any legislation that targets technology rather than behavior. There exist many legitimate uses for circumvention technologies and devices all of which may be undermined by any legislation containing excessively strong anti-circumvention provisions. CCER is concerned about the lack of public input in shaping Canada’s copyright reforms. Indications point to the Government tabling a bill without consultations with Canadians, so that a full range of voices will not be heard. This means that the best decisions cannot be made. Instead, narrow interests of those who do have the Government’s ear are likely to trump what is good for the future of the country.

CCER is especially concerned with the anti-circumvention aspects of the proposed bill. Canadian consumers will be unable, even for perfectly legitimate reasons, to override the digital locks on machines and software they have legally purchased.. These provisions will prove to create significant harm to education, privacy protection, security, research, free speech, and consumer interests. CCER is concerned that anti-circumvention legislation will be used to create unfair limitations on what consumers can do with their own personal property. For example, we are concerned that the legislation would prevent Canadian consumers from using any device or software that would enable them to:

• Playback and utilize archival backup copies permitted under existing Copyright Law of expensive games, computer programs and content sold on fragile and vulnerable optical media.
• Use legitimate products such as games and films purchased abroad which do not function in Canada due to regional coding digital locks imposed for no good reason, or often for the purpose of price discrimination. This practice interferes substantially with cultural diversity by preventing the use of legitimate software and entertainment material from countries such as India and Japan.
• Harness the computing power of various electronic platforms in atypical ways. Countless open source communities have emerged boasting hundreds of thousands of members collaborating on software projects that take advantage of the computational abilities of very powerful everyday platforms.

The proposed anti-circumvention contained in the new law will raise significant marketplace concerns. The CCER seeks to provide a unified front amongst its members to ensure that fairness and flexibility is included with any copyright reform.

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