[HN Gopher] Win for copyright user rights in Canada: Digital loc...
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Win for copyright user rights in Canada: Digital locks do not trump
fair dealing
Author : peutetre
Score : 168 points
Date : 2024-06-04 03:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.michaelgeist.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.michaelgeist.ca)
| isaacfrond wrote:
| tl;dr
|
| The case arises from years of litigation between Blacklock's
| Reporter, a paywalled news service based in Ottawa, and the
| Canadian government.
|
| Blacklock's continued to press ahead with other cases with the
| latest decision involving 15 articles that were distributed to
| media personnel at Parks Canada. The department had an individual
| subscription to the service, but Blacklock's argued that allowing
| anyone other than original subscriber to access articles
| constituted copyright infringement.
|
| Blacklock's position on this issue was straightforward: it argued
| that its content was protected by a password, that passwords
| constituted a form of technological protection measure, and that
| fair dealing does not apply in the context of circumvention. In
| other words, it argued that the act of circumvention (in this
| case of a password) was itself infringing and it could not be
| saved by fair dealing.
|
| The Federal Court disagreed on all points. It cited with approval
| CIPPIC's argument that "the TPM provisions do not apply to
| restrain fair dealing; using a validly obtained password to
| access content is not circumvention." Further, court noted "how
| the password was obtained is significant as this may prevent a
| user from invoking the fair dealing provisions of the Act." In
| other words, not all password sharing will qualify as fair
| dealing. This decision is not a licence to simply share passwords
| with no consequences, but rather affirmation that passwords are
| not a technological protection measure and that using validly
| obtained password does not limit fair dealing rights.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| My reading (grain of salt, I'm not a lawyer) is that receiving
| a password from the person who owns that password is likely to
| always fall into "validly obtained" and be considered fair
| dealing
|
| However the ruling leaves open the possibilty to find other
| forms of password sharing to be considered invalid. We'd have
| to see if something like a "My friend shared his friend's
| password with me without his friend knowing" would continue to
| be "valid"
|
| Stolen passwords are almost certainly "invalid
|
| If we think about it like house keys, entering someone's home
| with a stolen key is likely illegal. Entering a home with a key
| they lent you is fine. Entering a key that you obtained from
| someone who is allowed to have the key but not explicitly
| allowed to share the key is a grey area
| wccrawford wrote:
| I'm thinking that selling access to your password won't be
| "fair dealing", either, though.
| DowagerDave wrote:
| the obvious case will be netflix account sharing, while IP-
| locking an account might be considered valid.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Interesting. You're probably right, and it makes me think
| of some similar but slightly different situations
|
| For instance what about cafes having magazine subscriptions
| that they give you a password for when you buy from them,
| much like they might have a couple of newspapers lying
| around (or daily coffee news prints)
|
| I wonder if that would count as fair dealing... Not
| "selling password access" but "giving password access to
| paying customers of our business"
|
| I also wonder how it's really any different than bars doing
| big pay per view events where they charge a cover to get in
| so you can watch
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Bars (in UK) pay enormous sums of money to present PPV
| broadcasts and such. They are charged, usually, according
| to floorspace; sometimes size of screens is factored in,
| sometimes there are maximum numbers of attendees.
|
| It's similar to libraries having to buy a book along with
| a license that bypasses the usual imprint that says "not
| for lending"; they don't just buy a book from a
| bookstore.
| sfRattan wrote:
| A license for a live event stream makes sense, but
| libraries having to buy special licenses to loan out
| physical books seems completely nuts to me. Does the UK
| not have an equivalent to first sale doctrine for
| physical goods?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Maybe a better example would have been people hosting pay
| per view parties at their houses
|
| They certainly don't pay for an event license for that,
| but some of those parties can get pretty big
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Excellent. A user's rights are determined by social consensus and
| the law, and cannot be circumvented simply by restricting access
| technologically. Big win for fair dealing (similar: american fair
| use)
| mthoms wrote:
| For those who are unaware, "Fair Dealing" is the Canadian
| equivalent of "Fair Use".
|
| As a Canadian, I have so much gratitude to Michael Geist and the
| CIPPIC. Many of these issues don't seem to generate the same
| amount of public interest in Canada as they do in the States, but
| it's very important work.
|
| _" The Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public
| Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) is Canada's first and only public
| interest technology law clinic. Based at the University of
| Ottawa's Faculty of Law, our team of legal experts and law
| students works together to advance the public interest on
| critical law and technology issues."_
|
| https://www.cippic.ca/about-us
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I've always been confused by how these decisions go. Everybody
| agrees that the user has the right to make a copy, so when the
| company puts a "digital lock" on it, the fight is whether the
| user has a right to break the lock. But if I have a right to go
| through my door, and somebody has put a padlock on the door to
| keep me out, the right question shouldn't be whether I'm allowed
| to pick the lock, it should be why the padlock is legal.
|
| If customers may legally make a copy of the e-book you sell to
| them, it should be on you the merchant to ensure customers are
| able to do so.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| This would probably fix Linux emulation for some games is my
| understanding, weirdly enough, all the games I hear have DRM /
| anticheat issues on Linux are the games I avoid, usually they
| are the more "popular" games that don't interest me.
| jfengel wrote:
| The digital lock is a matter of conflicting rights. They have a
| right to prevent infringement of their copyright; you have a
| right to make limited copies.
|
| The lock on your door is not -- assuming that they don't in
| fact have some kind of claim on you, like a landlord to whom
| you have failed to pay rent. So the situations are not
| parallel, and it should be no surprise that the decisions would
| differ.
|
| The job of a court is to decide which right prevails when
| rights conflict. There's often reasonable disagreement over it,
| and the distinction is often based on a complex and esoteric
| set of precedents, and on the specific wording of a law.
| L-four wrote:
| So a literal electric door lock would have the right to lock
| your door if they think you might break the copy right on the
| door lock you purchased from them.
| vkou wrote:
| Sometimes analogies are a useful tool for understanding a
| situation.
|
| This one is not.
| jfengel wrote:
| Analogies are sometimes useful for understanding, but
| they rarely seem useful in marking an argument. It always
| seems redirect the argument into the ways that the
| analogy is different. (If the analogy weren't different,
| then it wouldn't be any clearer.)
|
| If one goes into it with the intention of using the
| differences in the analogies to illuminate the domain, it
| can be helpful. But any argument of the form "X is like
| Y, and therefore since p(Y) is obvious then p(X) must
| also be true" is pretty much destined to shed little
| light but much heat.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I find an analogies useful in argument. They allow me to
| apply the logic someone is applying in an unfamiliar
| domain to a domain that is familiar to all, as a way of
| seeing how the logic holds up. Naturally, if the domains
| are too dissimilar, that becomes the focus of discussion.
| Like all tools, analogies can be used poorly.
| gspencley wrote:
| An analogy is kind of like a car ... OK no. Not going
| there. I'm out.
| wormius wrote:
| You wouldn't download an analogy.
|
| Went there just for you :)
| immibis wrote:
| If the laws about actual doors were written the same way as
| laws about copyright: yes.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| They do not have a right to prevent infringement. They have a
| right to make copies, and I have a right to make copies, and
| nobody else has a right to make copies, but that does not
| equate to a right to prevent others from making copies,
| especially me, a person who has a right to make a copy.
| That's not to say that copyright protection is illegal, it's
| just not a right.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _They do not have a right to prevent infringement._
|
| In the US at least, that right is explicitly granted in our
| Constitution. ("For limited Times," LOL.)
| immibis wrote:
| There is a special law - the DMCA - saying you can't break
| digital locks that were placed in the name of copyright, ever.
| Even telling someone how to break a lock is illegal. Even
| learning how to break a lock is illegal. Even probing at a lock
| in ways that might reveal how to break it is illegal.
|
| There's a reason that people say corporations own us, or
| corporations own the law. In some cases, acts that might result
| in lowered profits are punished worse than murder.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _Even telling someone how to break a lock is illegal. Even
| learning how to break a lock is illegal._
|
| Source? I wouldn't have thought a US law saying these things
| would be allowed.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Yeah, you'd think so, but alas principle still has an
| uphill battle against profit and power.
|
| https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-appeals-court-
| ru...
| faeranne wrote:
| Exact source is a bit convoluted, because most US law is
| convoluted, but is covered in multiple subsections of
| section 1201 of Public Law 105-304 (the technical name for
| DMCA). There are exceptions for things like making things
| interoperable and security research (kinda), but beyond
| that simply glancing at one of these locks can be a
| violation of DMCA. Sadly the document is excessivly long
| (60 pages plus references to other laws), and the available
| source PDF is so poorly formatted as to be nearly
| impossible to follow (nothing is aligned correctly, and
| subsections regularly form a very confusing pattern)
| zerocrates wrote:
| The typical area where this comes up is 17 USC 1201(a)(2);
| "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public,
| provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product,
| service, device, component, or part thereof, that" [breaks
| DRM]. "Otherwise traffic" is a big universe of actions, as
| is "offer to the public."
|
| The courts that handled the DeCSS cases (code that broke
| DVD encryption) allowed that code like DeCSS was speech
| protected by the First Amendment, but basically ruled that
| the functional aspect of the code meant it gets lesser
| protection. Posting the code, but even just linking to
| somewhere else it could be found, were both found to
| violate the DMCA, and that restriction was found to be
| permitted by the First Amendment.
| II2II wrote:
| The DMCA does not apply in Canada, so I'm not sure if telling
| someone how to break the lock is illegal.
|
| Being a Canadian, I really should look this up. That being
| said, I try to avoid situations where I would want to break a
| digital lock. There are plenty of alternatives encumbered
| media, provided that you don't have your heart set on a
| particular product. For example, many publishers offer
| unencumbered ebooks. Library books do have DRM, but it is
| pretty much a given that some sort of access control is
| needed since the books are on loan.
| jMyles wrote:
| Although I agree that your question is important and sensible,
| I also think that the metaphors involving locks, keys, and
| doors have added complications rather than subtracting them to
| every discussion where they've been applied since the beginning
| of the internet.
|
| * Transit through a door, in meatspace, amounts to tresspass
| insofar as it creates a physical vulnerability - to violence,
| vandalism, or larceny. This is true whether my door is locked
| or unlocked. * Locks prevent operation of a door (or, in some
| cases, detachment of objects, such as with a bike lock). To
| open a lock is to facilitate transit through a door, or
| independent movement of the detached objects - these are state
| changes. Compare with copying bytes, where the original bytes
| are left unchanged. * (Not central to the current discussion,
| but still demonstrative and worth consideration) Keys - don't
| get me started on keys. This metaphor has made it so much more
| difficult to teach cryptography to students who tend to learn
| well from other metaphors.... especially for assymetric crypto
| - keys do not map cleanly whatsoever, and they break the
| "signature" metaphor, which is otherwise pretty good. You don't
| sign things with a key; you sign them with a pen.
|
| tl;dr: although perhaps companies adding bugs that prevent
| copying is a violation of your rights, it's not the same
| violation as adding a lock to a door.
| spoonjim wrote:
| We can't fight the right to break the digital lock. They are
| getting increasingly unbreakable. We must void the right of the
| vendor to apply such a lock in the first place.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I agree that the locks shouldn't be allowed. At the minimum, it
| should be false advertising to describe exchanging money for a
| DRM-infected product as a "sale".
|
| That said, I've watched an endless parade of unbreakable
| encryption being broken. I don't expect that to change any time
| soon.
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