20 Apr 2022
There is an urgent need to raise public awareness about Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. We believe the public needs to be protected from products that can be remotely turned off by the manufacturer, products that ‘phone home’ and would therefore stop working if the manufacturer went bankrupt, or products that are ‘region coded’. We will require that any product sold in Canada that includes a DRM mechanism is stored without DRM in escrow against a time where access to DRM versions is no longer possible.
DRM technology should not be protected by the force of Canadian law (such as the Digital Locks Provision). DRM measures should be allowed to succeed or fail as a business strategy on its own merits.
The following policies have been approved by the Political Council and will be sent to the membership to be voted on:
-The ‘Digital Locks’ provision will be removed from the Copyright Act.
-Circumventing locks on media and the production of tools to do so will be held to be legal.
-Media with digital locks must be visibly labelled as such.
20 Apr 2022
We will legalise the use of copyright works where no money changes hands, which will return to the people various rights including:
- A right to “format shift” (for example, buying a CD then copying it to a portable media player such as an MP3 player or phone);
- A right to share files between friends and peers (which provides free advertising that is essential for less well-known artists);
We will help create an environment in which we can all enjoy and share our cultural heritage free from the threat of legal action or censorship.
20 Apr 2022
The Pirate Party of Canada seeks a copyright term length that optimizes both economic advantage and social benefit. It is the party’s stance that, at present, copyright terms are too long to fulfill these criteria and that terms must be shortened until the optimum copyright term is found, even if it means no copyright at all.
We will reduce the duration of copyright to 10 years, closer to the original duration of 14 years, reflecting the much greater ease with which works can now be made and distributed. Shorter copyright will encourage artists to keep on creating new work; will allow new art forms, such as mash-ups; and will stop businesses from relying on large back-catalogues rather than investing in new content.
Prevent ‘restarting the clock’ by ensuring that new copyrights are not created unless the new work represents a substantial change, we will remove the loophole in current copyright law that allows ‘restarting the clock’ by simply moving content to a new format or making an incremental change to it. This will be of particular benefit to our education system where making slight changes to extend the copyright on textbooks is rampant.
The following policies have been approved by the Political Council and will be sent to the membership to be voted on:
-We will shorten copyright terms from the current length of the author’s lifetime +50 years to a more economically justifiable length of 10 years from the date of publication.
-Copyright owners will be granted the ability to commit their works to the public domain permanently at any time.
20 Apr 2022
A fair and balanced copyright regime that is suitable for the 21st century is an absolute necessity for Canada to remain competitive in a global economy that is built upon ideas and innovation. Copyright should give artists and innovators the chance to make money from their work; however, that needs to be balanced with the rights of society as a whole.
20 Apr 2022
We will promote the provision of free public WiFi as well as the provision of Internet access in community centres and libraries by local authorities. At present a significant portion of us have limited access to the Internet and the benefits that access provides. Providing access where it is otherwise limited is a good initial step to reducing and eventually ending the digital divide.
