O O Ø O O O O
War on my Music
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa K1A 0A2
cc: Hon. Jim Prentice, http://pintday.org/archive/20080708
Mr. Harper;
I was listening to one of my favourite albums the other day: Color me Psycho’s Pretend I’m Your Father. I don’t expect that you’ve heard of it. Color me Psycho was a short-lived Calgary band that played in and around the city in the mid to late 80s. As such, they only ever released two albums: a 10-song cassette called Kiss Me, Then Color Me Psycho, and the aforementioned LP (yes, an actual record!).
It took me almost 20 years of looking to find a copy of Pretend I’m your Father. By the time I realized I wanted it, it was long out of print, and the band was long gone. Furthermore, there was simply no demand to have the record reissued. Apparently, all of the true fans already had a copy. By the time I did acquire a copy, (a surprising transaction resulting from an Internet plea for assistance) I no longer owned the technology to play it. I gave away my last record player in 1994. As a result, I had to resort to some format shifting to get the songs into a format that I could actually listen to (and preserve, since the original LP is prone to scratching).
Pretend I’m your Father is a piece of Canadian culture. A very small piece, certainly, but in my opinion, culture is made up of small pieces. Unfortunately, if Bill C-61 passes, then this story will have a very different ending for the next generation.
In a post C-61 world, I would be a criminal. If we accept the premise that online delivery of content is indeed the future (as the success of iTunes and the other online retailers would seem to bear out) music is increasingly purchased online. This music is protected by Digital Rights Management, and hence, format shifting is prohibited (sec 29.21(c) unless I am a library (sec 30.1(1)(c)). Even if physical albums were to somehow make a resurgence, I would expect that like DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, and other next-generation media, DRM would necessarily be included. Worse, my format shifting would not be subjected to the $500 statutory damage cap. Because format shifting involves removing DRM, damages are explicitly unlimited by the proposed bill (sec 38.1(1.4)).
It gets worse. Even though a library could, in theory, archive every song produced by Canadian artists from now until eternity, content producers can exclude even this exemption simply by including the relevant language in a click-through license (sec 29.21(2)). Bill C-61 gives contracts priority over copyright law. This means content producers can opt out of copyright law entirely, should they choose. Mr. Harper, this hardly constitutes a balance between the needs of content producers and consumers.
Mr. Harper, a post C-61 world will require that we all repurchase our music and movie collections whenever formats change. As evidenced by my love of a certain Calgarian ex-band, not all music will be reissued in these new formats. As a consequence, these contributions to our cultural mosaic will be lost forever—victims of a future format war. As fewer and fewer physical copies of albums are sold, this loss will become more pronounced.
I like Canadian culture, Mr. Harper, and I like my Calgary bands. I hope my kids do, too. Don’t let Bill C-61 eviscerate the next generation of music collections.
Yours Truly,
Kjell Wooding
July 8, 2008
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