Re: No longer free to write your own software either

["Frank Townsend" <ftownsen@iamdigex.net>]

"Byron Q. Desnoyers Winmill" <byron@asimov.ab.hsia.telus.net> wrote in
message news:0tZv5.1424$ud.705314@news0.telusplanet.net...
> Okay, so what is the difference between "private" and personal use?  If
> anything, private sounds to me to be more open ended.

Since the drafters of legislation can choose any of the words used in the
final statute, the fact that the "private use" phrase is preferred instead
of "personal use" is probably significant.  In the US you could look at
early drafts of the Act, committee reports and other aspects of the
legislative history.  I am not familiar with how the process works in
Canada.  However, I would suspect that the drafters deliberately chose
Private Use to emphasize the *constraints* placed on the permitted use,
rather the discretion implied by the term personal.  That is, private use
does *not* permit "(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing
or offering for sale or rental;  (b) distributing, whether or not for the
purpose of trade;  (c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or
(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public."  Thus, you can't
even give away your copy.


> that the Canadian Copyright Act is full of exemptions for "private use"
> and "private study".  Do all of these exemptions provide some form of
> compensation for the authors?  (Just do a keyword search for "private"
> at "http://canada.justice.gc.ca/FTP/EN/Laws/Chap/C/C-42.txt";.)

No.  However, the Canadian Act handles "Private Copying" (Part VII)
differently from the other "Exceptions" in Part III.  I would characterize
Part III's exceptions for fair dealing etc. more as public policy
exceptions, while Part VII involves compensation.  Also, you would have to
look at the case law to see what fair dealing allows (I have seen 10% quoted
as the amount of a complete work that may be copied).


And,
> while copies of music for personal use are compensated does it reflect
> a true loss in royalties?

Dunno.  Depends on how the Section 81 remuneration is split up.

>
> In fact, here are some comments from CanCopy:
>
> <QUOTING http://www.cancopy.com/newsletters/briefly-summer-97.html>
>  After eight years' drafting and a full year of hearings in Parliament,
>  Bill C-32, the legislation to amend the Canadian Copyright Act, has
>  finally passed.
>
>  Creators, producers and users all made compromises. Among the
>  most extensively debated were a number of exceptions for non-profit
>  educational institutions, libraries, archives and museums, many of
>  which apply only when a work is not "commercially available" in an
>  appropriate medium.
> </QUOTE>
> Again, it does not apply to us, but it demonstrates that there can be
> exceptions to the rules.  (I don't know whether this "commercial
> availability" was incorporated into bill C-32, but the question of
> commercial availability appears to be an open question in copyright
> protection.)

US law contains similar provisions for libraries and archives.  Commercial
availability is unlikely to appear in copyright law except as an exception
for archives, etc. since it would create a de facto requirement that an
author keep a work in print to maintain copyright protection.

> BTW - when you live in Canada, Canadian law is what concerns you.

Sure, unless you are an author in which case US law and international
agreements would probably also become important to you.

> On the angle of books-on-tape, I really didn't think about them since
> I *read* the real thing every day.  :-)

I hate books on tape, but my wife likes to listen to them in the car,

>
> Byron.
>
> Frank Townsend <ftownsen@iamdigex.net> wrote:
> > You are, of course correct re "copying for private use" of copyrighted
music
> > recordings which is permitted by the Canadian Copyright Act.
Interestingly
> > enough, however, the Canadian Act provides this right in conjunction
with a
> > right for "eligible authors, eligible performers and eligible makers. .
. to
> > receive remuneration from manufacturers and importers of blank audio
> > recording media."  There is also a tax on blank audio recording media.
So
> > someone does *pay* for this right.
> > *
> > In the US, *some* home copying of copyrighted recordings is probably
fair
> > use.
>
> > I was not really thinking about music (or Canadian law for that matter)
when
> > I responded to Marsha, whose examples of a "personal use" exemption (a
> > non-existent term under both US and Canadian law) were applied to a
literary
> > work by a U.S. author and a computer program by a U.S. corporation.