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Abram Hindle's Blog, The Personal Blog Of Abram Hindle

Abram Hindle
abezblog@abez.ca

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    Wed, 30 May 2007

    Subject: Hon. Maxime Bernier - Copyright Act
    I got this back from the Minister of Industry.

    Pretty bland response. I editted some email addresses.

    ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 10:15:26 -0400 From: "Correspondence Minister/Correspondance Ministre: OCS" 

         <CorrespondenceMinister ic gc ca>
    To: Abram Hindle <ahindle cs uwaterloo ca> Subject: Hon. Maxime Bernier - Copyright Act

    Thank you for your electronic correspondence regarding possible amendments to the Copyright Act (the Act).

    In my view, the Act must continue to be supportive of innovation and research while reflecting current technological and legal realities. To this end, a balance between adequate protection for copyright holders and reasonable access to copyrighted material is critical.

    With this in mind, I am working closely with my colleague, the Honourable Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to copyright reform.

    Please be assured that your comments will be taken into account as we move forward.

    Sincerely,

    Maxime Bernier

    -----Original Message----- From: Abram Hindle [mailto:ahindle cs uwaterloo ca] Sent: April 16, 2007 9:12 PM To: Correspondence Minister/Correspondance Ministre: OCS Subject: Proposed changes to BILL C-60

    Dear Maxime Bernier, Minister of Industry,

    As a computer science researcher I am concerned over news that anti-digital-circumvention laws are proposed as additions to BILL C-60. By making digital circumvention illegal and the tools and means of doing so illegal you provide NO market incentive to industry to protect a user's privacy. Essentially computer criminals will use the latest software exploit to access the private information of Canadians and use this info in expensive and dangerous ways. They will do this regardless of legality of circumvention. What this law does is it silences ethical researchers who find bugs in software and devices which often protect people. Without these researchers these bugs go un-found or they are kept within the computer underground and used against unwitting victims.

    Essentially you're taking the most capable researchers who help protect your digital security and putting them in chains. Even worse you're allow industry and the market to become lazy, you're removing incentive for industry to fix security issues.

    If you think these are laws are only for music and videos I suggest you read about the abuse of the DMCA in the USA and how it is used to protect faulty voting machines and buggy software from "exploitation" by people who have every right to audit the safety of these devices.

    Do not make common sense illegal, software research has shown that there are numerous bugs created per every 10 lines of code written. Most software packages you use are over 100,000 lines of code. Bugs are not going away and computer exploits are not going away. Do not disable our ability to secure ourselves against criminals.

    Ref: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1875/125/

    Abram Hindle

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