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Canadian Council of Archives on C-32: Digital Lock Rules Disastrous For Long-Term Access

By Michael Geist

The Canadian Council of Archives, a national non-profit organization dedicated to nurturing and sustaining the nationwide efforts of over 800 archives across Canada, has submitted a brief to the C-32 legislative committee and requested an opportunity to appear.  While the CCA brief (not yet online) touches on several issues, including photographs and orphan works, its comments on the digital lock rules are particularly noteworthy:

Bill C-32 prohibits the circumvention of TPMs for legal purposes such as preservation activities used by archivists to protect the documentary heritage of Canada.  This is completely unacceptable and is a matter of very grave concern to the Canadian archives community in the digital environment where obsolescence is both rapid and disastrous for long-term access.  The CCA recommends that Bill C-32 be amended to provide that circumvention of TPMs is prohibited only when the circumvention is for the purpose of infringing copyright and that circumvention tools and services should be available for non-infringing uses. 


As I noted earlier this year, other countries have specifically address concerns related to digital locks and archiving.  For example, the Czech Republic's copyright law provides at Article 37 that:

(1) Copyright is not infringed by a library, archive, museum, gallery, school, university and other non-profit school-related and educational establishment:
a) if it makes a reproduction of a work for its own archiving and conservation purposes, and if such a reproduction does not serve any direct or indirect economic or commercial purpose;

That country's anti-circumvention provisions then specify at Article 43(4) that:

Legal protection under Paragraph (1) [the anti-circumvention provision] above shall be without prejudice to the provisions of . . . Article 37 (1) (a) . . . to the extent necessary to benefit from the exception. An author who used technical measures under Paragraph (3) in respect of his work shall make his work available to lawful users to the extent necessary to fulfill the purpose of the stated exploitation of the work.

It remains difficult to understand how a government can intentionally introduce legislation that will cause clear harm to the preservation of a country's own digital heritage.

Full post as published by Michael Geist on February 10, 2011 (boomark / email).