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Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage
Room 604, 180 Wellington Street
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Honourable Members:
September 15, 2003
Regarding copyright, UNESCO's Vancouver Round Table of June 6th, 2003, on the World Summit on the Information Society was concerned that copyright is being used to reduce innovation. I attended that discussion on behalf of CMES.
The Vancouver Round Table encouraged the idea that copyright-free software be promoted to assist community development. All too often, licenses are an obstacle to progress.
Because of the concern that dominant corporations buy copyrights from creators in order to prevent competition with their products or services, or to speculate in the value of a work, there should be provision for a copyright work to revert to the individual producing the work after a set
period.
The reason is that the future value of a work is notoriously hard to predict. Corporations often have disproportionate power in bidding for a work while its value is still indeterminate. CMES would like to see protection for the personal rights of the individual creating the work.
In the same spirit, CMES supports the Independent Media Arts Alliance position of recognizing the director as the author of an audiovisual work.
Sincerely,
Richard Ward
Executive Director,
C.M.E.S. Community Media Education Society
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