The CopyCamp website has been updated with answers to many questions, providing more information for those thinking of attending this event in Toronto from September 28 to the 30'th. This event will bring together people from the arts community, the Free/Libre and Open Source Software community, and others interested in creativity and copyright together in one conference. The full list of questions includes:

• What is CopyCamp?
  
• What is an unconference? What is a camp? Is this one?
  
• Who is running CopyCamp?
  
• Is it free? Is it expensive?
  

FACIL, is holding an event on Friday the 11th of August 2006, 18h00 at the CRIM (550 Sherbrooke O., suite 100, near metro McGill).

Read the English translation of the announcement. I will be there to help clarify where Canada differs from the French process and law.

FACIL is a non-profit organization that promotes the use of Free Software in Quebec.

A NewsForge article by Bruce Byfield includes:

Torvalds' comments should probably be read in the context of his statement that his particular concerns, notably the mention of DRM, have not been addressed. Yet, in fact, they have been. In an interview with NewsForge, Eben Moglen, who heads the revision process, specifically mentioned that some changes in the second draft were specifically made in response to Torvalds' concerns. Apparently, the changes were not enough to satisfy Torvalds, who has ideological differences with the FSF, but that is no reason to condemn the process itself as hypocritical.

With the recent launch of the Petition to protect Information Technology property rights at the Ottawa Linux Symposium (French translation in progress), we now move to the harder stage of explaining the petition not only to those who we want to sign it, but those whose activities we wish to influence. It is not only politicians who must help protect our property rights, but also software authors who we want to discourage from working with monopolies in the hardware manufacturing and content industries to circumvent our property rights.

A newsforge article by Bruce Byfield includes:

We talked to representatives of two coalition members about the status of DRM in Canada: David Fewer, staff counsel at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Canada's leading legal technology law clinic, and Evan Leibovitch and Russell McOrmond of CLUE, an open source advocacy group.

It is great to see that some members of parliament are taking the time to learn more about FLOSS. While this introduction to the event focuses on using FLOSS to save money, it also provides an opening to discuss some of the policy issues facing our part of the software sector.

I wrote the following as a reply to an ITBusiness.ca article written by Shane Schick titled Truth, justice and the open source way which discussed FLOSS and the patent system.

I believe that FLOSS is to software what the patent system was for tangible inventions of physical things in the past.

Historically we had limited communications technologies and mobility slowing down collaboration. Inventions of tangible things took a lot of time and energy to move from design to prototype to distributable product. Within this context patents solved important problems. Without governments granting a temporary monopoly to the first inventor there would be too much risk to trying to develop ideas, and too much of an incentive to keep the ideas secret. Far too many inventions were kept secret and lost with the death of the inventor. A patent filing required a full disclosure of the invention such that someone skilled in the art could study, replicate and improve upon it, with the 20 year monopoly representing the slower realities of the day.

There's not much that longtime tech columnist John Dvorak has to has that I find agreeable. He's been wrong on so many issues related to open source it's been hard to keep track.

This week, however, there's finally something on which we can agree, as he implores his readership to Screw the Digital-Rights Bugaboo. Of course, in the US such a plea at this time is somewhat pathetic, as the DMCA is already in place. Where was this opinion when the DRM debate was actually going on south of the border? I guess I shouldn't expect more from Dvorak, but I guess it's (maginally) better late than never.

CLUE is participating with a wide coalition of experts and community groups who are deeply concerned about the legal entrenchment of “digital rights management” (DRM) technology in Canadian copyright law. Today this coalition, led by the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa, today launched the website intellectualprivacy.ca and released a background paper on the issue.

In an open letter to Minister of Canadian Heritage Bev Oda and Industry Minister Maxime Bernier accompanying the background paper, we offer to work with policy makers and politicians on this issue, and seek assurances that:

1. any proposed copyright reforms will prioritize privacy protection by including a full privacy consultation and a full privacy impact assessment with the introduction of any copyright reform bill


2. any proposed anti-circumvention provisions will create no negative privacy impact


3. any proposed copyright reforms will include pro-active privacy protections that, for example, enshrine the rights of Canadians to access and enjoy copyright works anonymously and in private

CLUE will remain an ongoing part of this effort, and work with the coalition to ensure that Canadian copyright laws protect both creators and consumers, and will not impede the ability of developers to create free and open source software.

Comments are invited.