Frames Supporting Copyright Moderation

Everyday Life: Excess copyright is an intrusion into the everyday lives of ordinary Canadians. It interferes with normal and legitimate activities, threatens privacy, and brings government into everyday activities in the private sphere.
"The government has no place in the family rooms of Canadians"

Censorship: Radical copyright forbids artistic and political expression, including satire, parody, collage and criticism. It puts government in the business of outlawing art and art forms. It attacks freedom of speech.

Made in America: Revisions to the law are being undertaken under the guidance of and pressure from the American government and media companies (and their Canadian branch-plant operations). Canadian musicians and other artists have rejected this as not in their interests.

Moderation vs Radicalism: Protection for digital locks and intrusive monitoring constitute a radical change discontinuous with the history and application of the law. Such changes show disrespect for the balance of the past. This is not copyright as we know it. We would be better to be moderate, include many affected groups, and learn from the experience of other countries. Note: attempting to occupy the moderate middle is a common communication tactic. And in this debate, we really are the moderates.

Privacy: The new laws will need enforcement mechanisms. C-61 comes with warrantless data retention at the behest of rights holders, while ACTA threatens broader search and seizure powers for authorities from police to border guards. These changes use criminal enforcement mechanisms to deal with a civil cause of action.

Frames Supporting Radical Copyright

Law & Order: Appeals to the sentiment that the law must be obeyed. Piracy is characterized as rampant lawlessness that must be stopped. Often this is combined with talk of young people, drawing on stereotypes of lawless youth and the idea that they must be taught right from wrong. Some reports and articles have attempted to link filesharing to for-profit counterfeiting by organized crime. The statement "piracy is theft" falls into this category (the word piracy itself implies lawbreaking). This frame seems likely to be effective with older people and social conservatives.

Modernizing Copyright: The Angus Reid poll found that a majority of respondents felt this would be the effect of the law. Technology has changed, so must the law. There is an implication here of progress, of innovation, and also of keeping up with the rest of the world.

International Obligations: Canada is depicted as failing in its obligation to implement the WIPO treaty. This is an embarrassment for a country that prides itself on a multilateral cooperative approach to international issues.

Property Rights: Copyright is a property right of an artist. It is an exclusive right to control access to and use of her work. It is the role of government to enforce that right through appropriate laws, especially in the face of technological change that undermines that right. The right exists because without the artist the work would not exist. In theory, that control can be absolute. It is the sole right of the artist to implement less control (e.g. by allowing a work to be shared). Technology that implements this control is not introducing new rights, it is only implementing existing ones. (This is an extreme statement of the position, which I have tried to make seem reasonable. It is in fact riddled with unfounded assumptions. Its implementation undermines art and basic freedoms in a democratic society. - Geof)