Technological protection measures have been around for an awfully long time and are likely going to stick around.

How should Canada address these digital locks and the circumvention of them in the new act?

People file share. There is little empathy for the companies who say they are losing vast sums of revenue due to it. Litigation of ordinary citizens for vast sums of money in damages does nothing to change the apathy, if anything it causes a greater degree of it. The data that companies use to demonstrate that file sharing hurts them is flawed. People want to share, it is in our nature.

The end product of these discussions should be decided early. Are we going to submit a proposal? A model act? A policy paper? A cartoon?

without our society of sharing resources, ideas, and science where would we be?
reselling these ideas or resources in a "commercial" way without the creators permission is already illegal.

The more often your work is shared, seen, admired, learnt from the more chance people will value it and pay for the product commercially.

If sharing is natural and 99% of young people are doing it please do not consider restrictive laws that will have the effect of the extreme minority controlling the majority, its a recipe for disaster politically and financially.

Here is an excerpt from CBC.ca":

Canadian broadband blasted by Harvard study
Last Updated: Thursday, October 15, 2009 | 5:38 PM ET Comments212Recommend363
By Peter Nowak, CBC News
Canada rates poorly in a Harvard study that measures adoption, capacity and prices. (IStock)
Canada has some of the poorest high-speed internet service in the developed world and is an example of what not to do from a policy perspective, according to a study by Harvard University.

The 232-page study, commissioned by American regulators and released Wednesday evening, found that Canada rates poorly compared to peer countries when measures such as national broadband adoption, network capacity and prices are taken into account.

Canada was 22nd overall out of 30 countries surveyed by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Canada ranked 16th on broadband adoption, 20th on speed and capacity, and 25th on price. Japan, Sweden and South Korea headed up Harvard's rankings, while the United States placed above Canada at 13th overall.

The government proposed 5 big questions that are too broad to be proposed at single ideas.

1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?
3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?
5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

Breaking these questions into smaller more focussed discussions might lead to better results.

There are two questions here, do we make sub-questions out of these big, board questions? If so, what form do these subquestions take?

The practice of traffic shaping hinders the development of the internet. Practices like this, do not help the ISPs maintain a stable network, they help an ISP run a minimal network instead of a robust one.

Traffic Shaping is generally applied to peer-to-peer file sharing systems. These peer-to-peer file sharing systems should not be considered as a threat to network statistics, but as a tool. Currently, it is possible to use applications such as BitTorrent to download legal files, such as the Linux operating system, from peers rather than a deidcated server. This enables the network load to be distributed throughout the internet rather than on a single system. In the case of Linux, I have used this for work purposes. In other cases, the PlayStation 3 from Sony, using a Peer-to-peer sharing system for downloadable content and upgrades. This enables users of the system to recieve their downloads quicker, by not relying on one source.

Overall, if ISPs continue to shape traffic, the internet will fail to be the tool it could be for Canadians. Innovations are abundant on the internet, some will use higher bandwidth than others, we should not hinder these innovations by applying traffic shaping, we should be keeping up with them.

We need to find a collaborative writing tool that will allow for the development of our final deliverable. It needs to be able to support many users and should be able to handle larger documents.

How should contributors be identified in the final submission?

Should the Copyright Act include limitations on the types of conditions rights holders and other parties can impose?

Licensing agreements can often far overreach the scope of copyright protection.

More importantly, perhaps, ISPs in other jurisdictions have been making deals with copyright holders to cut off customers accused of infringing, and now even to block certain sites like Pirate's Bay altogether.

Thoughts? Solutions?