Thank you, Mr. Lake.
I'd like to respond to a couple of comments that Professor Geist made in response to Mr. Angus's question. I do agree with the notion that we need very clear framework rules, but I fundamentally disagree about what those rules are. As well, I do not believe that a person who buys a product subject to a digital lock should necessarily simply have the right to circumvent that digital lock, and I don't think using the “trumping” language is actually appropriate.
The TPMs on products are there to support business models, and if you look around the world, those business models are subscription business models, rent-to-own business models, and owning business models that cannot be sustained without legal protection for TPMs. If a person could simply acquire a product under various terms and then circumvent the TPM, there would simply be no incentive to launch those products, or, if they were launched, there is no reason to think they'd be provided at different price points that would be beneficial to consumers. Rather, what you'd have is businesses thinking that they had to price a product for the maximum possible use, which would be anti-consumer.
The last point I'll make on that, if I may, Mr. Lake, is that this isn't only about consumers. This is also about Canadian businesses and jobs, and every time an uncompensated copy is made, as Professor Geist would advocate, that's somebody whose pocket is being picked or whose job is being lost. That kind of policy, I submit, is a real problem.