The corporate copyright is a different issue so I won't touch it here.

I do believe in the extension of personal copyright beyond the grave, at least for a limited period of 50-75 years. After all, if my works have some monetary value, shouldn't that be part of the legacy I leave for my children and heirs? Shouldn't they have more right to my works than the person down the street or some marketing guy in Toronto? Of course they should.

As for what happens to a work after it is sold, the matter is not as cut and dry as that Supreme Court decision might imply. If I take a photograph, and sell you a print, that should not give you the right to take the print, or the image it contains, and modify or otherwise use it for your own purposes (especially commercial purposes). While you could resell the print itself, you should not be allowed to make copies of it for resale, sell the image to marketing firms, or use it for advertising of your own. I am still the copyright owner of the original photograph and I should still have the right to decide how it is used. However, if I sell you both the image and the rights to it - which is often the case in commercial photography - that is a different matter.

I believe the issue involved is this: If I buy a music CD and download the songs to my MP3 player, that should not be a violation of copyright. If I make a backup copy of the CD because I don't want to carry the original in my car, that should not be a violation. These are personal uses. The music industry, though, has long deemed such uses to be violations. However, if I give you and all of my other friends a copy of the songs, either a backup CD or downloaded to your MP3 players...well that should be, and is, considered a violation. It's no longer a strictly personal use.

The same issue is involved in photography. If I take a family portrait and you buy one copy for yourself, but then scan and copy it 20 times to hand out to your relatives, that should be considered a violation of copyright. Why? For the same reason as with the music CDs: because it's no longer for personal use and because you have taken away some of the potential financial gain the artist would have realized from the sale of those extra copies. Even though I took the picture for you, I still own the copyright and I still control all rights to the image.

What will happen if the courts and the government allowed the user/purchaser to do as they wish with authorized copies of works of art? For one, they will become more expensive. If, in the past, I would have sold you ten copies of that family portrait at $20 each but, today, you'll only buy one and then copy it yourself 9 times for your relatives, my response will be to make that first copy not $20 but $200. I will get my money up front with the original sale. If I plan to make a living doing it, I'll have no choice.

Actually, I will...I can live with the fact that people will copy and distribute my works without my permission and simply hope that I can still make a living at it. Or, I can just give away my images and publications knowing that I'll never make any money at it anyways because of all the unauthorized reproductions that will quickly start floating around. Or, I can simply say "the hell with it" and either give up my art altogether or refuse to allow anyone but myself to see and enjoy what I have created. None of those options are very inviting...

What I see is a public that believes they can use anything they find/acquire/purchase for whatever use they see fit in total disregard for the original creator of that work. Many don't understand copyright, the remainder simply don't care. It's reached an extreme. Unfortunately, the response from artists and industry has been to go to the other extreme. The problem is that current Canadian copyright laws are either unclear on certain matters or don't mention them at all. We need a new definition of the creator's rights, and a new definition of "fair dealings" in the digital age, so that the artists can be protected while the consumer has a clear understanding of their rights to personal use. But the Federal government undertook this task in 1996 and they still aren't finished...