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Anti-DMCA Petition in Canadian Parliament
Matthew Skala writes "Last month we heard that the Canadian government is rejecting some of the worst features of the DMCA (more analysis here), but with Heritage Minister Liza Frulla parroting the media-cartel lobby with a promise to "give the tools to companies and authors to sue" and persuade children that downloading music for free is morally wrong even though it's presently legal in Canada, the battle is far from won. Yesterday, Member of Parliament Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster, NDP) introduced the first batch of signatures on Digital Copyright Canada's Petition for Users' Rights. This isn't just a Web click-through petition that politicians can freely ignore; more than a thousand real hardcopy signatures have already been collected from Canadian residents opposed to further expansion of copyright privileges, and the campaign is hoping for many more. Additional coverage on p2pnet.net."
The NDP isn't irrelevant. The current government has a minority of seats, so if all the opposition parties vote against a proposed piece of legislation, then it won't pass.
Downloading commercial music without payment is not.
Actually, if by "downloading" you mean making a personal copy of someone else's commercial music, then you're wrong.
The Canadian Copyright Act specifically allows personal copies of music to be made. The U.S.A. has never had an equivalent exclusion in its copyright laws.