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Canada's Proposed DMCA-Style Law Draws Fire
litui writes "Michael Geist assesses the problems with new copyright legislation presented today. In short, it looks like unless it's heavily contested, Canadians are in for a worse piece of law than the DMCA." CBC News' story quotes one critic, Scott Brison, who warns that enforcing the anti-circumvention clauses of this legislation would turn Canada into a police state — which, considering the pervasive eavesdropping it would take to make sure that people aren't enjoying their rights to fair use (or "fair dealing") of hardware or media, seems like a fair prediction.
Please write your MP and let them know you want no part of this bill. Please write a polite and informed message to them, encourage them to check out Michael Geist's page (link in article above). The world does not need another DMCA that empowers big media at the expenses of consumers' rights. Write your MP.
The bill still has to go through committee (LOL that will be fun) and back to the house, and then the Senate. I can see an election happening long before this becomes law.
:)
Politically, this is pretty stupid to roll out, but I think Harper is feeling heat from American business interests and bowing to them - SOP for this government.
In the scrum at the announcement, there were deflections over questions over whether a kid remixing and uploading a song to YouTube would be slapped with a $500 fine. I think they know they are vulnerable on this: Vernier suddenly developed a hearing problem and Prentice was a bot, repeating carefully scripted talking points. Watch the video, it's quite amusing: http://tinyurl.com/3zvmjn
Let me assure you, while Canadians are mostly passive, people will hold this one against the government Some of you may remember when there was that outrage over Rogers Cable's negative-option billing scheme. The lesson that all governments should heed is that it's not wise to mess with a Canadian's media.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
The American DMCA has many faults, but one of the more serious faults found within is the so-called "anti-circumvention law". This law essentially makes it illegal for Americans to bypass electronic locks, or "DRM", on content they own. Such a law gives unlimited power to content owners, and strips any and all rights from consumers, even rights explicitly laid out in law. This is not a "fair and balanced" approach to copyright.
Before we pass a similar law here in Canada, we must first ask ourselves what the purpose of such a law would be? The industry groups tell us that these locks are meant to protect against piracy, and that anti-circumvention legislation is therefore required to protect their intellectual property. If the goal is to prevent consumers from copying software, movies, and music, then we need pass no further legislation, for these acts are already illegal in this country (with the obvious exception of the private copying act of 1998). The act of copying such intellectual property is already illegal, and there is little sense in making it "more illegal".
DRM has extremely dire side effects. DRM stands for "Digital Rights Management", and that's exactly what it does; it controls what rights a consumer does and does not have over the media the consumer has purchased. But these are rights determined by the content provider, not by law, and the revocation of these rights becomes the province of private industry, which has already demonstrated a total disregard for consumer rights.
For starters, there exists no DRM scheme which does not also generate vendor lock-in as a side effect; music purchased on Apple's iTunes Music Store can only be played on computers running Apple's iTunes software or on Apple's iPod line of portable music players. Some DRM schemes, such as Microsoft's now defunct "PlaysForSure", are lice sensed to multiple manufacturers. However, even though you can buy multiple players from different hardware manufacturers that support PlaysForSure, when purchasing one of these players you are essentially locking yourself into Microsoft's music store.
Microsoft's PlaysForSure is an excellent example, by the way, of the problems inherent in a DRM scheme, because Microsoft has recently closed its authentication servers down [4]. This means that millions of people who bought music from Microsoft can no longer move that content to new audio players. If these consumers loose their existing audio players, or their players or computers break or are sold, then all of the music these people have purchased - music which they own - will be irretrievably lost. The only option these people have is to buy the media they already own a second time.
By enshrining digital locks and DRM in law, you ultimately give license to the content industries to write their own laws where copyright is concerned, because any rights given to consumers, even rights given explicitly under law, can be revoked by the application of a digital lock. Rights such as the "first sale doctrine", the ability to enjoy content on the player of your choice, the ability to format shift media from one format to another; all of these are taken away by almost every existing DRM scheme.
Many DRM schemes, especially in the realm of computer software, do not explicitly enumerate which rights they revoke in a clear and transparent manner to the consumer. Many times consumers are not even aware of the restrictions imposed upon them until they attempt to breach those restrictions. Rarely are consumers trying to breach these restrictions with criminal intent.
It is also important to point out that most such electronic locks are ultimately pointless; as soon as a single user bypasses the lock and posts the content to the internet, the content can easily be copied by all. Such locks will also always be easy to bypass because, from a technical standpoint, the underlying principal of such a lock is inherently flawed. All DRM schemes are based on encryption. Encryption, at it's most fundamental,
Does the mean the Recording Industry can no longer collect taxes on any and all CD/DVD recordable media once it passes since it'll be completely illegal to record anything for private use?
If this gets passed, it would mean that the primary use of CD/DVD recordable media would be for data backup purposes of which the Recording Industry has absolutely no involvement and the excuse that the media could be used for private duplication is out the window since it would be illegal to do so.
I bet the Recording Industry would back off if they knew their "free money" from media cds were cutoff.
Provided that the music isn't coming from a DVD, and that the original source isn't protected by DRM, in which case the new bill actually expressly criminalizes it, whereas before it would have been legal.
But not laser discs, video-CDs, DVDs, or any other audio-visual media with the exception of videocassettes. Again, these are now criminalized.
If you're using P2P technology, this new bill imposes a $20,000 fine for "making available", which is far more than the current statutory damages.
This part doesn't seem so bad (unless I'm missing something). Basically, if ISPs get served with a notice, they have to pass it on to their users, which seems good.
You are 100% wrong. The Canadian Conservative Party is pretty much like the Democrats in the US. The Canadian Liberal Party is further left than anything that exists in the US right now. The New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois are socialists -- I don't think any of those survive in the US, am I right?
Give a man a match: warm him for an instant. Douse him in petrol and set him aflame: warm him for the rest of his life.