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.

Comments

Mac and Linux users...

[farrellj]

Would become criminals under the new law...

With the new law, it is going to be illegal to bypass any "digital" locks
that a content creator/publisher puts on their work.

One of these systems that is used by some Record companies prevents you from
coping a CD on a Microsoft Windows machine. The way that it works is that it
automatically loads up a program when you put the CD into the computer that
prevents the transfering of CD's music to either your computer or Ipod. This
is known as Digitial Rights Managment or Copy Protection.

But what if you a Mac, or a Linux machine?

As the software that is automatically loaded from the CD to prevent you
copying only works under Microsoft Window, it would thus be illegal to put
that CD into your Mac, as it would be a "circumvention of the copy
protection" on the CD.

This law is stooopid!

ttyl
          Farrell

Liberals

[JebusIsLord]

I know the NDP and probably the Liberals will vote this down, and we currently have a minority government so the Conservatives won't be able to push this though.

Hopefully... lately the Liberals (our official opposition) have been obstaining from votes rather than trigger an election when they're down in the polls. A sad state of affairs, really.

Re:Liberals

[Deadplant]

I wish we had some to spare.
Sadly the Liberals (kind like your Democrats) are performing just like your Democrat controlled congress.
They have decided that their party politics and political strategy is more important than any of the actual issues that have come to a vote.

Re:Liberals

[sayfawa]

Exactly! Those cowards just sat out a bill which they were against involving immigration. The bill basically goes over the head of our point system which judges a potential immigrant impartially, based on their skills and instead gives whoever is in charge of immigration at the time way too much power to pick and choose, based on their predilections, who comes in and who doesn't. Similar to how it was in first half of the century when 'Great White North' referred to more than just snow. This bill will have serious consequences for many people and families. The Liberals were completely against it but, because it might have triggered an election, they slink off during the vote and let it through.

If they can't stand up for their beliefs for something as important to Canada as immigration, then no way do they have the guts to make a big deal out of copyright reform.