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SOPA-style Amendments Dropped From C-11; DRM Provisions Not
New submitter Ashenkase writes "Michal Geist reviews what stayed and what was rejected by the Bill C-11 Committee Review. Looks like SOPA-style amendments are dropped except Digital Locks. There is still a chance for Canadians to have their voices heard before third reading: 'The Bill C-11 legislative committee concluded its clause-by-clause review yesterday as eight government amendments were added to the bill and all opposition amendments were defeated. The amendments included an expanded enabler provision and some modest tinkering to other elements of the bill. There are still several steps needed before the bill passes including third reading at the House of Commons, Senate review, and ultimately royal assent, but Canadian copyright reform is well on its way to completion before the summer starts. In the days leading up to the clause-by-clause review, many focused on three key issues: no SOPA-style amendments such as website blocking or warrantless disclosure of information, maintaining the fair dealing balance found in the bill, and amending the digital lock provisions. By that standard, the changes could have been a lot worse. The government expanded the enabler provision, though not as broadly as CIMA requested. Virtually all other copyright lobby demands — website blocking, notice-and-takedown, iPod tax, copyright term extension, disclosure of subscriber information — were rejected. Moreover, the provisions supported by consumer and education groups including user generated content protection, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies, Internet provider liability, and statutory damages reform were left untouched. This represents a major victory for the many Canadians and groups such as Open Media that spoke out on these issues.'"
Imagine if a stand-alone DRM supporting law was created in a place, there would be uproar.
Don't be happy until this crap is completely dead.
That's because the actual contents don't matter - they're completely bypassed by the "small part" of the bill.
I don't care to read the rest of the bill, because it doesn't matter. If all one needs to do is slap a digital lock on a work to completely bypass fair use, then why should I read the rest of the bill?
The digital lock provision isn't a "small part" of the bill.
"I've read the entire bill, and as far as I can tell the only bad thing about it is the digital locks provision, which is just a small part."
It may be a small part in writing, but it affects almost everything in there. It means that the copyright holders can trump any of the more enlightened provisions in the new law by installing DRM on their content. Want to format-shift your DVDs as the new bill claims you can do legally? No go. Not unless it's a DVD without CSS, which are extraordinarily rare, and most DVDs have additional DRM. Same for all sorts of things. Don't want to fish the CD off the shelf every time you want to play a game? Usually I'd install a NoCD patch for my legitimately purchased games. Not legal anymore.
The "digital locks" provisions negate most of the good points about the rest of the bill, and that's despite year after year of people pointing out the problem through multiple revisions of this bill. The facts are pretty clear that the current government doesn't care about the problem and wants to ram it through parliament anyway. They think Canadians are stupid, because when the government advertises "the new bill now lets Canadians legally do things they've always done anyway (e.g., format shifting)", the bill actually does the opposite, and makes many things technically illegal in the majority of circumstances whereas previously you could have defended yourself on the grounds of "fair dealing" and ignored the DMCA-like provisions (because they didn't exist yet). Wherever DRM is implemented, it rolls back the "fair dealing" rights we finally gained when the supreme court ruled on the matter back in 2004.
I don't like it, but apparently when this passes I'm going to have to break the law to get rid of the DRM on content I've legitimately purchased and want to use on whatever devices I wish. People who care about following the law are worse off.
But that's the evil brilliance of bill. That one little digital lock provision undermines everything else in the bill like a puppy-killing unicorn. Removing a "digital lock" (AKA DRM) is illegal EVEN IF you are doing it to create something that is otherwise legal under the other parts of the bill like time-shifting, format-shifting and yes even the noncommercial Star Wars re-edit (it's pretty hard to re-edit something without source material, and the Star Wars prequels have never been released in a non-DRM format).
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