The Canadian DMCA Battle Concludes: How Thousands of Canadians Changed Copyright

An anonymous reader writes "Nearly 15 years of debate over digital copyright reform will come to an end today as Bill C-11, the fourth legislative attempt at Canadian copyright reform, passes in the House of Commons. Many participants in the copyright debate view the bill with great disappointment, pointing to the government's decision to adopt restrictive digital lock rules as a signal that their views were ignored. Despite the loss on digital locks, the "Canadian copyright" led to some dramatic changes to Canadian copyright with some important wins for Canadians who spoke out on copyright. The government expanded fair dealing and added provisions on time shifting, format shifting, backup copies, and user generated content in response to public pressure. It also included a cap on statutory damages, expanded education exceptions, and rejected SOPA-style amendments."

Comments

The digital lock provisions trump everything else

[crazyjj]

What good do all those "time shifting, format shifting, backup copies" exemptions do when the digital lock provisions make them all completely illegal anyway? Sure, you can backup and format shift your DVD's, just as long as you don't break the CSS encryption to do so. In other words, it's illegal to format shift or backup your DVD's/Blu-rays/etc.

I mean, let's face it. No one gives a shit about format-shifting or backing up their own home videos. The whole point of format shifting is to move COMMERCIAL material from my physical DVD/Blu-ray to my computer.

Canadians must have a very different definition of "important wins" than us Americans. This is nothing less than a complete and outright victory for Hollywood and the media powers.

Inevitable

[Anrego]

But still sucks.

This is largely the problem with law. You can just keep on trying, until the public runs out of energy fighting it or it succeeds by fluke. If this hadn’t passed we’d be reading stores about the 5’th attempt, then the 6’th. In a weird way I’m glad it’s finally over.

And the digital locks thing sucks big time. I mean practically speaking, I’d still feel safe ripping a DVD at home it’s the guys writing the software that enables me to do this that are going to be hit. Just in principle it annoys me that it is no longer legal in many cases for me to make backups (or realistically make copies and keep the original media as backup) of media I purchased.

It’s infuriating, because I buy media to rip it onto my computer where I ultimately watch/listen to it. I do this despite it being considerably _less_ convenient then downloading it for _free_ because despite my hatred of big media, I still don’t think it entitles me to just grab their stuff for free. I (figuratively) have money, sitting in my pocket, that I would happily spend on high quality DRM free downloads if anyone would offer them to me. They don’t. So I do it the hard way.. and now they are making that somewhat illegal, in some pretend effort to prevent me from going the absolute easiest and quickest route (just downloading the damn thing) .. which is exactly what it will drive me to! I still don't feel I am somehow entitled to media on my terms.. but I've just stopped caring.

Re:Inevitable

[__aaeihw9960]

It’s infuriating, because I buy media to rip it onto my computer where I ultimately watch/listen to it. I do this despite it being considerably _less_ convenient then downloading it for _free_ because despite my hatred of big media, I still don’t think it entitles me to just grab their stuff for free. I (figuratively) have money, sitting in my pocket, that I would happily spend on high quality DRM free downloads if anyone would offer them to me. They don’t. So I do it the hard way.. and now they are making that somewhat illegal, in some pretend effort to prevent me from going the absolute easiest and quickest route (just downloading the damn thing) .. which is exactly what it will drive me to! I still don't feel I am somehow entitled to media on my terms.. but I've just stopped caring.

And this sentiment exactly is how these companies/countries can justify anti-piracy measures. It becomes, "Look, look, they're pirating this, we have to lock down our material more to make it stop."

I'm not sure if it's a vicious cycle, or just a circlejerk. But it's definitely one of the two.

I'm in the same boat as you - I buy it, and then either rip it or download it, just to appease my conscience. I purchased a DRM free game about a week ago - the download folder contained an .exe file. I was actually hesitant to move the file. Do you know how long it's been since I've seen a file that was easily portable, and contained every piece of the game? That's F***ed up.

Re:Inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a company who's primary software product is DVD/Bluray backup software and this is certainly worrying as its made what we do illegal here [in Canada]. I read the news on the way to work this morning and it certainly ruined my day. I suppose its time to start applying elsewhere for a development gig. I can always trust the conservatives to bend over for American corporations and endager Canadian jobs it seems.

Re:The digital lock provisions trump everything el

[TheRaven64]

It depends on the enforcement and wording. For example, the DMCA only protects 'effective' countermeasures. One argument that has been made is that any countermeasure that has been compromised is no longer effective, which would mean that the act of breaking DRM would demonstrate that it was not effective and therefore not protected by the DMCA. If the Canadian version has similar wording and courts uphold this interpretation, then it's a win...

Nice to have clarity

[canajin56]

Last week my wife wanted an eBook, but it wasn't available through Amazon. She bought it through Kobo, then removed the Kobo DRM and converted it to a .mobi and put it on her Kindle. It's nice to know that this is now legal format shifting and also illegal lock breaking. What a relief it is to have that kind of clarity. It's nice to know that the Harper government considers this acceptable because "It's unlikely that copyright holders would consider it worthwhile to sue individual violators". This makes me feel so safe. At least it's still just a civil violation, not a 10 year felony ;) It's still absolutely insane that Harper would defend the bill as "we won't enforce it so why worry?"

Re:Nice to have clarity

[mark-t]

Actually, format shifting any digitally locked work without consent of the copyright holder will be illegal under C-11. It doesn't matter whether or not the fair dealing provision should apply, because the fair dealing provisions explicitly exclude any case where the work was subject to a "technological protection measure".

This is why the so-called expanded fair dealing provisions in the bill are laughable... they are entirely revocable at the discretion of the content provider who can choose to use a digital lock.

The conservatives have stated that they don't expect to hold individuals accountable for "privately" breaking any digital locks, but that's only because trying to enforce it at that level would be virtually impossible without an enormous change in the privacy laws in Canada.

On the other hand, this bill effectively makes the Canadian blank media levy a completely illegal tax... since it exists to compensate artists for private use copying, but under C-11, with its digital lock provisions prohibiting decryption of any work without permission, any otherwise existing provision that might allow somebody to private copy a digital work is rendered all but completely moot. For what it's worth, it's the Conservative's intent to scrap this levy.

Not sure about Canadian law...

[Anonymous Coward]

But here in the states with the limits on copyright duration, I don't know why the Supreme Court hasn't ruled DMCA and digital locks unconstitutional as it extends copyright to infinity. There are no provisions for placing all encryption keys into an escrow account to be released to the public on xyz date.
There are no provisions in the encryption methodology to turn off encryption after xyz date.

Current encryption methods used on all DVD and Blu-Ray devices are illegal due to how they extend copyright (based on DMCA or DMCA type laws).

Use to protect communications?

[RecoveredMarketroid]

A thought off the top of my head... Can the digital lock provisions be used to protect personal communications? People are very worried about eavesdropping/profiling of their online activity-- wouldn't applying a 'digital lock' of even a trivial sort make place the eavesdroppers outside the law?

Obviously, strong encryption can protect your communications. But this is potentially something different-- you aren't guaranteeing the security of your communication, but rather, shifting the legal burden of violation onto some of the parties who sought to create the law in the first place...

For example, what if your bittorrent tracker information is protected by a digital lock?