Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Copyright Reform Takes Effect
An anonymous reader writes "This morning, the majority of Bill
C-11, Canada's copyright reform bill, took
effect, marking the most significant changes to Canadian
copyright law in decades. Michael Geist summarizes
the changes, which include expanded fair dealing, new protection for
creators of user generated content, consumer exceptions such as time
shifting, format shifting, and backup copies, and a cap on liability
for non-commercial infringement."
The North will rise again!
come and sue me for that against my fair dealing defence, original content boy.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
This is unfortunate. A digital locks rule would not *necessarily* be a bad thing, if it contained a, "as long as it does not supercede the above-listed consumer rights" clause. As it stands, I'm pretty sure this is not the case.
I had actually e-mailed my MP directly (a Liberal) and the Minister of Industry Affairs (a Conservative), making it pretty clear about how consumer's rights must be protected.
Looks like the levy on media is there; I guess music downloading will continue being legal in Canada. I'm fine with that.
The digital locks piece is what bothers me, and it's good that a process exists to have the governement re-visit this. So on top of my list will be to copy DVDs so that I can use it my devices. Since format-shifting is permitted then this should be fine on principle.
Michael Geist himself should be commended because he was a solid (constructive) critic and I remember seeing him on CSPAN doing an awesome job explaining the issues to the committee members. He played a BIG part in my opinion to get this bill the way it is.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
A great deal has been made about the expansions to fair dealing in this bill. However, there is a provision that "digital locks" cannot be circumvented, even for the legitimate purposes enumerated in the fair dealing expansions. The logical conclusion of this is that anybody producing any intellectual property can just slap a ROT13 cipher on their work and call it a digital lock. From there, all the new restrictions will apply, and none of the benefits. Anybody who reads the digital locks provision would realize that it's a loophole big enough to fly a 747 through, but based on the Conservative government's repeated refusal to amend that provision, it seems to be a feature, not a defect.
In short, this is a huge loss for the Canadian public, and a huge win for content producers.
To be fair, I have to say that those fair dealing exemptions are a good thing to be added to the law.
The core problem is that those exemptions can be revoked entirely at the discretion of the content maker who can simply decide to utilize a digital lock.
This is an inherent self-contradiction. If fair dealing was allegedly a reasonable exemption to copyright infringement, then why should a choice that the consumer has no part in making (the decision to utilize a digital lock) change that? Even at best it's irrellevant, and it's a damn-near certainty that most Canadians aren't going to care about this at all when they are engaging in practices that still may qualify as fair dealing, and allegedly could have been completely exempt from copyright infringement, but are suddenly illegal just because of a lock's presence. Consumers may have a choice to not buy such locked content, but by offering legal protection for digital locks, the government has created an added value incentive for publishers to utilize them, and this so-called "choice" that consumer have is restricted by the actual availability of unlocked and alternative content, which in the face of the added value that locks might have for publishers, is only going to get smaller in the future.
People do not obey laws that do not agree with... at least not in the long run, and it is as certain as anything that Canadians will break this restriction at their own convenience, privately or otherwise.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Right. This is not the case. Every single concession given to consumers are provided the absence of digital locks. In other words as soon as a digital lock is applied, every single consumer right goes out the window.
And so yes, Canadians have been fucked over royally by their government (which was just a proxy for the US government) in favour of the copyright lobbies.
And all of this despite the fact that the government ran (a charade of) a "consultation" across the whole country with Canadians asking what they wanted, and even though Canadians told them overwhelming that they did not want a DMCA, that is exactly what they have shoved up the asses of every single Canadian.
And as far as it being a DMCA, it's even worse than the US "model" where at least that model allows for a review every few years of new exceptions that should be made to the digital locks provisions. Canadians get no such reviews and will live with these digital lock rules forever.