Fight Canada's Ridiculous New Copyright Legislation!
The minority Conservative party is putting forth legislation to give Canada the world’s worst copyright law. They are doing this despite the failure of the US DMCA law. Soon big business will be able to sue schoolchildren and grandmothers for copyright infringement. This is going to be a terrible. Please help fight this. Michael Geist has the lowdown on how to fight this. Let’s kill this backwards bill.
He can say it much better than I:
The Canadian government is about to introduce new copyright legislation that will be a complete sell-out to U.S. government and lobbyist demands. The industry may be abandoning DRM, the evidence may show a correlation between file sharing and music purchasing, Statistics Canada may say that music industry profits are doing fine, Canadian musicians, filmmakers, and artists may warn against this copyright approach, and the reality may be that Canadian copyright law is stronger in some areas than U.S. law, yet none of that seems to matter.
The new Canadian legislation will likely mirror the DMCA with strong anti-circumvention legislation – far beyond what is needed to comply with the WIPO Internet treaties – and address none of the issues that concern millions of Canadians. The Conservatives promise to eliminate the private copying levy will likely be abandoned. There will be no flexible fair dealing. No parody exception. No time shifting exception. No device shifting exception. No expanded backup provision. Nothing.
Instead, the government will seemingly choose locks over learning, property over privacy, enforcement over education, (law)suits over security, lobbyists over librarians, and U.S. policy over a “Canadian-made” solution.
Update: The minister responsible, Jim Prentice, will not even talk about it with the public. Link
Typical.