I stole this from a forum posting because it’s got all the relevant information well presented. I’d already joined the Facebook group Fair Copyright For Canada, but thanks for the links/writeup J0no!
Well, it’s that time of year again, and the government is trying to introduce a bill to reform Canadian copyright law and ratify the terms of those questionable WIPO treaties the Liberals signed on our behalf in the late-90’s.
The good news is, the new bill appears to have been derailed right out of the gate.
The bad news is, they will almost certainly be introducing this bill into Parliament just as soon as they have their strategy worked out, and it’s sounding like it will be even worse than the squashed Liberal bill C-60.
If you don’t know what this is, will be an amendment to the Canadian Copyright Act, in a very similar vein to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I don’t want to provide a full break down of what this might mean at the moment, but basically what this will do is give large copyright holders the ability to control what devices you can use to enjoy electronic media, and thereby control how and when you can use it. The idea is that this will somehow curtail media piracy.
The implications of that are already fairly extreme. As just one of numerous examples, imagine you own an iPod and you decide you would like to purchase another music player from another company. Well, I hope you didn’t buy too much music from the iTunes music store, because this new law will provide Apple with legal protection from you ever playing your music on a player that is not Apple-approved.
For more information, here are some links I stole from the Fair Copyright for Canada facebook group:
Web-Based Resources on Canadian Copyright
Michael Geist: http://www.michaelgeist.ca
Digital-Copyright.ca: http://www.digital-copyright.ca
Fair Copyright: http://www.faircopyright.ca
CIPPIC: http://www.cippic.ca
Online Rights Canada: http://www.onlinerights.ca
Excess Copyright: http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/
Michael Geist’s The Canadian DMCA: What You Can Do
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2431/125/
Michael Geist’s Copyright Choices and Voices
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2419/125/
BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow on Canadian copyright reform
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/27/canadas-coming-dmca.html
CBC’s Search Engine Asks Questions of Industry Minister Jim Prentice
http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/blog/2007/11/last_chance_to_ask_the_industr.html
It also removes the ability to use copyrighted images for parody purpose.
That funny “Wii, Not So Wii, Frickin’ Huge” graphic you did a while back? You could be sued for something like that if this goes through.