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."

Some good, but adds restrictive digital lock rules

[Bradmont]

From the article:

Fourth, the digital lock rules are now also in effect. This was the most controversial aspect of the bill as the government caved to U.S. pressure despite widespread opposition to its restrictive approach. There are some exceptions to the digital lock rules (including for law enforcement, interoperability, encryption research, security, privacy, unlocking cellphones, and persons with perceptual disabilities), but these are drafted in a very restrictive manner. The government has established a regulatory process to allow for new digital lock exceptions, which creates the possibility of Canadians seeking new exceptions to at least match some of the U.S. exceptions on DVDs or streaming video. At the moment, Canada is arguably more restrictive than even the U.S., though the digital lock rules do not carry significant penalties for individuals. Under Canadian law, it is not an infringement to possess digital locks and liability is limited to actual damages in non-commercial cases.

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.

Re:NOW I'm moving to Canada

[MeNotU]

This provision alone can make all the other customer benefits meaningless. All a "content provider" has to do is provide ANY means of locking, including something as simple as ROT13, and the customer/consumer cannot legally do anything with it this bill was supposed to allow like format shifting.

Giant leap backwards for Canadian copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

A wolf in sheep's clothing

[mark-t]

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.

Re:Some good, but adds restrictive digital lock ru

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada had a regulatory process to allow satellite TV service into Canada, and satellite radio service into Canada. Both took about 10 years to complete, and were completed simply because in 10 years a Canadian media conglomerate had figured out how to monetize Canadian consumers.

The answer is it will not work because history has shown it doesn't. It's okay, everyone will just keep pirating just like they always did.