Canada Proposes n Anti-Piracy Law

Canada, one of the shining lights in the copyright and intellectual property world, has a shadow approaching that may dim that for all. The name of that shadow? Bill c-61, which was formally introduced by Industry minister Jim Prentice yesterday.

The bill, dubbed the ‘Canadian DMCA’ has not been popular with many of those it will effect. Over 40,000 have joined a facebook group, run by Michael Geist opposing it. Geist, a law professor at University of Ottawa, has been fighting to oppose these laws for some time now.

The bill is controversial in many ways. Whilst supporters of the bill will point to the allowances for time shifting, format shifting, and the ability to ‘private copy’ (moving a song from CD to an mp3 player for instance). It will, however, prevent that activity, though criminalization, if there is any sort of technological restriction on it. Anti-copy flags on TV shows, DRM on music, or rootkits on CDs would mean that any attempt to make a fair use, would be subject to prosecution and heavy fines.

Perhaps even more important, uploaders, and to an extent, downloaders too (certainly those on torrents), will now be liable. While in the past, the RMCP has stated it won’t pursue uploaders, with new laws come changes in policy for those that enforce the laws. Bill C-61 contains a statutory damage amount of $500.
This is a change from the previous wording, which gave the court latitude to drop that $500 to as low as $200.

Scene members, and torrent sites will also find themselves under increasing pressure. Despite claims that most torrent sites are not commercial, it’s not stopped industry associations from claiming they are, in order to get law enforcement action against them.

Although DRM has seen a decline in recent times, laws like this can only give content distributors incentive to bring them back, at least in Canada .

:source: Source: http://torrentfreak.com/canada-propo...cy-law-080612/
:view: Homepage: http://torrentfreak.com/

Not good for pirates in Canada..


:(

Not good for anyone anyway markupmaster.
When a country as liberal as Canada creates laws like this it becomes increasingly easy for other countries to follow suit.
Fortunately it's not a fait accompli yet as it has to go through a couple levels of government to be passed into law and at least one of the major parties strongly opposes it.
Still I'll be sleeping a little less soundly at night now.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/who-copyrightlaw/

possible fines of up to 20k for sharing music, if this gets passed..

The party that wants this to pass is in a minority. They need votes from an opposing party to get this passed. So its definitly not something anyone should get thier panties in a bunch about just yet.

i doubt that such party wants to pass it, what that party wants is all the support the industry can provide so they win next elections.. die anarquists

What a shit party... Do they at least give us free alcohol?

The feedback Im hearing is that the penalty side of the law seems to zero on uploaders not downloaders. And most critics are saying that its practically unenforceable as the police (RCMP) have already indicated they won't bust their resources going after pirates. ISP's still are not automatically required to hand out ISP's etc etc.

And the bottom line at the end of the day - the max one-time fine is $500 CDN.

I call this a ... Hey MIAA/GW - Here is something to make you shut up after your years of political pressure and hardball tactics on our government. Now go away.


Personally for me it's business as usual.

when will this govt. learn that its days in office are limited.

I think the whole thing is a joke as those peons won't be in power by the time the bill passes . Theres so many things wrong with it , being made in the USA being one of them .


It won't change my habits seeding or leaching and have joined a online group to fight it .

Link : http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...copyright.html