Copyright bills were put forward in both 2005 and 2008 and both were horrible. Do you know what happened? They weren’t quite put on the backburner, they died when parliament died. I’d say these bills are a great tool for Canadian politicians to appear tough on these issues to get the American media companies off their backs, but then before they get a chance to pass just dissolve parliament, and it’s gone. Said American companies don’t pay enough attention to Canadian politics to really notice this, and you don’t piss off the Canadians too much because you don’t actually do anything. I think we should all be on the lookout for an election coming soon.

It wouldn’t take a major change to fix the problem. All that’s really needed is a provision that makes breaking a digital lock legal when used for the lawful purposes spelled out in the rest of the bill. Such a change would mean the bill was still WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) compatible and stop corporate rights from trumping personal ones. Entertainment companies would still be able to aggressively go after those who make copies available since that isn’t permitted anywhere in this bill.

There are already several provisions that allow breaking digital locks, including for encryption research, the perception impaired, computer security (thank you Sony), loss of personal information (again thank you Sony) and software interoperability. It seems pretty reasonable to add device, format and time shifting and backups to that list.