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Liberals Come Out Against Bill C-11 Due to Digital Lock Rules

As debate on Bill C-11 kicks off today, the Liberals have staked out their position, announcing their opposition to the bill due to the digital lock provisions. Industry critic Geoff Regan states:

“The Conservatives want us to believe that Bill C-11 will give Canadian consumers the right to take material they purchase – such as music – and transfer it onto different devices. But what they are not saying is Canadians can only do this if that content is not already locked. Breaking those locks under this legislation will be making Canadians into criminals for doing something the government has deemed lawful. Allowing digital locks to trump the rights of consumers is the complete opposite of balanced legislation. It’s contradictory and completely skewed. The Conservatives giveth and the Conservatives taketh away! They take away from Canadian consumers and they take away the abilities of innovators and creators.”

Regan continues by focusing on the U.S. influence over the legislation:

“It’s disturbing, but we all know why the Conservatives are force-feeding us one of the most restrictive digital lock provisions in the world. Diplomatic cables tell us that the Conservative government colluded with the US in their lobbying efforts, even going as far as to encourage the US to elevate Canada on the Special 301 Priority Watch List – a list of countries that do not provide adequate protection of intellectual property.”

The Liberal position is consistent with Bill C-60, their 2005 copyright bill that linked the digital lock rules to actual copyright infringement and did not establish a ban on the tools that can be used to circumvent digital locks.

43 Comments

  1. I think I can live with this if the Conservatives actually change it. But I doubt that they will, they must make their American overlords happy after all.

  2. Backbenchers
    I fear the only reason the liberals are coming so clearly out against this is because they’re now political backbenchers… infertile.

    IIRC, During the election campaign they were far less committal about their position. NDP (Angus) were far more vocal on the issue, and I bet now that they’re the official opposition they’ll take the old liberal tack.

  3. Who cares if they are doing it because they are backbenchers or not, this bill is all about corporate greed at the expense of citizen. The big companies didn’t find a way to make money off the internet, now they want to pass laws for it.

    Fuck lobbying.

  4. Occupy Canada.

  5. Rory McGreal says:

    Is DRM really the issue
    Michael,
    Great post!
    After looking at the contents of a variety of the licenses being used for digital content, it seems to me that when you agree to the license, you have agreed that you have no fair dealing rights. In which case, what does it matter if it is locked or not?? We can’t avail of fair dealing in an educational or research context in any case. Am I reading this wrong?

  6. @Whocares
    If it were a case of “this bill is all about corporate greed at the expense of citizen” then the expanded fair dealing wouldn’t have been incorporated into the bill.

    I liked the comment made by a writer at the Globe and Mail… paraphrasing, you know it is a more or less “balanced” bill when everyone is pissed. By this he meant that no group got everything that they wanted. The consumers got expanded fair dealing rights, the publishers got protections for TPMs.

    Personally I could do without the protection for TPMs, but I also realize that the companies will stop using it, or offer non-locked versions, if the sheeple are willing to stand up for themselves and forego a purchase of something with TPMs in place. This does not require legislation and in fact makes grassroots use of the very market forces that the “Occupy” groups are protesting. Corporations are profit driven (what a flash of the blindingly obvious). If they aren’t making any revenue from something, there is no profit and the practice will stop (another flash of the blindingly obvious).

  7. The expected Conservative response on this isssue …
    [Fingers in ears] la-la-la-LA-LA-la-laaa

    I hope to be proven wrong.

  8. Prisons
    So this kinda makes sense why the Harper administration is planing on expanding the prison system. We are all going to the slammer!

  9. @Anon-K
    “Personally I could do without the protection for TPMs, but I also realize that the companies will stop using it, or offer non-locked versions, if the sheeple are willing to stand up for themselves and forego a purchase of something with TPMs in place. This does not require legislation and in fact makes grassroots use of the very market forces that the “Occupy” groups are protesting. Corporations are profit driven (what a flash of the blindingly obvious). If they aren’t making any revenue from something, there is no profit and the practice will stop (another flash of the blindingly obvious).”

    I feel like you are giving the RIAA way too much credit. The industry had opportunities to make boatloads of legitimate money had they chosen to innovate. Instead they’ve chosen to litigate, and as much as possible, stand in the way of innovation.

    One can only hope that TPMing everything will result in their financial demise in the face of people illegally sourcing their media/breaking TPMs, but we as a nation should not be forced to do something illegal in order to allow natural market forces to work.

  10. RE: Anon-K
    Your “DRM” choice attitude doesn’t work. This isn’t fair trade vs. slave labour; there is no real choice. How come the U.S. doesn’t have this so-called ideal choice you describe? They have anti-circumvention too, but instead of creating a large and obvious DRM and non-DRM market, all it has done is be open up to abuse by companies who simply want to lock down their products (PS3, xbox, iPhone) among other abuses. The strategy hasn’t worked in France either. A choice only exists when the conglomerates and corporations don’t have monopolies. Considering that Canada is riddled with monopolies like Rogers, Bell, and so-on, this is of particular concern here.

    Furthermore, your scope again only extends to market offerings rather the wider implications of this bill. To think DRM only matters in how conglomerates will sell DVDs (as an example product) is demonstrably naive. People running a legally purchased Mac OS X copy on a generic PC would be breaking the law. People modifying a PS3 for virtually any purpose, legal or not, will be breaking the law. Playing a legally purchased DVD in VLC would be breaking the law. Free software that breaks DRM so that the desired content is actually usable with Free software would be breaking the law. Forcing a GNU/Linux or any other installation on a Windows 8 computer with permanent secure boot would be breaking the law. And on, and on, and on.

    No anon-k, your assertion has not been proven by the real life examples provided by other countries who have gone this completely backwards and self-defeating route.

  11. Anon-k, you really like that Globe and Mail writers comment. The thing you have to realize is that even unbalanced bills have complaints from both sides, even if one side gets everything they want they won’t stop arguing the point to avoid the bill from being modified. This alone invalidates your blind following of an article written by someone that’s part of big media. In this case, the big media has a “do not copy” license that never expires on anything they put a bit flag saying “don’t copy” as a lock. A never expiring “do not copy” license seems rather one sided to me. This is very much against the reason copyright was invented. Who needs to innovate when you can keep making money off dead people or one song you released (but didn’t write) 40 years ago? Clearly this isn’t beneficial to society’s advance – it’s the rich getting richer.

    Companies won’t stop using locks unless forced. Music was forced by people bypassing locks or downloading copyright infringing material. You are closing the legal way to force the market to shift. It’s either steal and be a criminal or break a lock and be a criminal – either way they can cry foul and not have to come up with a new business model. Once this bill is passed I can see more digital locks due to the added benefits to the companies, not less digital locks which would then be caused by illegal activities. Considering how lucrative the lawsuits in the states are, perhaps the new business plan is to simply outlaw as much as possible and proceed with lawsuits.

  12. @Dave: Incorrect. The Liberal stance on the proposed digital lock provisions has not changed at all since back when this bill was called C-32. *EVERY* party in parliament other than the Conservatives has previously made a statement to the effect that they recognize that the proposed digital lock provisions go too far, and are heinously imbalanced. This is such a serious issue since the last election especially because now that the Conservatives have a majority, they could pretty much pass this thing at the drop of a hat. I expect that the only remaining chance is for the conservatives to somehow be convinced of the specific problems with the bill and agree that some concessions made to its digital lock provisions will not utterly emasculate the intentions of the bill, as they currently seem to fear, and can put some much-needed balance into it.

  13. Anon-K raises a very good point. If the Bill was a direct reflection of U.S. interests it would not contain notice and notice, expanded fair dealing or the range of other wins for the general public.

    The digital locks section is terrible, but it is not the only part of the Bill. A nuanced approach is required from progressives on this or we might end up with the worst of worlds – legislation stripped of fair dealing, notice and notice, etc. but with the draconian anti-circumvention language still in place.

  14. If the intent of digital locks really was to restrain copyright infringement, it would have been abandoned a long time ago, as it has been proven time and time again that it just plain do not work.

    The real intents of digital locks are more pernicious:

    *They are primaraly a form of control for how the media is used. If you cant transfer your music from the cd to the Ipod, then you have to buy it again. Want a sample of a song for a ring tone? Pay 4x the value to have it. Want to rip that dvd to your media center? Buy it again or forgo the quality of dvd. Your choice.

    *They enable vendor lock-in. Ever tried to play that wma file on your Ipod? Use a movie digital version on an Archos? Remember Walmart Electronic Music store?

    *They enable region lock-in. Because God forbade global realeases.

    Your so-called fair dealings rights becomes naught because of digital rights and no amount of boycott will do anything, because most people will sadly put up with it.

  15. @Anon-K
    ..”paraphrasing, you know it is a more or less “balanced” bill when everyone is pissed”

    Sounds like a cliché in the making. But hardly true. Off the top of my head, I can think of dozens of potential situations where “everybody is pissed”, and at the same time the solution is NOT “balanced” – just stupid.
    A proper “balance” compromise would be when nobody is happy, but everyone can live within it. And the “solution” is logical, internally consistent, and equally applied.

    ..”the companies will stop using it, or offer non-locked versions, if the sheeple are willing to stand up for themselves and forego a purchase of something with TPMs”

    The corollary to that, is the companies refuse to release any works without “legal protection” for TPMs. Neither one is a realistic response in the real world.

    For the most part I don’t disagree with the specific statements you make, but I disagree with the conclusions they lead you to. This is because those statements only consider a narrow segment of the issues.

    In it’s essence, TPM has nothing to do with copyright law. It’s application is to the area of “digital distribution”. Once you disconnect the issue of TPM from the issues of copyrights, you move the discussion into it’s proper arena, that of economics. The whole discussion changes it’s focus and tone.
    Any reference to TPM doesn’t belong in C-11, a bill focused on modernising copyright law. The intersection between TPM and copyright is peripheral, works distribution mechanisms. The issues of legal protection for TPM apply to a much wider range than just copyrighted works distribution. It deserves it own bill, with it’s own bounds and limits.
    When you move the discussion out of copyright issues and into economic issues (which still affects some, but not all, copyright owners), the issues become more clearly defined. EG: the issue of a “license to use” the content can be clearly delineated from the “distribution protection” issue. Laws become simpler, and have clearer boundaries. They each have a separate “focus”.

  16. Keeping TV recordings
    I wouldn’t be surprised if the Conservatives give up on the blanket DRM circumvention to infringing-only; this is what their alleged puppet-masters south of the border in the end care about.

    First of all it should be noted that this is in no way, shape or form a “Copyright Reform” act, it’s “Copyright Modernization” in the sense that it enacts certain obligations we have (like it or not) to WIPO/WTO, etc. This means that re-thinking the length of copyright protection in the light of private duplication capabilities is out of the question and therefore doesn’t come up. So any qualification as “fair and balanced” is “fair and balanced within the framework of current international obligations”, an important distinction.

    Other than the DRM issues, the biggest beef I have is Section 29.23 Fixing Signals and Recording Programs for Later Listening or Viewing (1) (d) says “the individual keeps the recording no longer than is reasonably necessary in order to listen to or view the program at a more convenient time”. This means you can no longer keep a recording. If your son is being interviewed on the (local) evening news, so sorry, but you can’t legally keep your recording. This was present in previous incarnation of the copyright law amendment bills, but since VCRs became mainstream in the early 1980s people have removed the little plastic tabs on video cassettes in order to keep certain recordings. Removing those tabs will soon be illegal!

  17. USA
    I talked to some people in the US and they told me if our copyright laws are anything like theirs it’s a joke and that we shouldn’t worry but with my understanding Americans don’t have digital locks, is this true?

    I notice a lot of Americans on P2P programs still and also downloading torrents. .

  18. The Reality
    When this bill passes in all it’s digital lock glory, how will that really affect the average Joe Blow consumer? I would argue hardly at all. Software consumers use, like VLC Player, CDex, DVD Decrypter, DeCSS and Handbreak for breaking locks on CDs/DVDs/BDs is easily attainable, legal in most countries and won’t magically disappear from the Internet. Possession of such technologies is widespread is impossible to police. Using such technologies is untraceable and even more difficult to police.

    Where does it really make a difference? Industry!! The rise in popularity of the stand-alone media player and it’s big brother, the full blown Home Theater PC, Digital PVRs, MP3/DivX enabled deviced etc. is already to the point that it’s pointless to try and reign them in. Such legislation serves only as an attempt to castrate new technologies and businesses in favor of established technologies and businesses and truly inhibits innovation and creation, again in favor of the established and status-quo. Sure, I can buy a media player or build an HTPC, but then I won’t legally be able to copy any of my legally purchased content to the device. Forward thinking from our illustrious conservatives.

    “We didn’t think of that use” will NEVER be an excuse for limiting my usage 10, 20 years after the fact. That’s why this legislation is doomed to fail…at least the digital locks portion.

  19. @??
    “I notice a lot of Americans on P2P programs still and also downloading torrents.”

    Some time ago I did some testing on P2P sites. My tests all revealed that if the content was in English, be it printed, audio or video, 80%+ of the IP addresses downloading the content were American. The reality is chilling compared to how skewed they represent the numbers.


  20. @Byte: “it enacts certain obligations we have (like it or not) to WIPO/WTO, etc.”

    Like anyone cares:

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/18/pol-us-ambassador-buy-american.html

  21. @Byte
    “it’s “Copyright Modernization” in the sense that it enacts certain obligations we have (like it or not) to WIPO/WTO, etc.”

    Not true. Canada has only signed the WIPO treaty; there would only be an obligation after ratification.

  22. @??: Some people actually care about adhering to the law, even if it is easy to get away with not actually bothering.

    The problem is when fair and reasonable usage is denied to people, then things have gotten out of hand. C-11’s blanket TPM provisions bias things totally in favor of the publisher that has the resources to use them, and is far worse than any similar provisions in the USA because at least in the USA, fair-use is still possible, whereas the analog in Canada – fair dealing – will not generally be utilizable without the copyright holder’s permission.

  23. @IamME
    You said it. The ones crippled by this law will most certainly be newly establishing companies trying to compete with the big monopolies. That directly collides with the Conservative’s suggestion that DRM-availability will be driven by consumer choice, which there won’t be because companies won’t be able to compete due to not being able to exist.

  24. BULL
    Dear Donald

    Thank you for writing to me with your concerns about Bill C-11.

    Bill C-11 was introduced with little or no changes to it since its original introduction in the last session of Parliament as Bill C-32. At that time our government conducted extensive consultations with not only industry stakeholders but with Canadians across the country so that we could present a Bill that balanced both the rights of creators and the needs of Canadians in a digital age. From those consultations Bill C-11, formerly C-32 was created and it is our government’s belief that Bill C-11 will bring Canada in line with international standards and promote home-grown innovation and creativity. It is a fair, balanced, and common-sense approach, respecting both the rights of creators and the interests of consumers in a modern marketplace. There are many current examples of unprotected music being sold legitimately by retailers, and Bill C-11 strikes a fair balance between duplication of unprotected digital material and prohibiting the circumvention of locks should they be present.

    By modernizing the Copyright Act, the Government of Canada is working to secure Canada’s place in the digital economy and to promote a more prosperous and competitive Canada.

    For further information, please visit the website http://www.balancedcopyright.gc.ca.

    Should you have any other questions or concerns please feel free to contact my constituency office at 905-886-9911.

    Sincerely,

    Hon. Peter Kent, PC, MP – Thornhill


  25. “Bill C-11 strikes a fair balance between duplication of unprotected digital material and prohibiting the circumvention of locks should they be present. ”

    So if Sony decides to install another rootkit on my computer, it will be illegal to remove it?

    Sounds like a very fair balance to me.

  26. @Mark
    ..”whereas the analog in Canada – fair dealing – will not generally be utilizable without the copyright holder’s permission.”

    Perhaps. Or perhaps not. This is where it gets messy. The copyright holder isn’t the one applying the TPM, it’s the distributor. Now you get into the details of contract terms between the copyright holder and the distributor. And per C-11, you are *still* not allowed to remove the TPM, even with the copyright holder’s permission. The only recourse is to have the copyright holder supply you with a copy of the work without TPM – if they are contractually allowed to do so.

  27. Misc.
    @Skeptic: Canada has signed but not ratified the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) because the government needs to change the legislation first, before they can ratify. They have been trying but all bills except C-11 (so far) died along with their governments.

    This all started, by the way, with Bill C-60 introduced by the Liberals, which did allow for non-infringing TPM circumvention, but otherwise was clamping down on the use of “officially” copyrighted materials that we all enjoyed. Don’t think the Liberals are that far removed from the Conservatives’ digital agenda.

    I’ve replied on this blog before, that what’s really needed is actual copyright reform. If I wanted to have the public domain work Aesop’s Fables back in 1975, I had no choice but to go to a book store, and buy a printed copy. Public Domain or not. A collection of short stories written that year was -for that purpose- identical to one written in 600 BC. Copyright was something that for the largest part affected publishers, not consumers.

    Consumers did not own their private printing presses, vinyl record pressing plants, film development labs, etc. Today, that’s all different. Consumers can not only conveniently make copies of e-books, songs/albums and photos/movies, but also conveniently share them with/obtain them from complete strangers, which is being done on a massive scale. Only the “radicals” believe that it should be fine to do this, non-commercially, with brand-new works. The “moderates” disagree and believe copyright should cover works anywhere from 5 years to a few decades. What reason could there, given the Digital and Internet revolutions of the last 30 years, still be for enforcing a “Life+50” copyright protection? Why does “everyone” pretend that the Life+ rule is set in stone, by way of not even publicly bringing that possibility up for discussion, and it’s just the methods of enforcement that need to be modernized?

  28. Concerned Citizen says:

    Dr. Geist,

    As you read through this comment stream and see the almost total confusion and lack of understanding of actual copyright, I wonder… are you proud of your part in creating this?

    I think you probably are proud.

    Pathetic.

  29. @Concerned Citizen
    Instead of trying to bad-mouth Dr. Geist, why don’t you enlighten us on our lack of understanding?

    Times have changed, my friend. As I said before, back in 1975, copyright and related issues did not affect the average citizen. Sometimes you were able to buy a bootleg LP, knowing it wasn’t official, but that would be it. The public didn’t really care about copyrights, so business and politicians could do what they wanted without much public scrutiny.

    Today “copyright” is turning into a mainstream subject of discussion, most of the time by people who are indeed not legal experts, but who do find it affects them, and in 99% of the cases in a negative way. And instead of letting Those Who Know Better For Us, a.k.a. The Man or The Authorities decide, for us, over us, what is best for us, the public is getting involved. This blog is just one venue.

    A lot of Sacred Cows are going to be slaughtered. You have seen the effect bloggers have, bringing to light subjects regular newspapers wouldn’t find opportune. You have seen the power of Wikileaks.

    One way or another, the system where a few business groups can build a huge brick wall around our cultural heritage, together with a small annex where you can still buy a small percentage of these works, but the rest being kept in Semi-Permanent Storage, will be over. I just hope it will be sooner rather than later.

  30. Un-Trusted Computing says:

    @Concerned Citizent
    One Word: Astroturf.

  31. @Concerned Citizen
    …”see the almost total confusion and lack of understanding of actual copyright”

    Care to enlighten us with your wisdom? Or are empty pot shots all you can do? Never mind Geist, just interact with those of us in the “comment stream”.

    …”Pathetic.”

    I must admit, as a sig for your posting, this was very appropriate.

  32. @Byte
    “Canada has signed but not ratified…because the government needs to change the legislation first, before they can ratify.”

    Again, you are mistaken.

    Dr. Geist has explained that Canada’s having signed a treaty does not impose any legal obligation to ratify.

    As Tony Clement reiterated, Canada is fully compliant with its international obligations.

    Your claim that we have legal obligations to WIPO, to ratify, are simply wrong.

  33. @Oldguy “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. This is where it gets messy. The copyright holder isn’t the one applying the TPM, it’s the distributor”

    There is no “perhaps not” about it. In section 41 of the bill, it explicitly defines “to unlawfully circumvent” as “… to descramble a scrambled work or decrypt an encrypted work or to otherwise avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair the technological protection measure, unless it is done with the authority of the copyright owner”

    In light of this, one might contrive a situation where the author of a work grants permission, while the distributor does not, and argue that in such cases, it would not be unlawful for circumvention to occur, but if a distributor has more say in who is allowed to copy a work than the original copyright holder does, then for all legal purposes, copyright ownership has effectively been transferred to that distributor.

    That said, I don’t have any doubt that under C-11, some publishers *will* expressly grant certain private-used based time-shifting or format-shifting privileges to consumers, realizing the importance of satisfying consumer expectations and what that can mean to continued sales, however, because the works are digitally encoded, performing those actions will be tightly coupled to particular technologies, and are certain to become quickly obsolete, long before the copyright itself expires, creating a situation where shortly after a work is originally published, it will no longer be effectively usable except by people who are content with vendor-lock-in, and technological obsolescence, unless a publisher is willing to invest the ongoing effort into actively supporting the work with tools that the consumer may use to copy the work within the parameters specified. This will only result in increased consumer costs when lawfully purchasing the work in the first place.

    @Skeptic “Dr. Geist has explained that Canada’s having signed a treaty does not impose any legal obligation to ratify.”

    That’s was not my understanding. Could you provide a link to the specifics, please?

    It was my understanding that signing a treaty obligated a country to uphold that treaty, and if that treaty required the eventual creation of certain laws, then not trying to get those laws made would be not fulfilling the terms of the treaty.

  34. @Concerned Citizen
    “As you read through this comment stream and see the almost total confusion and lack of understanding of actual copyright, I wonder… are you proud of your part in creating this?”

    And what is “copyright”? In it’s original form it was intended to give consumers limited “right to copy” and copyright holders “limited” control over content they create and exclusive rights to earn profit from their creations. Originally creators only had a maximum of 28 years of protection, after that the content went to public domain. “Copyright” was created for exactly what it sounds…to give consumer the right to copy so creators could NOT lock content down indefinitely. C-11 essentially gives copyright holders, that power, the power to lock consumers out of their content…forever…indefinite copyright protection…Disney would be proud. That is completely against the entire purpose, intent and spirit of what “copyright” was meant to achieve. Digital locks belong at the licensing level…NOT enshrined in to a law which will ultimately be just as ineffective as the DMCA and perhaps even more damaging.

    Methinks it is you who has the “lack of understanding”.

  35. @IamMe: “And what is “copyright”? In it’s original form it was intended to give consumers limited “right to copy” and copyright holders “limited” control over content they create and exclusive rights to earn profit from their creation”

    No. The underlying purpose of copyright has absolutely nothing to do with profit. Its actual purpose is to give the creator of a work a limited right to dictate who else may make copies. This might enable a person to generate a profit from the work through artificial scarcity, and it could be argued that may be part of its intent… but it is not the motivation of profit that is universally considered the incentive for a person to use copyright, or else there would be no reason to put copyrights on material that actually *IS* freely available (such as Linux, for example).

  36. @Mark
    From the Statute of Anne

    “…to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families…”

    This implies monetary gain to me. I’m all for creators making profits from their works. Linux/Open publishing is a different beast. Anyone can choose to give away their work or freely license it.

    BUT!!! There were limitations strictly laid out…

    “…shall have the sole Right and Liberty of Printing such Book and Books for the Term of One and twenty Years, to Commence from the said Tenth Day of April, and no longer; and that the Author of any Book or Books already Composed and not Printed and Published, or that shall hereafter be Composed, and his Assignee, or Assigns, shall have the sole Liberty of Printing and Reprinting such Book and Books for the Term of fourteen Years, to Commence from the Day of the First Publishing the same, and no longer…”

    Granted, the digital age offers unique challenges obviously not present in 1710, but should we be seeing less rights? C-11 places virtually no limitations on copyright holder rights and power and restricts virtually all fair usage, in perpetuity. Once something is locked with a digital lock, it has no statute of limitation, no “real” consumer-level exceptions and no accountability placed upon the copyright holder. Orphan works and public domain material become inaccessible if there are digital locks. Published material from defunct companies become inaccessible in the presence of digital locks. So many more problems…

    These reasons are where the problems lie and why the bill, as written, will suffer the same fate as the DMCA…it will be completely unsuccessful in it’s desired goal. Why does the US keep adding exceptions to the DMCA? BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE DOING IT ANYWAY.

  37. …more commentary on digital locks
    Is it reasonable that I should not be able to play a DVD I bought in Germany…one that I cannot buy here? Is it reasonable that I should not be able to play a DVD relatives in England send as a Christmas gift? In both cases, bought and paid for with the profits going to the appropriate groups. Both will likely be protected by region coding, a form of digital lock? Neither will play here on commercially available hardware. Is this reasonable?

    How about back-ups or personal copies of legally bought content? Should it be so unreasonable that I cannot remove locks to protect my investment. I have two toddler boys…very hard on DVDs. What about downloaded songs or movies with DRM? If your computer crashes you lose the license with no way to get it back…you are simply expected to repurchase it. I’ve experienced this with trying to get replacements of failed or corrupted downloads from sites like Napster and Puretracks. This is why I only purchase DRM-free media on-line or remove the DRM immediately after purchase. Is it so unreasonable that I should not be allowed to copy movies to a laptop or media player for traveling or to a Home Theater PC for playing on my TV? As long as I’ve purchased and own the original content what is so unreasonable about any of this?

    I have more friends who were born outside of Canada that those born here. We live in a global world more so that ever before and this is all common practice. C-11 will not affect how I currently consume or use media and if any media company tries to sue me for copying my DVDs to a Home Theater PC, I will drag my entire 1400+ DVD collection in to the court room and ask them, “How am I not supporting your business?” Admittedly, I would probably lose because I would ultimately be on the wrong side of the law…but it would generate enormously bad press for them…and I would make sure of that.

  38. @IamME
    Exactly; it’s not really civil disobedience, but a lot of people just ignore “the rules”. But that’s just the easy way out.

    The North-American governments are sometimes jokingly referred to as the “best governments money can buy”; of course there’s some truth to that, but people just “doing it anyway” is our biggest problem. People will not demand change if what they do is technically illegal, but they can just do it without consequence.

    In France, we will soon see the first disconnections due to their HADOPI three-strike laws. Let’s see if, in a couple of years, that will make a difference in people’s list of Important Issues they want to see come up in leadership debates. Taking strikes laws to the extreme, the Rightsholders are busy creating an army of opponents!

  39. Bill C-11 & The Death of The DivX Player
    If this law passes, that means DivX players will be useless! Just as a cigarette is a nicotine delivery device, Bill C-11 is a legal tool for the enforcement of the PVR (Personal Video Recorder)! What the distributors of Television programming don’t seem to understand is that there’s a technology out there that most of the public wishes to use. Why not embrace this technology just as the music industry adopted the consumer driven choice of downloading MP3 files. The MP3 epitomizes how the entertainment industry adopted a technology that most of its customers preferred and they did not lobby politicians to make MP3 files illegal to download. Rather than outlawing that technology and forcing consumers to buy CD’s, the law allows customers to legally download and pay for MP3’s.

    There is no need for TV cable and satellite providers to lobby politicians in order to legally wipeout compressed digital files such as AVI, which can be run on computer media players and DivX players! This is an act of desperation by a frighten industry that wishes to exert full control over a perceived threat and thus, rather than embrace the consumers’ choice of technology, they decided to kill AVI’s altogether. The music industry embraced MP3 technology, the world did not end for them and in fact, an entirely new economic niche was serviced by the portable MP3 player. As a result of the MP3 player, jobs were created (in R&D, product design and manufacturing) in order to supply this product to meet the market demands of the consumer.

    The same type of job growth could be created only if the entertainment industry would embrace the legal distribution of compressed digital files for TV programs and movies. With TV programs, there is absolutely no reason why subscribers of TV from cable and satellite providers can’t be offered the option to download TV shows legally. Customers could have the added luxury of viewing after aired TV programs on their computers or via their DivX player! Rather than perceive AVI’s as a threat, TV cable and satellite providers could adopt this technology in order to meet the needs of their customers. Because after all, more and more Canadians have adopted downloading TV shows in compressed digital files over watching TV programs live when they first air. If TV cable and satellite providers adopted the legal downloading of compressed digital files, this would create jobs and most likely this economic niche would be worth more than the MP3 market! It would also spawn the next generation of DixX players, which of course would create a multimillion-dollar market. But this economic dividend is now gone because of a selfish bunch of frightened and myopic ‘control freak’ TV programming providers!

    The irony of Bill C-11 is that the Tories tout it as a jobs creation bill when in fact the opposite is true! There is a very small window of opportunity to amend this bill, unless TV cable and satellite providers can be swayed to see the business model of legalizing AVI’s to download, the DivX industry will shrivel and die! If the music industry could embrace the business model of legal downloading of MP3’s for their consumers, why can’t TV cable and satellite providers embrace the legalization of downloading TV shows via compressed digital files? And AVI’s can be easily encoded with copyright protection along with a password key that customer can enter in order to activate these files. It’s absolutely disgusting and reckless for Canadian politicians to allow the passage of Bill C-11 as is because of an oligopoly’s irrational fear of AVI files! Please write, phone, fax and E-mail your MP about the seriousness of this potentially devastating piece of legislation! Tell your MP that Bill C-11 needs to be amended to allow for the legal downloading of TV shows and movies (which can be done just like MP3’s) because this would reinvigorate the DivX industry. It will spawn off jobs, jobs and more jobs—so go now and act, do it today or otherwise DivX technology will be dumped onto the dustbin of history.

  40. @Byte
    “The North-American governments are sometimes jokingly referred to as the “best governments money can buy”; of course there’s some truth to that, but people just “doing it anyway” is our biggest problem. People will not demand change if what they do is technically illegal, but they can just do it without consequence.”

    Agreed, and you might be interested to know that a law that is unenforced, is a valid defense in court in Canada. You can actually sue someone and win if you get hurt doing something illegal and that law you are breaking is generally not enforced. Ski-dooing in the highway right-of-way, for instance.

    However, for an average, blue collar, Joe Blow, really, what other option is there than to just do it? C-11 effectively makes Home Theater PCs (HTPC) and media players useless as far as how most people use them and it explicitly makes out-of-region DVD/BD content illegal, which is especially bad for our enormous foreign population. (I really should run out an get a spare player before this passes.). Overall, a normal person does not have the financial means or knowledge to fight such legislation, but is facing potentially $1000’s of dollars worth of hardware becoming essentially useless and hundreds of hours, or more, worth of digitizing becoming illegal.

    To all pro-copyrightists…what do you think guys like this will say to C-11 and draconian digital lock rules, and such individuals are far more common than you might realize. I can think of two words…and the first is a type of fastener characterized by a sharp point and threads.

    If ripping a DVD you legally purchased is to become just as illegal as downloading it, why not save the money and just download it to begin with if you plan to copy the DVD to a HTPC anyway. And that WILL be the mentality many will have. The music industry already proved digital locks and copy controls are devastating to sales…this will be no different.

    I say it again…the C-11 approach to digital locks is American-designed legislation, not reasonable in today’s digital climate and will ultimately prove to be an utter failure perhaps even more so than the DMCA.


  41. @IanME: “However, for an average, blue collar, Joe Blow, really, what other option is there than to just do it? ”

    There’s always the option of doing something else.

    Stop eating chips and drinking beer in front of a copyrighted & TPMed movie. It makes you a fat criminal.

    How about some outdoor activities instead.

  42. Steven Harper doesn’t want to be Canada’s leader he want to be Canada ruler. Heil Harper!