News

Bill C-11 Receives Royal Assent

Bill C-11, the copyright reform bill, passed third reading at the Senate and received royal assent today. The bill is now S.C. 2012, c.20. The reforms do not take effect yet, however. The bill must go through an order-in-council process with a series of new regulations first, a process that is likely to take several months.

23 Comments

  1. well all i can say is i hope they’re ready for all the hell that’s comming their way.


  2. Courts will be so filled for such non sense most likely most will be thrown out.

  3. Digital Locks…
    I’m starting to like the idea that the digital locks count as infringement. That means if an anti-piracy or law enforcement agency “breaks a lock” to get evidence then the evidence is an infringement of copyright. Wonder if “by-passing” a firewall (which is a type of lock) is included?

    I think the bit-torrent and other sharing sites should take this as a hint… put a lock on the IP address and data within a torrent.

  4. About the only chance sanity has now is if, somehow, the extent of the digital lock circumvention prohibitions is ruled unconstitutional.

    I’ve already described elsewhere how this law, without offering any exemptions on circumvention for personal use, makes *EVERYONE* a criminal.

  5. Many reasons to break the digital lock
    * watching non-R1 DVDs sent as gifts by foreign family members
    * transferring optical media to Home Theatre PC
    * transferring audio material (protected CD-DA, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, Super Audio CD, etc.) to portable audio player

    The question is: how difficult is it going to be for the next government to, as a maximum, limit the digital lock provision to apply to copyright-infringing situations only.

    It’s up to us to keep the other parties aware and willing to act (these things are easily forgotten and politicians prefer to let sleeping dogs lie).

  6. seen on /. says:

    Intellectual Property Rights: The Quiet Killer of Rio+20
    “Richard Phillips, president of the Intellectual Property Owners Association, sent a powerful message to Washington the day before the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development regarding the U.S. intellectual property community’s stance on sharing IPR with developing nations. Philips argued any language included in the Rio+20 final declaration compromising the existing IP regime would discourage investment and destroy trade secrets. ‘Any references to technology transfer should be clearly qualified and conditioned to include only voluntary transfer of IPR on mutually agreed terms.’ The IPO has no interest in helping developing countries transition to a more sustainable economy if it means sacrificing valuable IPR. And the IPO’s chilly message set the tone for what many pundits and participants considered a disappointing Rio+20 conference yielding few substantive results.”

    http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/02/1738214/intellectual-property-rights-the-quiet-killer-of-rio20

  7. djnforce9 says:

    It’s an unenforceable law. How is anybody going to know when someone circumvents the protection on a DVD or bypasses DRM on a PC game that would not work otherwise? Who would even be watching out for it?

  8. Andrei Mincov says:

    Copyright Act
    The Parliament website presents the upcoming amendments to the Copyright Act in in a way no one can understand. Not only is it not feasible to see what and how is being changed, you get lost in the multiplicity of versions.

    Because of this I made the version of Bill C-11 as it received Royal assent with all relevant markup at http://mincovlaw.com/doc/bill_c-11_after_royal_assent and also the version of the Copyright Act with all provisions of Bill C-11 incorporated into it at http://mincovlaw.com/doc/canada_copyright_act_consolidated_with_bill_c-11_after_royal_assent .

    These documents let you see clearly what changes have been made to the Copyright Act.

    Andrei Mincov
    andrei@mincovlaw.com
    http://mincovlaw.com

  9. The bigger issue is that any developers of software/devices (no matter the non-infringing uses) that circumvents a TPM, can be sued or sent to jail.
    What can a person create anymore that may or may not piss off Hollywood or a manufacturer of a locked down device? Its scary.

    Its oppression at its finest. Canada just legalized the same nonsense that goes on in the United States. Geohot getting sued by Sony is a good example.
    Nevermind the anti-competitive attempts that were made to companies that made 3rd party devices such as printer cartridges or garage door openers…. its also against individual people who are intelligent.

    Of all the very bad examples from the United States that show anti-circumvention laws is a complete disaster, Canada decides to import it anyway.

    Oh, and absolutely NONE of it does anything to prevent “piracy”. LOL

    Good job Harper, good job.

  10. galaxy S3
    Next they’ll be passing IP laws making it easier for Apple to sue everyone and block their phones from being sold. Just because all the other countries are jumping off bridges, doesn’t mean we should. They already put us at the Kiddie Table in the trade talks, why should we follow their example when it not only is shafting their citizens and competition, but they also treat us with no respect.

  11. Is this officially law yet?
    Hi guys. So I do not quite understand, is bill c-11 now officially law, or does it not officially become law until it undergoes order-in-council process with a series of new regulations first? I have a question about the new law. If I was to start a YouTube series reviewing tv shows and providing tv industry news with the intent of becoming a partner and earning money from my videos, would i be allowed to use video and images in my videos under the new fair dealing expansions and not get my videos taken down by YouTube? Thanks for your input

  12. Uhhhh, considering that you can actually OWN the copyrights in question, yet STILL get your content removed from YouTube anyway by a bogus DMCA notice, I don’t see why anything in your question really matters….

  13. What will this mean for .torrent users?

  14. RE: LouLou
    Nothing really.

  15. Don’t torent when Bill becomes law!
    @LouLou

    Torrents would be the easiest way
    for some movie or music corp to catch
    someone. A lot of people in the US had
    gotten caught and charged from downloading
    copyrighted files off Bitorrent.

    Now I’m not how easy it would to be caught
    downloading from file locker sites like
    Rapidshare. The same goes for people paying
    for access to the Usenet newsgroups, who
    are using encrypted technology to keep ISP’s
    from knowing what you’re downloading.

    @ Eric. L

    Not true, Eric. Lawyers for big corps
    in the USA have caught and charged many
    people. The easiest way for them to catch
    your IP address, and then reporting you
    to your ISP.

  16. who knows
    This law was not originally designed with torrents in mind, its as clear as mud. In past articles, there was a $500/file cap, now there’s a $5000 liability for everything (whatever that means) which I’ve heard applied to both the ISP for not complying and also the user. The cap was to discourage filesharing lawsuits, as was the notice system, which meant that the user was notified and had to remove the content ASAP (which won’t work for torrents). Now im hearing that the notice IS a subpoena (which makes even less sense).

  17. New EU Ruling
    It would be interesting to see when Canada signs free trade with the EU, whose ruling stands…. the US’ “Software purchase is only a lease” or this new “You bought it, you own it!”
    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/top-eu-court-upholds-right-to-resell-downloaded-software/

  18. Bill C-11 blatantly discriminates against those with Perceptual Disabilities
    Bill C-11 makes it illegal for an individual or organization to provide tools to circumvent Technological Protection Measures (digital locks) for the purpose of producing copyrighted works in alternate and accessible formats.

    The bill does this by adding the condition “to not unduly impair the technological protection measure.”

    Given the impossible task of creating circumvention tools that will restore the TPMs (digital locks) to their original condition after converting the copyrighted material into accessible formats – as well as the likelihood of getting sued for failing to restore these digital locks – there likely won’t be many people willing to break the law to support people with perceptual disabilities.

    As a result, with few or no tools created to break the TPMs, people with perceptual disabilities won’t have the same access to copyrighted material as those without perceptual disabilities. And to restrict access to copyrighted works via a technological barrier is in violation of The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (the province where I live) among other national and provincial laws.

    It’s bad enough that most copyright owners support these restrictive digital locks and don’t see fit to produce their works in accessible formats in the first place. But for the Harper Government to legitimize this approach and lock the perceptually disabled out of copyrighted works available to everyone else is unconscionable and blatant discrimination.

  19. @K-Van – Actually the bill doesn’t change anything if you are torrenting copyrighted material. That was already infringing before and will be no more or less infringing after C11. C11 just makes a bunch of legitimate stuff illegal. It doesn’t have any effect on things that were already infringing before like downloading copyrighted material over torrents.

  20. a person says:


    I am still in the process of digesting this all, but may I inquire as to what C11 outlines for any normal person watching Youtube videos of foreign shows as well a live concerts?

  21. Welcome to Draconian Age
    This to-be-made-law restricts creativity of peoples on many levels. By election time we need to change the government from a government that has favoritism to impartiality.

    We need to have the-new-Copyright-Law be reformed again for the better that will satisfy the copyright holders, promoters, and consummers.

    The COpyright Law needs a middle ground for all as possible.

  22. Bill c-11
    How will we know the date that Bill C-11 becomes law? Will this date be some time after the date of Royal Assent?

  23. thedarkknight says:

    Wake up Canada the digital age will now come to an end with this bill
    I can’t believe that this bill has passed.

    Wake up Canada the digital age will now come to an end for all Canadians !!!

    This government will definitely not receive my vote since i know this is all money under the table with the digital industry. Canada your government has shown you that it doesn’t care about the people but more with the industry who hide behind the excuse of the economy. Everyone has the right to backup their data no matter what the causes are. Digital media since the 90’s have been changing dramatically from cassettes, vhs, dvd, etc. As well the people who rely on digital information are use to this as well. The real reason behind all of this is to change these forms of media so that consumers will give in and will give up on the same product for an updated product which is that same product but in different formats. For example when dvd’s were first brought to the market, everyone jumped on the wagon and gave in to the dvd since it was more compat than vhs. The only way of this government to change this bill is if the buying rates for media and other digital info goes down since there would be any profit from these industries. The question now is what will happen with maxell, tdk, verbatim, who create dvd’s/cd/etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if these industries will go out of business. What the government is doing in a way is allowing the distribution of blank media to go out of business. How is this fair to those people who are currently working in these blank media distribution companies and other manufactures who create dvd burners, etc? The government needs to also consider this since this is also impacting other industries.