Last week's House of Commons copyright debate on Bill C-11 included a
curious comment from Industry Minister Christian Paradis, who, in
trying to demonstrate the amount of debate that went into the bill, stated
that "more than 10,000 consultations have been held across Canada." The
"10,000 consultations" claim made it onto the Hill
Times front page article on the bill titled "House Set to Pass
Controversial Copyright Bill Next Week, After 10,000 Consultations."
The problem with the "10,000 consultations" claim is that it
isn't entirely accurate. Paradis is likely combining the total
responses to the
2009 copyright consultation (just over
8,300) with submissions or witnesses to the Bill C-32/C-11
legislative committees (roughly 300).
Throw in the two town hall meetings and private meetings with
stakeholders and you might come close to 10,000. However, if Paradis is
relying on comments and submissions from the public to the government,
the 10,000 figure massively understates the public response. During the
same debate, Liberal MP Geoff Regan indicated
that his office received over 80,000 emailed submissions over the past
several months alone. Three weeks after the introduction of Bill C-61,
Industry Canada received tens of thousands of actual letters. When you
combine the additional MP meetings, thousands of letters and emails to
MPs, the number of submissions on
this copyright bill is at least 10 times the Paradis estimate.
Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareFriday May 25, 2012 |
|
View
|
|
India's two Houses of Parliament passed copyright
reform legislation
this month that includes digital lock provisions. The Indian approach
is very similar to what dozens of groups recommended for Canada as it
links circumvention to copyright infringement. The new Indian digital
lock rules state:
65A. (1) Any person who
circumvents
an effective technological measure applied for the purpose of
protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act, with the intention
of infringing such rights, shall be punishable with imprisonment which
may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine.
(2) Nothing in sub-section (1) shall
prevent any person from,—
(a) doing anything referred to
therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act:
Pranesh Prakash offers detailed
analysis of the bill and the digital
lock provisions.
Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareFriday May 25, 2012 |
|
|
