3 Comments

1. Anonymous says:

   July 24, 2008 at 11:21 am

   Sorry but this is juvenile nonsense. C-61 does not make it illegal to share lecture notes or anything else where the copyright owner is OK with the sharing. Sure it bans downloading and sharing copyright material, as does the current law. Silly article by people who should have read the Bill
2. Andrew Louis says:

   July 24, 2008 at 12:16 pm

   There’s also a related commentary piece:

   [ link ]
3. RTFA says:

   July 24, 2008 at 12:21 pm

   re: post #1
   The article does give me the sense that the author didn’t thoroughly read and understand the bill before writing the article. However, I think the effect of this bill on students still needs to be considered. To be sure, any prof. who is the original creator of a document (ex: lecture notes) and is OK with students sharing those notes is fine, and when it is not, it is business as usual; the existing law already attempts to restrict copyright infringement/unauthorized use of intellectual works. What the new bill does is explicitly invalidate common student behavior, such as saving article content from subscription-based providers (ex: sites accessible due to school-wide subscriptions/licenses). This is bad. I can’t imagine doing research in this environment — where you can’t back up your relevant source material in case anyone challenges you. Prof.s are similarly disallowed from providing the copy-written content in an educational context: particularly, i suspect, with the TPM provisions for Bill C-61 ramping up the liability.