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61 Reforms to C-61, Day 49: Education Harms – Lessons May Require DRM

The conditions attached to the lesson provisions do not end with destroying lessons that use the exemption at the conclusion of the course.  There are two provisions that would appear to encourage (or possibly even require) the use of digital rights management to control the further distribution of these lessons. Section 30(5)(b) requires teachers to:

take measures that can reasonably be expected to limit the communication by telecommunication of the lesson to the persons referred to in paragraph (3)(a);

Section 30(5)(c) requires teachers to:

take, in relation to the communication by telecommunication of the lesson in digital form, measures that can reasonably be expected to prevent the students from fixing or reproducing the lesson, or communicating it other than as they may do under this section;

In other words, Bill C-61, which already covers a limited number of educational exemptions and establishes special liability for violating the Act with respect to these distance learning lessons, now requires to teachers to limit the communication of their lessons outside the circle of students enrolled in the class and stop students from "fixing" the lesson.  How do you that?  Given that these lessons are made available in electronic format, the obvious method is to use DRM.  Whether a court would be satisfied with a warning to students to not distribute outside the class, is a risk that few educational institutions are likely to take (in fact, Section 30(5)(d) indicates that further conditions may be established by regulation).

11 Comments

  1. stupid
    and what happens when its cracked and everyone gets it

    ARE YOU GOING TO PUT ALL THE STUDENTS IN JAIL
    are you going to fine them

    like i said knowledge should be free and whethar or not you make htis law i will make sure it gets to people

    you can get me , but you can’t get us all.

  2. I agree w/ Stupid
    The very IDEA that prentice and his goons think they can control the RIGHT to the FREE flow of INFORMATION is LUDICROUS. I’ve said it once I will say it again, “beware he who would deny you access to information for in his mind he sees’ himself your master”.

    This is it, this bill is in no way shape or form about copyright any more, it is about the restriction and manipulation of information for the general masses, these new “provisions” are nothing more than an extreme draconian attempt at civilian information control, in fact I would bet that after the bill passes that the “government employees” are exempt from this control in some form.

    The future of information in canada is getting bleaker every single day and I often wonder what will it take to make these idiots that we call our government to realize that restriction of info is a big NO!

  3. Maynard G. Krebs says:

    This is what elections are for
    This piece of legislation would be comical if it hadn\’t been proposed by the Conservatives – but the Conservatives clearly have a very draconian view of the world.

    Harper is looking to get tough on \’crime\’ and wants to build more prisons – more than likely operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CXW – NYSE), so he needs to create more \’criminals\’.

    Time to vote these clowns out of office.

    ————–

    BTW: Here\’s another major retailer selling a device that would be illegal under C-61.

    [ link ]

  4. Maynard G. Krebs says:

    Fines will be added to student loan bala
    The Conservatives will just add the amount of any fines to student loans. That way students will never be able to declare bankruptcy.

  5. what this does is say that you need to try and limit the possible redistribution of copyright material. on the face of it, this doesn’t look that objectionable

  6. As a college instructor who uses online learning, this Section is useless and pointless. What purpose is this intended to serve?

    Why do I HAVE to password protect and anti-copy protect my notes? I don\’t care who reads or uses them. The students still need to pay their tuition and pass the exams to get a final grade and credit for it.

    This part of C-61 is useless, pointless, and makes needless work and hassle for teachers and instructors.

  7. DRM a major barrier to e-textbook adopti
    Here is an ArsTechnica article about DRM on e-textbooks:

    [ link ]

  8. BCDD and Music Lover says:

    Text books
    Problem with E-textbooks is that they can make it so you cannot read it after the course ( rented ) or if the reader fails you may not be able to get at the info. Or transfer it to another.

    On a plus side paper text books are readable all the time any time

  9. Link for michael says:

    DRM EBOOK STUDY
    the link above about the DRM study, shows that this adds a bad burden of cost to the process.
    I say get into and embrace open source now.
    Kudos to the quebec open source community for wacking that govt for not looking at linux, YES it might in year one cost the same but after you get it implimented and people can see how cheap and safe it is ( xp and the NSA holes and exploits and dont get me going on vista and its costs versus linux)

    and now a study that will show it becomes to costly and too hard to impliment a DRM Ebook system

    yes canada needs to pay more taxes , and more money
    and yes pay a fee to have MS in the school

    when will all levels a govt wake up and USE linux and as morpheus would say:
    \”FREE YOUR MIND\”

  10. Duh.
    Hey they guy who says that the POS cassette to MP3 copies woudl be illegal … wtf?

    Cassettes don’t have DRM. Copying a cassette doesn’t mean breaking through a TPM and it’s not illegal to make a private copy of a recording for your personal use. So why would it be illegal to sell such a device? C’mon, genius, enlighten me.

    Of course anybody who buys a crap product like this oughta have his head examined anyway. Wow! You can now make the worlds crappiest sounding MP3 files. What a treat.

  11. capitan
    window.location = ‘[ link ]’