Michael Geist

Bill C-11 has passed the committee stage last week and now seems slated to become law before the summer. The Bill C-11 legislative committee recently posted the remaining committee submissions (C-32 submissions here, C-11 here), which confirm that the government rejected the intense efforts of some groups to undo many of the user-oriented provisions. Some of the demands included:

• remove the user generated content provision
• create a new fair dealing test
• remove new statutory damages limits for non-commercial infringement
• remove a new exception for educational use of publicly available materials on the Internet
• add an iPod tax
• add statutory damages to circumvention of digital locks
• force ISPs to keep subscriber data for 3 years after an alleged infringement

While the extreme demands were rejected, the government also decided against proposed amendments from many groups such as those representing the visually impaired, documentary film makers, and librarians. One of the more notable decisions was to leave untouched a provision that could create some legal risks for cloud computing based services such as network-based PVRs. Both Rogers and Shaw raised concerns with the approach in Bill C-11, yet the government did not amend the provision in question despite a proposal on point from the Liberals.

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