The Canadian Bar Association, which represents 37,000 lawyers, law professors, and students from across the country, has released an important submission on Bill C-32.  The submission, which was approved as a public statement by both the National Intellectual Property and the Privacy and Access Law Sections of the CBA, does a nice job setting out the debate over Bill C-32 (I was once a member of the CBA’s Copyright Policy section but was not involved in the drafting of the Bill C-32 document).

The CBA submission is notable as a strong counter to the frequent attempts to characterize critics of digital lock rules or other elements of the bill as “anti-copyright.” Far from the claims that there is near unanimity in support of DMCA-style reforms, the CBA submission confirms that the legal experts who work on copyright issues on a daily basis are deeply divided on many issues. In fact, the CBA submission opens by noting:

The Intellectual Property and the Privacy and Access Law Sections of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA Sections) are pleased to comment on Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act. Copyright is a controversial subject and engages the interests of a wide cross-section of Canadians. This includes copyright owners, who run the gamut from large entertainment conglomerates to self-employed artists, and copyright users, who include everyone from broadcasting corporations to teenagers downloading music in their parents’ basements. The copyright bar, similarly, holds a multiplicity of perspectives on copyright.

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