Osgoode Hall Law School professor Carys Craig has a great post at the IP Osgoode site on her article in From “Radical Extremism” to “Balanced Copyright”: Canadian Copyright and the Digital Agenda, the copyright book from Irwin Law that officially launches tomorrow. Craig’s article focuses on two key aspects of Bill C-32: the fair dealing reforms and the impact of the digital lock provisions.  On fair dealing, Craig brings much-needed perspective to the fair dealing reform, which has been the target of an ongoing fear mongering campaign that implausibly and inaccurately claims that it will erode Canadian culture.  Rather, Craig notes:

Educational, parodic and other transformative uses have long been recognized as potential fair uses in the United States. Indeed, the need to expressly include these specific exceptions in Canada speaks more to the shortcomings of the Canadian approach to fair dealing (in contrast to US fair use) than it does to the pursuit of a genuine balance between owners and users in the copyright reform process.

Craig reserves her harshest criticism for C-32’s digital lock provisions, which she describes as “unduly expansive,” concluding:

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