Go read this article:
Michael Geist – The Canadian DMCA bill. I started to sputter after the second provision – where converting DVDs, CDs and other medias to portable devices may become a crime if you use a device/program that circumvents the copyright protection. If we’re using these converted files for personal use and not for resale or distribution, why should it matter what we do with the movie/music we bought?
Because we have to buy these media files over and over again to play on various devices, making more money for distributors. Who had a major hand in crafting this bill. If I buy Iron Man on DVD, I would have to buy it from iTunes if I wanted to watch it on my iPod. Cha-ching!
While the law does update some outmoded digital rights, this goes too far into personal freedoms, methinks.
UPDATE: Michael Geist expands succinctly on what the new law would mean – invasion of privacy, a law that barely could be enforced and rights of consumers stripped away (shouldn’t Apple be coming in on a white horse right about now?). He also provides ways of contacting your local and federal reps to protest this flawed law. Write in today!
5 thoughts on “Too Mad to Write”
We’ve always had laws about fruit, vegetables and plants at the border. My sister was given a hassle about an orange. Copyrighted material is just one more thing. If someone hacked your site to send out spam, then you would care about ownnership.
What I don’t understand about copyright is why iTunes charges for music, but also allows you to download the same song free in a podcast. Or how Realplayer constantly asks me if I want to download copyrighted material to my computer. I think we’re going to be spending many years to come on copyright issues.
Snotty, part of the law is for piracy, which is lacking and needed. However, the part about creating copies of movies/music you legally own to one of your devices is certainly being geared towards allowing the distributors power to go after individuals as well as large scale pirates, hence the $500/file bits. Think of that one woman in the US who was charged $22K for having at least 8 songs in a “Shared” folder on her computer. This will happen here but for iPods.
I think it will go hand in hand with searching of your electronics for copyrighted media at the border, which the US now has the power to do.
I see this law much like our useless Ontario liquor laws. So flimsy and loose that any interpretation can be used against you at the discretion of the police/security force/flatfoot who may be investigating you for whatever reason.
These laws sound like they are aimed at pirating. The government doesn’t go after the hundreds of thousands who don’t register their guns and won’t likely spend a lot of time going after individuals who aren’t re-selling copyrighted material.
Don’t buy Iron Man in any format please
Come on people wake up. Its time for a change in ottawa. I’m really sick of having government taking care of Corperate Canada instead of Public Canada. If they want to go after the real crimials check outside Canada were most of the illegal copys are made. I payed good money to buy my DVD’s and shouldn’t have anyone tell me what I can and can’t do with them. As long as I can provide an original version thats all should be expected. I will boycott the whole industry if need be. After all we do create the markets.