Watching for copyright reform reaction
The copyright-reform legislation has been released, at last.
For reaction, we'll watch the opposition parties of course, but Facebook is the place to go to see how this is landing at the grassroots.
A Facebook group, Fair Copyright for Canada, amassed tens of thousands of members last Christmas when the reforms were merely a rumour. As of this morning, the Facebook group has 41,670 members and there is talk on the site of doing a big invitation push today in the wake of the announcement by Industry Minister Jim Prentice and Heritage Minister Josee Verner.
The founder of this site, incidentally, is University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, who will be weighing in with his reaction in tomorrow's Star.
Good!
I'm looking forward to Michael Geist's column with much interest.
I need an expert to tell me whether this bill is balanced or not....my gut tells me that the individual Internet user may be unnecessarily hand cuffed by these electronic locks..they have already been mis-applied - in my opinion.
Posted by: wascally wabbit | June 12, 2008 at 05:18 PM
So, "wabbit" ... you're going to let Mr. Geist -- who is clearly biased towards one side of the debate -- make up your mind for you and tell you what to think? How about deciding for yourself?
Posted by: Andy | June 13, 2008 at 10:06 AM
After a long night of reading over as much of the bill as I could without nodding off, I certainly feel educated enough regarding the bill to say it is not at all in my best interest or in the best interest of most Canadian consumers for this bill to be passed as is. By making it illegal to bypass DRM, it encourages the use of DRM on more and more source material. Remember the Sony root-kit? How about the DRM software that had a number of older "colourful" imacs being sent back to Apple for costly service? And that's only on music CDs. Copy protection on games such as Bioshock is downright rude. Honest consumers are being significantly affected by current DRM software. People who are chronically stealing their music or games will be in no way affected by this bill. Sure there are fines to be laid, but as the RIAA is now coming to discover, it takes quite a bit of work to successfully prove infringement.
Posted by: Joe McGuire | June 13, 2008 at 01:40 PM
Hello Susan:
The Fair Copyright For Canada Facebook Group has climbed to
50 000+ members as of this posting. Seems a lot more Canadians took a look at this proposed bill and don't like what they see.
Posted by: Scott Tribe | June 14, 2008 at 01:29 AM
59 000+ as of this message.. WOW!
Posted by: Scott Tribe | June 15, 2008 at 09:57 PM