Ottawa has tabled its long-delayed copyright bill, proposing to legalize common practices, such as copying a CD to a computer or an MP3 player for personal use, but criminalize breaking digital locks.
The new legislation,
Bill C-32, will make it legal for Canadians to back up a copy of a CD or DVD, record television shows for later personal viewing, and copy or “format shift” content from one device to another.
The bill also provides new exceptions to copyright protections, allowing Canadians to use copyrighted material for parody, satire and education.
While some groups like the Council of Ministers of Education Canada welcomed the new exception for education, critics say the ban on circumvention of digital encryption — any device or technology that prevents copying or use of material — overrides the new rights and exceptions in the bill.
“The government is giving new rights for teachers and students with one hand, and taking them away with the other,” said CAUT associate executive director David Robinson.
“To put it bluntly, as more and more content moves to a digital format with locks, the bill will make it increasingly difficult for university and college teachers and students to have access to and use copyrighted materials for teaching and learning.”
Because there are no meaningful exceptions to this rule, he said, the bill will lock down a vast amount of digital material, effectively preventing its use for research, education and innovation, and curtailing the user rights of Canadians.
“It’s like the government has said, you’re welcome to take out a book in the library whenever you want, but we’ve locked the doors and if you try to get in you’ll be charged with breaking and entering,” Robinson said.
Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, said the issue of digital locks is a major flaw in the bill.
“Despite a national copyright consultation that soundly rejected inflexible protections for digital locks on CDs, DVDs, e-books, and other devices, the government has caved to American pressure and brought back rules that mirror those found in the U.S.,” Geist wrote on his blog. “These rules limit more than just copying as they can also block Canadian consumers from even using products they have purchased.”
Geist added the digital lock principle extends to other provisions in the bill, including a requirement that digital copies produced by libraries must be destroyed within five days of being received by a user and that distance learning course materials be destroyed 30 days after the course concludes.
Under the proposed law, he said, students would be able to share books for educational purposes, but not digital books protected by a lock. And teachers would be legally prohibited from copying and distributing printed material if there is also an electronic version that is digitally locked.
“The foundational principle of the new bill is that anytime a digital lock is used, it trumps virtually all other rights,” Geist said.
Robinson said the government should have introduced a more flexible approach that would have been consistent with international obligations by prohibiting the cracking of digital locks for unlawful purposes only.
“Instead we find ourselves in a situation where the Conservative government is catering to the demands of the American entertainment industry,” he said.