Early this week Industry Canada Minister Tony Clement announced a 64-page bill to the House of Commons. Bill C-32 is a proposal to admen current current Canadian copyright legislation. The shortened title of the bill is "the Copyright Modernization Act." The bill attempts to address to copyright in an increasingly digital world and the full bill can be seen online here.
The tabling of this bill coincided with the release of a government website entitled "Balanced Copyright." This site breaks down the bill into more manageable sections and provides a good overview for anyone without a legal background looking to understand what this bill potentially means.
Canadian Copyright legislation does need to be updated to reflect the rise of born digital content and the sharing of information virtually. However, any new legislation needs to encourage fair use and consumer rights need to be taken into consideration. The new bill has taken some measures towards improving consumer rights, eg. it would no longer be illegal to copy music from most purchased CDs to an ipod. Despite some improvements to a similar bill proposed in 2008, there is still a tremendous amount of gray area in the bill and content needs to be included which reflects new and evolving born digital mediums.
Views on the proposed bill can be seen here, here, and here.
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