Today's globe and mail has an editorial on Bill C-61 which is critical of the bill, but not nearly critical enough. Here is the reply I sent to the editor. I could have said much much more, but the likelihood of being printed and the length of the submission has a very strong inverse relationship.

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Catherine Ford at the Calgary Herald today struck upon what I consider to be the biggest negative aspect of this bill that everyone can easily relate to, and it will explicitly criminalize the vast majority of all Canadians.

She said: "There are at least 400 movies and an uncountable number of television shows on about 200 VHS tapes stored in my den. ... Should the amendment to Canada's copyright law pass without change, I will apparently be branded a thief"

Over at Creators Copyright of Canada, they appear to be keeping score of how their membership is responding to the introduction of bill C-61.

So far there are four member organizations listed on the blog. ACTRA and the Writers guild have only supported the principle of copyright reform without commenting on bill C-61 specifically.

The songwriters have come out opposed and the Federation of Musicians are supportive.

Here is a list of all the common and socially acceptable activities which will become illegal under this legislations

Definitely Illegal

Television Recording (when 'NO COPY' broadcast flag is set)

The Bill pretends to give fair use rights to time shift tv viewing 29.23(1), however the TPM clauses take precedence 29.23(1)(b). Therefore all the broadcasters need to do to take this right away is to set the 'NO COPY' flag in the digital broadcasts. They have absolutely no motivation not to do this, any plenty of motivation to do it. So expect it.

Here is a quick summary of some of the negative effects on everyday activities from my reading of the bill

29.21 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright for an individual to reproduce a work or other subject-matter that is a photograph or is contained in a book, newspaper, periodical or videocassette, or any substantial part of such a work or other subject-matter, onto another medium or device, if the following conditions are met:

This weekend's blog entry on creatorscopyright.ca by Christopher Moore comments on the recent cancellation of the Hockey Night In Canada theme song by CBC. Unfortunately it puts so much political spin into the issue as to make even the likes of David Frum dizzy.

Thomas Denton wanted to raise money for cancer. He did so by enlisting the services of several professional and amateur comic book artists, who drew original artworks featuring famous DC comic book heros, then selling them on Ebay with the proceeds to go to the charity.

But just how wrong was he to do this without the permission of the super hero copyright holders? I argue on DeathByCopyright.ca that he was not at all wrong.

Michael Geist's blog today points to a study by Taylor Wessing which compares various national IP laws around the world. No doubt, Canada's laws are judged by the report to be very strong which supports Geist's conclusion that "claims that Canada's international reputation has been harmed by our intellectual property laws are the stuff of fiction."

This is a great study to demonstrate that our laws are strong enough. What is missing, and what I'd love to see next, is a study that compares the fairness various laws.

It's good to see that the copyright issue is still on the radar of the mainstream media. Such coverage will be very important if the coming legislation is going to be as bad as many expect.

Chris Brand was quoted in today's Vancouver Sun on the issue. Way to go Chris!

I came across an interesting article today discussing how the BBC has forced a knitter to take instructions down from her website because of alleged copyright violations. Not for selling knitted objects which resemble BBC characters, not even for the pictures of the creations she made, but for instructions which tell other knitters how to make their own creations in the form of these BBC characters.