“How did copyright become cool?” is perhaps one of the most well-informed and thought-out articles in the mainstream press on the subject. Sadly, it appears to be web-only, so I guess it didn’t make it into the real paper. But this is a start!

The Globe and Mail is, essentially, Canada’s New York Times. It’s based in Toronto, but available throughout the country. The fact that such a major source has, not only covered the issue, but considered it, is something of a big deal, web-only or not.

“Maybe he just didn’t think that copyright legislation could capture the public imagination. It would be hard to blame him if that were the case; at politician school, they don’t teach you to watch out for that third rail of Canadian politics, “anti-circumvention legislation.”

Suddenly, though, circumvention is a word that people are getting hot and bothered about. As anyone who has bought music from Apple has learned the hard way, companies are in the business of putting technological locks on their content. The classic example is songs bought on iTunes, which have built-in limits on where they can be played (iPods only!) and how they can be copied (hardly at all). The happy euphemism for this technique is Digital Rights Management, or DRM.”

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“The Industry Minister’s press secretary has advised journalists that the bill will not be introduced today or tomorrow. Since the House of Commons will break at the end of the week, the Canadian DMCA will not be introduced until at least late January.” Link.

This sounds to me like the Minister is hoping to delay long enough so that the intense opposition to the bill will wane, get distracted, and forget about it.

Which isn’t going to happen. This is the internet. Not TV. Not newspapers. When this gets brought up again in January, as long as Cory makes a few posts on BoingBoing, everybody will wake up, again.

The mainstream press probably won’t talk about it again. They’ve done their stories, they’ll forget.

But a month or so from now, when this rears its ugly head again, the opposition will be as fierce as ever.

As Cory said earlier today, “this thing won’t die until we cut off its head, sew its mouth full of garlic, and bury its head at a crossroads.” And activists aren’t going to give up until that happens.

via Michael Geist

Now, even mainstream media outlets in Canada are covering the uproar over the proposed new copyright legislation, and the delay it’s caused in tabling the bill.

The roundup:

CBC

Canadian Press

National Post 

Ottawa Citizen (which appears to just be the CP article)

This is kind of a big deal. When does the mainstream press ever cover something like copyright law? And when they do, when is it a discussion over the criticisms of it?

Democracy, eh? Yeah, that’s how we roll up here.

Last night I linked to Charlie Stross’s outrage over the Science Fiction Writers of America putting the guy responsible for their last “piracy” PR debacle in charge of their new anti-piracy committee.

Cory Doctorow’s written his opinion of the matter at BoingBoing. And, yeah, he doesn’t sound too impressed by SFWA’s decision, either.

“Burt’s copyright projects for SFWA have been controversial and divisive. He created a push-poll that attempted to convince the membership to stop Amazon from indexing their books; he created a non-working system for poisoning ebooks and ruining the download experience and then patented it, in his name, at the organization’s expense (he has promised to return the money); he helped create a loyalty oath in which members were told to swear to “respect patents and trademarks” and so on.”

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Canada’s planned changes to copyright law will include lots of rules that will make it the worst, most restrictive in the developed world, according to Cory on BoingBoing:

If this law passes, it will render all of the made-in-Canada exceptions to copyright for education, archiving, free speech and personal use will be irrelevant: if a technology has a lock that prohibits a use, your right to make that use falls by the wayside. Nevermind that you’ve got the right to record a show to watch later — or to record a politician’s speech so you can hold him to account later — the policeman in the device can take that right away with no appeal.

via Michael Geist

Howard Knopf’s article in The Hill Times outlines what proposed changes to Canada’s copyright law will do to Canadians (screw them over), and why, despite Canada already having stronger copyright law than America, it’s going to happen.

This is happening mostly because of a lot of spin and propaganda from the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, as well as the considerable efforts of Canadian lobbyists such as Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which is the Canadian arm of the RIAA. Important Canadian “indies” such as Nettwerk have left CRIA, and disagree with its desire to sue fans and families. Nettwerk is a leading label that produces the Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, and Sarah McLachlan.

The ambassador was quoted by Deirdre McMurdy on Nov. 16 in The Ottawa Citizen as saying that Canada is known for having the weakest copyright protection in the G8.” That is not only ridiculous. It is false and misleading.

First, the G8 includes Russia. Enough said.

Michael Geist warns that a new Canadian copyright bill is only a few weeks away.

I, for one, hope it’s in the form of a DMCA-style law. I’ve just been feeling a touch too free lately, you know?

According to the Ottawa Citizen article Geist references, U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins says that “no one expects the law to be identical [to America's], but hopefully it will be compatible.”

“That means that Canada would have to meet the three criticisms of its current copyright law put forward by the U.S. Trade Representative earlier this year in its Special 301 report, which includes implementing an international treaty signed in 1997 (WIPO), as well as incorporating some of the elements of the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act.”

This is bad, because, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“[T]he DMCA and DRM have done nothing to stop “Internet piracy.” Yet the DMCA has become a serious threat that jeopardizes fair use, impedes competition and innovation, chills free expression and scientific research, and interferes with computer intrusion laws. If you circumvent DRM locks for noninfringing fair uses or create the tools to do so, you might be on the receiving end of a lawsuit.”

In practice, this means that I will not be allowed under law to play DVDs on my computer. Seriously. As I’m running the Linux operating system, I need to break the (albeit weak) encryption on the discs to allow for playback. But this violates the DMCA. I have no intention of pirating (Arrr) the content, nor even sharing it, I merely mean to view the content I purchased. But the DMCA does not even allow for this simple, innocent use.

Chilling, indeed. But, then again, it’s often quite cold up here. I suppose we’ll just get used to it…