This week’s Throne Speech by the federal government suggests Canada is about to take another crack at coming up with changes to the way intellectual property is managed, copyright experts warn.
Buried amid the proposals for increased tax cuts, changes to environmental policies and an anti-crime law was direct mention of possible revisions to the Copyright Act of Canada in the speech delivered by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean on Tuesday.
“Our Government will support Canadian researchers and innovators in developing new ideas and bringing them to the marketplace through Canada’s Science and Technology Strategy,” the speech said. “Our Government will improve the protection of cultural and intellectual property rights in Canada, including copyright reform.”
Copyright has been as contentious an issue in Canada as it has been in the United States and elsewhere, particularly in the way it relates to electronic information, software and blank media such as CDs. The previous Liberal regime had also looked at changes to copyright in Canada through Bill C-60, which was dropped after the minority government fell to the Conservatives. Among other things, Bill C-60 would have made illegal any attempts to circumvent technological protection measures (TPMs) that protect media and prevent it from being copied, which alarmed security companies who said they do so for research purposes.
“The fact that’s in the Throne speech indicates it is some kind of priority,” said Howard Knopf, a lawyer with Macera & Jarzyna, LLP in Toronto who also writes the blog Excesscopyright.blogspot.com. “If it’s a controversial bill, if it annoys some of the more vocal critics out there, it may be in for a rough ride. It may be that the government doesn’t blow a lot of political capital in a minority situation.”
Knopf said the people who tend to make the most noise on copyright issues are the intermediaries such as record companies and software firms that use digital rights management (DRM) technology to prevent any attempts to duplicate or change their products. The last time the Copyright Act went through major revisions about 10 years ago with Bill C-32, he said, it was one of the most lobbied piece of legislation in the country’s history.
“I wouldn’t doubt that this one would exceed that. There’s an enormous amount of money at stake,” he said.
Industry luminaries such as Red Hat founder Bob Young banded together two years ago to fight the anti-TPM amendments, but those efforts are now largely being channelled through the Information Technology Association of Canada, said Brian O’Higgins, CTO of Ottawa-based security firm Third Brigade. He said many groups are worried that the Conservative government will introduce legislation that more closely resembles the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the United States.
“We’re Canada. We should have Canadian law,” he said.
Earlier this year activist group Digital Copyright Canada sent a petition urging the government to prohibit the use of TPMs in technology products, but those concerns were largely ignored in a response from Industry Canada which promised to review the country’s overall approach to governing copyright.
