Is Bill C-11 the right way to reform copyright?

UPADTE, Feb. 10: Friday marks the last day of debate on Bill C-11 before it goes to committee. The Conservatives passed a motion Wednesday to limit debate on the copyright reform legislation.

Originally posted: Feb. 2

The Conservative government's proposed copyright reform legislation has been in the works for years and has been brought before Parliament four different times, most recently in September 2011.

The bill, now known as Bill C-11, has a bad habit of dying when governments fall or elections are called.

But C-11 has been getting a lot of buzz lately, partly as a result of the wave of objection to SOPA and PIPA, two copyright bills in the U.S. designed to fight online piracy.

Critics say those pieces of legislation were so far reaching that they threatened the internet as we know it. Wikipedia famously "went dark" on Jan. 18 to protest SOPA and PIPA.

Some Canadians joined that protest, in part because SOPA, if passed, would have affected the internet worldwide. Also, the same entertainment lobbyists that supported SOPA and PIPA also back C-11.

Canadians have turned to Twitter and petitions to object to Bill C-11. Reddit users have been writing their MPs and posting the MPs' replies.

"There's some real fears about where the bill might be headed," internet law researcher Michael Geist told George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight.



"Big lobbyists at the music industry and at the entertainment software industry have demanded that bill look more like SOPA," he said.

The bill currenly includes provisions that allow consumers to record radio, television and online broadcasts for personal use, and to make copies of purchased content, such as music and video files, for personal use. 

It does not, however, allow the circumvention of digital locks (known as digital rights management or DRM), even to exercise other rights under the Copyright Act.

Do you support Bill C-11 in its current form? Does it need changing to make it tougher, or should provisions like the banning of circumvention of digital locks be removed? Let us know what you think.



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