Canadian DMCA Moving Forward
Both Boing Boing and Michael Geist have been covering this proposed legislation in depth. I noticed that the legislation has taken its first step towards law over on Boing Boing. This article also republished a link Cory posted earlier for Canadians who wish to act against this law. Its looking pretty bad, as I’ve discussed on the podcast, this appears to be worse than its predecessor, the defeated C-60.
We already knew that it would not have the request and review period for exceptions to the anti-circumvention measures. Even worse, Industry Minister Prentice is apparently tabling consumer concerns for up to a decade. Rather than address them as part of the legislative deliberation itself, it looks like he wants to establish some sort of review board after the fact. This panel would propose amendments in the form of new legislation and Geist speculates this could take up to a decade to have any effect, based on the frequency of past copyright legislation and the pace of similarly constituted review boards.
This seems pretty consistent with Prentice’s refusal to face criticism and concern over the legislation. If Prentice is convinced this legislation is in Canada’s best interest, then he should be ready to face open deliberation, eager on fact. Perhaps he already fears what Lehman, the architect of the US DMCA observed on the same program Prentice ducked. Namely that the US DMCA has not met its planned objectives.
I haven’t listened to the Search Engine episode on which Lehman spoke and in the interest of fairness, this is the first I have heard of anyone involved with or responsible for after the fact the US DMCA questioning its efficacy. Quite the contrary, I have criticized the Copyright Register, Mary Beth Peters, for unreservedly considering it to be a success as written and executed.
Regardless, I think the important point is one Geist raises in his criticism of Prentice’s plan for a review board to consider consumer issues. Discussion and debate of the balance of consumer rights is critical, it should simply happen as part of the original law making, not as an after thought.
