In his article, The Canadian Copyright Bill: Flawed But Fixable, Michael Geist summarizes the Bill C-32, what he calls the “long-awaited copyright reform Bill.” The reform has brought some extensions that provide more legroom for Youtubers and videos created as satirical or educational. Geist describes a few of these changes as “provisions worth fighting for.” He may be fighting for the wrong thing though.
All of these legal wranglings are really the result of a much larger problem. The entertainment industry is still living in the early nineties and can’t seem to deal with the internet revolution. If the industry, tried to adapt to it, rather than fight against it, they may realize that people would stop downloading illegally if it was more readily available online in the first place.
The CRTC recently tried to set us back even further, by allowing media corporations (such as the unscrupulous Bell) to influence a decision about internet use. Had the bill been passed, Canadians would have faced a significant increase in internet fees, a result that seems suspiciously connected to major networks’ decline in TV subscriptions. Increase internet fee’s = keep people watching TV.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/02/01/internet-usage-based-billing-clement.html
It has been hinted at by fellow internet users that the reason this bill almost went through is because the big shots on the review board for the CRTC are the big shots that run Bell and other such networks. Someone should be cutting down these monopolies to size. Let’s hope its done soon before its too late.
- Michael Geist (2010) The Canadian Copyright Bill: Flawed But Fixable. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5080/125/
- Can I Use Someone Else's Work? Can Someone Else Use Mine?' U.S. Copyright Office. http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
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