LPT730 Lab #1 - Part 2 - Bill C-61

What is Bill C-61?
Bill C-61 is an amendment to Canada's Copyright act intended to bring Canadian law into accord with treaty obligations agreed to when Canada joined the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). If you go here you can get a good list of specific "dos", "don'ts" and potential fines. In simple terms, the argument for the bill is that content creators deserve to be fairly compensated for their work and that society should work against consumers who use the Internet and other technologies to freely share copyrighted content. The argument against states that this law's penalties are excessively punitive and would give the content creator the right to charge the consumer again and again for services that add no real value such as format shifting (e.g., music from a CD to a MP3 on digital player). To avoid confusion, the bill does allow "format-shifting" for any content without any digital rights management(DRM), but if any exists it's illegal to attempt to circumvent it. So in many cases format shifting would be illegal (e.g., copying a movie from a DVD and converting it into a smaller MP4 to watch on a notebook computer while traveling somewhere).

What is with Bill C-61?
Bill C-61 was about to become law but Canada's parliament was recently dissolved because an election was called. This happens to many bills that are excessively controversial. For those trying to get or remain elected this type of issue is a no-win situation. Because there are far more consumers of media than there are producers, it can only lose votes to a politician. Whatever side you come down on, I think it's safe to say that out next government will show equal skill in procrastinating on this issue.

References
C-61 - Text of the act
Wikipedia summary of bill C-61
Michael Geist's Fair Copyright For Canada blog