An overview of the proposed changes to the copyright law...

Finally, a bill to change copyright was introduced in the Canadian House of Commons today. The short summary of the proposed changes appears to be:

kiss fair use goodbye

What the law brings in is rigid enforcement of DRM (AKA technological protective measures). The law eliminate fair use provisions when DRM is in place. According to this law, it would appear that you could be sued for a maximum $20000 for watching a DVD using an unlicensed program like VideoLan. (Most people don't realize it, as the encryption has long been broken and the resulting legal battles concluded, but commercial DVDs generally are encrypted). There's also no abandonment clause, which means that once a company is no more, the company releases a new player, or moves to another DRM technology (MSN Music and Major League Baseball being examples) you may be left unable to legally watch your purchased media.

The bill claims to create rights to use VCRs and PVRs but they're largely nullified in the fine print. You're not allowed to indefinitely keep recordings or build a library of them (although during the press conference regarding the bill, the Industry Minister was left unable to answer how this would be enforced without creating a police state). It's also make illegal to record anything that is protected by technological protective measures, such as are found in the new HDTVs (and have been turned on in the past to prevent recordings). The same applies to format shifting - you're liable for a fine of up to $20000 if you convert music, on a copy-protected disc that you've purchased, to a format playable on something like an MP3 player.

The bill imposes a cap of $500 on private-use infringement, but during the press conference the ministry spokeperson became hard-of-hearing when asked what might happen to a teen who posts clips of a song, or mixes a few songs on youtube. (The resulting fine for that would appear to be up to $20000).

Michael Geist has a summary of the bill.