Canada's proposed new copyright law (Bill C-11 aka Canada's SOPA) is before the Canadian Parliament during February and March of 2012 before it will become official law. This piece of legislation is worse than the American's SOPA bill. It has everything SOPA had in it....and much more!
Of particular note are the provisions that criminalize jailbreaking your iPhone or hacking into your Playstation or any piece of hardware where the manufacturer prohibits such activities. Previously, doing so simply voided your warranty but under this proposed law, you would actually be committing a criminal offense!
You will also be committing a crime every time you copy a CD into iTunes and load it onto your iPod or with any media player and MP3 device.
The law will also criminalize making YouTube videos or Mashups using pre-existing DVD content regardless of whether it is being used for commercial purposes or not. That would also include using that content in classrooms or for training purposes or for an actor's demo tape.
Pretty special, eh?
This bill will become law due to the current government having a majority in parliament. They received an overwhelmingly negative response from the public during the public-consultation period but they have chosen to ignore the public's stated wishes and move ahead.
To put that into perspective, the government received nearly 7000 negative repsonses from the public during their consultations. That is about average in terms of individual citizens' participating in those consultations - which is pretty low in a country of million.
Since this has been a news item, the public's response has been underwhelming - THAT MUST CHANGE IN ORDER TO STOP THIS FROM BECOMING LAW!
Sign this petition but also visit the Prime Minister's Facebook page and let him know directly what you think and why. https://www.facebook.com/pmharper
You are all encouraged to participate in this campaign (Canadian, American, European....everyone everywhere) because on issues like this in our ever shrinking world, all voices matter and all people will be negatively affected.
Let’s get 2 million signatures and send a clear message of dissent
Thank you.
Go here to read the entire bill. http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Docid=5144516&File=9
