A post of Copyright Bill C-61 has been floating around the web for some time now and to be honest, I’m not too sure if I find it useful to anybody. If  we look at what Jim Prentice had to say about it, the Industry Minister has stated you get this:

“Our government has committed to ensuring Canada’s copyright law is up-to-date, and today we are delivering by introducing this ‘made-in-Canada’ bill that balances the interests of Canadians who use digital technology and those who create content”

And, so… basically we can copy legally acquired music, television shows, ebooks, photographs and movies to digital devices like iPods and the like. Call me crazy, but that’s what I thought people were already doing for years, now. I know I have. Although, I have to admit that the “timeshifting” term is a bit silly. I mean, the whole idea is that you’re temporarily saving a recording of a program that you can view at a time that fits your schedule better. Jesus, we’ve been doing this exact same thing since the personal videocassette recorder and VHS tapes were introduced the public. Why is this even an issue now? just because it’s being saved sooner and to a hard drive instead of a spool of tape?

Actually, I imagine that it’s because you could rip these saved videos and throw them up on all sorts of legally questionable websites.

This bill does have an air of positivity and a lot of it is spun in such a way to make us feel that we’re gaining all manners of new freedoms that haven’t been addressed before, but at the end of the day, the gist I can derive out of the bill is to allow Canadians the ability to copy and save and store digital media in their own libraries at home and to move them to portable digital devices and players with enough freedom to match what would be the equivalent to a creative commons licence…  unless it has had some form of DRM on it when you bought it. And giving content producers and providers enough of a heads-up to put DRM on anything and everything.

This doesn’t give balance to anyone. It is turning this whole situation into the same stupid cat & mouse game we’ve already had to deal with, just with a newer rulebook. And none of the major rules had changed.