Federal Government Introduces New Copyright Reform Bill

Last week the Canadian federal government introduced Bill C-11, entitled An Act to Amend the Copyright Act. Since 2005, there had been three failed attempts at copyright reforms by the federal government. The last such attempt was Bill C-32 introduced in June 2010 during the last parliament, which died on the order paper when the federal election was called last spring. The new Bill C-11 is identical to Bill C-32. The following are some of the highlights from the bill:

• The bill prohibits tampering with digital locks, which are embedded in digital media or devices to prevent unauthorized copying and decryption. This has proven to be the most controversial provision since it was introduced as part of Bill C-32. Numerous organizations have made clear of their objections to this provision before the Commons committee that examined Bill C-32.
• The proposed bill would expand the scope of the “fair dealing” provision, which allows the use of copyrighted work without permission of the copyright holder for certain purposes, to include purposes of education, parody or satire, on top of the currently recognized purposes of “research or private study”, “criticism or review” and “news reporting”. This amendment could have implications for an upcoming Supreme Court case Alberta (Minister of Education) v. Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, appealing the Copyright Board decision that copies made by K-12 instructors for student use are for instruction or non-private study purposes, thus did not qualify for fair dealing. The Supreme Court has granted our own Centre for Innovation Law and Policy leave to intervene.
• Under the proposed bill, internet service providers, upon receiving notice of infringement allegations from a copyright holder, would be obligated to notify the accused subscriber and to retain records that would allow the identification of that subscriber for a period of six months.

I conclude with a link to a recent comment by Michael Geist on Bill C-11.