Blame it on Canada - Fair Use becomes DRM

Blame it on Canada - Fair Use becomes DRM

Posted by isaac on Tue, 10/30/2007 - 11:58am in

Since 1997 Canada has had a unique legal approach to Music and Movie copyrights. Called the Copyright Act, the law allows Canadians to do whatever they want with the content they possess. Possession is ownership so it does not matter where you obtained the material. Sound illegal? Well its not. In fact at the time it was considered a 'win' for the media sellers because rather than tax the content the law tases, or places a 'levy', on the blank media that people used to use for recording their content. Also known as a 'private copying levy'. Not being imagineers of technology, at the time corporations never imagined a time when content would all be digitally stored on devices rather than blank media. Once agian their attempts to control the content was 'locked-into' a single technology... analog tape. 

 

Well now they are fighting back. The Canadian Copyright Act is facing its own closing credits. According to the Canadian Press article, we are part of the problem:

Exacerbating
the situation is intense pressure from the United States, where Canada
is considered a rogue when it comes to copyright and intellectual
property. It still hasn't ratified a 1997 World Intellectual Property
Organization copyright treaty.

Personnally I
would rather pay a private copying levy on the media playing and
storing devices I purchase than on the content I want to distribute
through my life. Pay for the privilege but own the distribution I say.
Leave the innovation killing DRM out of the model and let me choose
what works for me.


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