<story><title>Bill C-11 could bring SOPA-like piracy laws to Canada</title><url>http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/right-click/bill-c11-could-bring-sopa-online-piracy-laws-212657243.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sha90</author><text>The only thing wrong with C-11 as it stands currently are the digital lock provisions. Everything else in the bill is rather liberal, and, frankly, some of the provisions are outright &lt;i&gt;good&lt;/i&gt; for Canadians (limits on fines, ISP liability exemptions, educational use exemptions, &quot;mashup&quot; exemptions). Calling for protests against the bill in its entirety is ignorant and blaming &quot;the majority government&quot; for passing draconian laws is outright sensationalist and false. That&apos;s not really how we do things here in Canada. There&apos;s a better way to get things done, and it doesn&apos;t involve hyperbole.&lt;p&gt;Yes, the digital locks portions of the bill could use some reworking-- but as mentioned, the enforceability of the law as its codified now is questionable, so I wonder how big of a deal it would &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; be for the law to be passed as is. Remember, as pointed out, use of VCRs is also technically illegal, but you don&apos;t see any enforcement of that. The issue surrounding digital locks may very well have the same practical effect. We should certainly try to get these provisions changed before they are codified, but IMO it&apos;s not really the end of the world.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is going to be a lot of push from powerful lobbyists to get &quot;SOPA-like&quot; provisions into the bill. However that is a reason to remain vigilant, not a reason to pre-emptively black out the internet again. As it stands, those additions have yet to be added to the bill, so right now, the lobbying power hasn&apos;t done very much. Maybe it&apos;s just me, but I&apos;m not the type to start blaming people for things that haven&apos;t happened yet. I&apos;m going to watch and wait until there &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; something reminiscent of SOPA in this bill, which may or may not happen.&lt;p&gt;FYI for those who are just jumping on the bus because SOPA is in the title of this article, please read a bit on the issue before injecting your opinion or outrage. Michael Geist is a good and well respected source on this issue. He&apos;s come out (more or less) in favour of the bill, minus his open objections to the digital locks portions, which I pointed out above. However, his general approval should say something about the bill-- Geist probably knows a lot more about copyright law in Canada than anyone here does. His comments regarding C-32 (now C-11) can be found in this rather old posting: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5316/125/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5316/125/&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Bill C-11 could bring SOPA-like piracy laws to Canada</title><url>http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/right-click/bill-c11-could-bring-sopa-online-piracy-laws-212657243.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>unavoidable</author><text>The primary difference between American and Canadian copyright law is that although the new bill implements DMCA-and SOPA-like provisions, the safe harbour clauses for ISPs are somewhat more lenient.&lt;p&gt;Whereas the DMCA mandates a notice-and-takedown scheme, Canadian legislatures have preferred to adopt a &quot;Canadian&quot; solution of notice-and-notice, which means that ISPs and hosting providers have more immunity by giving notice to their customers.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this is a double-edged sword. Although service providers have greater immunity, thus less threatening to the structure of the internet, consumers are more likely to be given up by said providers, because there are less incentives for companies to defend such actions (since it requires far less costs and actions on their part to give notice rather than to take down infringing material).</text></comment>