The Rants of Issachar

The video & audio are up on Mr. Angus' site, although it would have been nice if the first part of the question hadn't been cut off. Mr. Prentice replied that the copyright bill would be introduced "in due course", but frankly I'm tired of that answer to every question the man gets asked on copyright. How difficult is it to give people a tiny bit of insight into the principle that are going into the legislatiPublish Poston.

And "balancing consumer & industry rights" is not an answer. The minister would describe any copyright bill that way. If the eventual bill does hose consumers, I suspect that Mr. Prentice will still describe it as "balanced".

I never did get any reply to the letter I sent Mr. Prentice's office or to the e-mail I sent. Not even a canned response.

The Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot on this one. We have good reason to fear a bad copyright bill. The government is getting plenty of pressure to enact a DMCA type law to mirror the fiasco they have south of the border and they've given no indication that I'm aware of that they're not going to do that.

If Mr. Prentice isn't planning on introducing a DMCA type law to hose us with, there's an easy way to reassure us. Stand up in the house and announce that while the bill isn't being introduced yet, it will unequivocally protect our right to backup our media, time-shift media (i.e. record a TV show), and device-shift our media, (i.e. play music you bought on a CD on your iPod). Also make it clear that it will be entirely legal to circumvent technical measures put in by producers that try to limit these legal rights by technical means. If you want a complete recipe for your bill, take a look at Michael Geist's proposal, or go to Fair Copyright for Canada.