The Canadian government is about to bring down Canada’s version of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and it promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world. It will contain an anti-circumvention clause that prohibits breaking the locks off your music and movies in order to move them to new devices or watch them after the company that made them goes out of business and it will follow the US’s disastrous lead with the DMCA in that there will be no exceptions to the ban on circumvention, not even for parody, fair dealing, time shifting, or other legal uses.
- Canada’s coming DMCA will be the worst copyright yet
- HOWTO Fight Canada’s coming DMCA copyright law
- Canadian DMCA Won’t Include Consumer Rights
Basically, in the US, it is illegal to even pick the locks of anything that is keeping you from accessing the content, EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO SO.
In plain English? You can’t rip songs off YOUR CDs to play on YOUR iPod. The company who runs the DRM system goes out of business? Too bad. Want to unlock your cell phone to run on another network? Nope. You want to copy an eBook that is in the public domain? No way. You want to use a clip from a documentary DVD in your own commentary? Fat chance. You want to backup anything copyrighted that you bought? Think again.
The list goes on and on.