Don’t they - and their clients - realize that little innocuous programs that enable you to view legally posted video clips may soon be chargeable offenses.

I’m joking but it does make you wonder, as sloppy as the language in the bill is currently.

The fact about DVDs on Linux is not lost on me, and for that reason alone this bill is one of the biggest threats to information freedom I’ve ever seen.

“One thing he mentioned was that we should target people who distribute for financial gain. I wholeheartedly agree.”

And I too agree, with the caveat that “financial gain” should be defined as what people make from selling copies, not “gain” as in money not spent on using a copy. Punish the distributors who profit from fakes, not the consumers who download/borrow/time shift/device shift or copy information. This would remove liability from people who are tricked into buying a counterfeit

$20,000 is adequate punishment for those caught with counterfeiting operations; or possibly a higher fine if that would not be enough to deter professional organizations from setting up here over elsewhere.) However, this bill goes after small time copy operations that are more about fun, rebelliousness, and experimentation, than they are to get rich off of someone else’s creations.

Thus, when fair use issues come up in the future, whatever bill we have can be clearly interpreted.

One thing he mentioned was that we should target people who distribute for financial gain. I wholeheartedly agree.

I firmly believe, however, that there should be no DRM provision in the legislation, and that we should let the free market decide on DRM.

Publishers should be free to drive people to piracy, if they’re retarded enough to do so (like they are today). Legitimizing DRM with legislation removes free market from the equation and motivates companies to put spyware in to see if you need to be sued.

It’ll be a dark day indeed when you have co-DRM software… and legislation like this will be abused to a degree most people can’t fathom.

(I’m talking about a DRM methodology that doesn’t just check to see if the product itself has been pirated, but if other products on your machine have been cracked. You pirate 10 things, buy one, and get nailed because that one called home)

It’s being developed now. It’s not gonna be pretty for consumers.

I know, but this bill would make messing with DRM a form of copyright infringement, no? Anyway, that’s what I’d meant, but it was worth it for you to point out the distinction anyway for people who are still unclear about the absurdity of this bill. The bottom line is that it makes a crime out of every-day, innocent, and harmless use of media.

It’s worse than that Sask. You don’t need to infringe someone’s copyright under the new Bill to be libel for a $20,000 judgment, just circumventing the DRM will get you hit. Even if you circumvent the DRM for non-infringing purposes (like you want to play your totally legal iTunes music on a Microsoft player, or you want to change the file format to compress your files and save space) you’re facing a $20,000 bill.

The new bill doesn’t say “messing with the DRM software in order to infringe copyright” is illegal, it says “messing with the DRM software”, period, is illegal.

Professor Michael Geist did a whole serious of “a week in the life of” posts that showed just how many ways this law will make criminals out of ordinary Canadians trying to do ordinary (and non-copyright infringing) things.

It’s a horrible Bill as far as I can see, and I hope it dies a relatively quick death.