Last week the federal government tabled its long anticipated copyright reform legislation for first reading in the House of Commons. The Copyright Modernization Act or Bill C-32 attempts to overhaul many of the out-dated provisions of Canada’s copyright law that have fallen far behind major technological changes of the last thirty years. For instance, under the proposed legislation, it would now be legal for Canadians to rip a CD to an iPod. Unfortunately, as we give a sarcastic slow-clap for this long overdue “reform” to legalize what has been common (and soon to be obsolete) consumer behaviour for nearly a generation, the canonization of digital locks overrides all of the new fair dealing rights in the bill. And this may be a huge problem for history researchers and educators.
The summary statement for the proposed legislation ambitiously states that one of the eight major reforms will be to “allow educators and students to make greater use of copyright material.” It delivers on this point in some very positive ways, particularly in section 29: “Fair dealing for the purpose of research, private study, education, parody or satire does not infringe copyright.” Educators are specifically protected under section 29.4(1) which stipulates that “It is not an infringement of copyright for an educational institution or a person acting under its authority for the purposes of education or training on its premises to reproduce a work, or do any other necessary act, in order to display it.” There are even provisions to protect the use of copyright-protected content for online distance education. However, the online instructor must “destroy any fixation of the lesson within 30 days after the day on which the students who are enrolled in the course to which the lesson relates have received their final course evaluations.”
Researchers, librarians, and archivists can breathe a little easier whenever they operate a photocopier or digital camera thanks to a number of amendments in Bill C-32. Libraries and archives may now make copies of copyright-protected materials for researchers “to be used solely for research or private study and that any use of the copy for a purpose other than research or private study may require the authorization of the copyright owner of the work in question.” This seems obvious and should have been part of a more flexible definition of fair dealing, but for history researchers it is welcomed (if a compromise).
All of these new rights and provisions for educators and researchers, of course, are undone by a single line in the proposed legislation regarding technological protection measures and rights management information under section 41 of the bill: “No person shall circumvent a technological protection measure.” If any of the material needed for research, study, or teaching is protected by a so-called digital lock, it is illegal to copy that material. Like the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Canada’s Copyright Modernization Act obliterates all of the liberal reforms that Canadians asked for during last summer’s copyright consultations. At best, this is a careless oversight on the part of the responsible ministers. But with the government’s recent defence of section 41, it seems clear that this is not the case. At worst, this is simply deception to serve the interests of a powerful copyright lobby, representing major media publishing corporations.
As Dr. Michael Geist argues, this is fixable. The supremacy of digital locks or technological protection measures must be removed from this bill if it is to be of any use to history researchers and educators. To read more about this topic and have your voice heard, visit Speak Out on Copyright.
To read a PDF copy of Bill C-32, click here.
