Yesterday, the Canadian Conservative party tabled bill C-61, which is basically a Canadian version of the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This is NOT a piece of legislation that is representative of the wishes of the people of Canada or one that should be made law. As a Canadian citizen, you can help stop this from happening.

One of the elements of bill C-61 is to effectively make it illegal to bypass any Digital Rights Management, even for fair use purposes like transferring music to your iPod. This means that if C-61 becomes law, it will be illegal to transfer a DVD you own to your iPod, as all DVDs have a rudimentary DRM system called CSS. Even worse, it will be illegal to transfer a CD you have just purchased if it implements a basic DRM system (which some music CDs already do, and more likely will if this becomes law).

A democratic government is supposed to act on behalf of its people. We elect representatives so that they can act on our behalf to make decisions about how Canada should be run. This bill simply does not serve the best interests of Canadians as a whole.

I would like to encourage every Canadian who reads this to take action. At Copyright for Canadians, you can generate and send a letter to your MP and Jim Prentice stating that you, as a citizen of Canada, do not approve of this bill or the way that the Conservative government is attempting to sneak it through congress without encouraging public debate. Visit Copyright for Canadians at http://www.copyrightforcanadians.ca/action/firstlook.

For more information about C-61, please read Michael Geist’s post, The Canadian DMCA: A Betrayal.