The Generation Gap On Bill C-61

The proposed copyright law illustrates the generation gap that has formed between Canada's lawmakers and the emerging generation of residents and business leaders the are supposed to serve.

Yesterday, Aldergrove Star editor Kurt Langmann, a Baby Boomer the same age as most Canadian MPs, derided opponents of the bill as "plagarists," and claimed that "a shameless and arrogant sense of 'entitlement' has concurrently grown among the Internet generation, to the point that creative artists and industries are in real jeopardy of going under, drowned in a sea of plagiarism and bootleg copies."

That's a bit much, but I'll give Kurt a break because I really don't think he understands how content is used by this generation.

Good on the Langley Advance's Matthew Claxton for breaking the issue down into what it really means--the criminalization of millions of innocent Canadians:

Here's a few activities which would now be illegal. Why don't you put a check mark next to each one you've committed? Most of these will cost you at least $500 per offense.

- Recording a TV show and keeping it longer than it takes to watch it once. Yes, those episodes of CSI: Miami and Battlestar Galactica you kept around for more than a week? Criminal goods, my friend. You might as well keep a brick of hash on the coffee table, you filthy crook.

- Giving a recording away. Your mom's VCR was on the fritz and you recorded American Idol for her? Also illegal.

- Recording anything broadcast online. You found a clip of a hilarious dog on a skateboard on the web. You recorded it and saved it away for later viewing ('cause that's never going to get old). You are a criminal.

- Making mix tapes. I may have mentioned this already, but the romantic gesture of dorky teenagers for decades would become a crime. Is the Canadian recording industry really threatened by this?

- Cracking digital rights management (DRM) software. Let's say you want to make a perfectly legal copy of a CD, for personal use. However, the record company has put DRM on the CD. Now any attempt to copy it, even for legal purposes, magically becomes illegal! Got an e-book like Alice in Wonderland, in the public domain for decades? You can't copy it, change its format or give it away if it's released with DRM. If a distributor slaps even a paper-thin layer of DRM on anything, they are now backed by the full force of Canadian law. The fine: $20,000.

We could argue about copyright, and how much is needed and the underlying ethics of the old legislation. No one but lawyers and luddites should welcome this new revision. It is actively anti-consumer, and it won't do any favours for new and emerging creative artists. It's also unenforceable in the wider sense; only a fraction of the vast new class of lawbreakers it creates could ever be caught. The idea is to make an example of a few.

I have Michael Moore's Sicko on my PVR. It's been there since March. I'll get around to watching it sometime this summer, I'm sure. But I'm breaking the law when I do. Who hasn't lent a friend an episode of Survivor or American Idol? Illustrious Dotcommenter Herb sends me funny videos from time to time. He's breaking the law.

By the way... you think the gun registry was an unnecessarily expensive boondoggle? Wait until the government has to enforce this law!

Matthew also interviewed my friend (and, I should disclose, my financial agent in both the 2005 and 2008 campaigns) Scott Cave. Scott runs a e-commerce business serving the independent music industry:

This means that it is illegal to copy a DRM protected CD to an iPod or other device, which Cave called "a little bit ridiculous."

"They want us to buy the CDs, but they don't want you to listen to it how you want," Cave said.

Cave has his own blog, where he writes on the topic, and he was mighty unhappy with the response he got from his MP, Mark Warawa.

This is a big deal for a lot of people under 35. I hope the Tories open their ears, or they could be training a generation of people to vote against them.