C-11

Many of us take advantage of free media sharing. Seriously, if you can get stuff for free, why pay. Although this is a perfect way to save big bucks on publications, this violates the rights of owners/ artists and it is more than just a moral issue. But many of us don’t pay attention to this or sometimes tend to neglect it purposely, so we should be cautious here. Obviously, this illegal downloading action has been considered as ‘stealing’, yet how do we judge and why should we bring awareness to downloaders?

So I looked into the bill C-11 (the Copyright Modernization Act). Off the ‘copyright’ topic a bit, I found it is always nice to hear new terms in class and then when I look them up on the internet, it helps me more in understanding the course material. The new bill, C-11 is rather the amendment that has been introduced to Canadians striking digital piracy. The bill is a new and good provision by being ‘a bill of two tales’ (paracopyright and copyright), in other words, it’s the compromise on copyrighted digital goods for non-commercial use. In a lot of ways, C-11 is amended elaborately, yet unfortunately, the most controversial part of C-11 (digital locks) still remains unsolved. Under C-11, breaking digital locks is considered as the action of against legislation. What is ‘digital locks’? ‘Digital locks’ is an approach to crack down illegal copies by providing technological protection methods, for example, CRIA and GNU. Some people think the digital locks are overwhelmed oppressing piracy and the rests credits digital locks keeping their business thriving. Do the digital locks go too far? The debate goes on.