Fight Against Bill C-61

kill bill c-61

On Wednesday, Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced a bill that will totally buried the "Canadian Homebrew Community" six feet deep under the Canadian soil. Why do I say that? just read this

"Michael Geist" in his post:
The digital lock provisions are worse than the DMCA. Yes - worse. The law creates a blanket prohibition on circumvention with very limited exceptions and creates a ban against distributing the tools that can be used to circumvent. While Prentice could have adopted a more balanced approach (as New Zealand and Canada’s Bill C-60 did), the effect of these provisions will be to make Canadians infringers for a host of activities that are common today including watching out-of-region-coded DVDs, copying and pasting materials from a DRM’d book, or even unlocking a cellphone.

While that is the similar to the U.S. law, the exceptions are worse. The Canadian law includes a few limited exceptions for privacy, encryption research, interoperable computer programs, people with sight disabilities, and security, yet Canadians can’t actually use these exceptions since the tools needed to pick the digital lock in order to protect their privacy are banned. In other words, check the fine print again - you can protect your privacy but the tools to do so are now illegal. Dig deeper and it gets worse. Under the U.S. law, there is mandatory review process every three years to identify new exceptions. Under the Canadian law, its up to the government to introduce new exceptions if it thinks it is needed. Overall, these anti-circumvention provisions go far beyond what is needed to comply with the WIPO Internet treaties and represents an astonishing abdication of the principles of copyright balance that have guided Canadian policy for many years.–

It was now illegal to circumvent or to bypass any security lock or to use any exploit to run any non-official firmware and homebrew apps at any game console.

In this post I will try to explain it why it was too bad to the bone for every homebrew people in the community this Bill was, this Law is applicable to Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo and even iPhone Homebrewer. I will try to make it in general for you guys to understand it more and to know how evil is this ignorant way of Digital Law created by US and co-creator Industry Minister Jim Prentice and the Harper Minority Government.

What’s hidden inside the box:

1. It will be illegal to make a back-up copy of your legally bought games, music and movies and any other types of digital stuff with DRM, even rootkits or virus as long it was created with DRM.
2. It was also illegal to transfer your CD or any music you download from iTunes which using a proprietary media format even it was a DRM free, because under Bill C-61, under digital lock to convert it to MP3 or Atrac3 or any encoding format is prohibited.
3. And of course to make most out of your game console is to run a custom firmware will is now cost you $20,000 or more if Sony or Microsoft will sue you after they will find out your using an M33-CFW or any exploit that you are using to circumvent the digital lock of the game consoles you are playing. Since cyber police must be legal to check inside your game console while you enjoying free online games as bait.
4. Since most of the homebrew application is running in a manner that will bypass the digital lock of any game console so it will now prohibit you to test, run your creative homebrew application unless you can make it run in any official game console firmware without using any exploit or alike.
5. It will also stop you to use a cheat code, if the game you are playing is not design to naturally work on the way you want it to be, because you already bypassing the original game play design of the games.

All this is under what they called-"anti-circumvent law" This law essentially makes it illegal to bypass electronic locks, or "DRM", on content they own. Such a law gives unlimited power to content owners, and strips any and all rights from consumers, even rights explicitly laid out in law.

DRM has extremely dire side effects. DRM stands for "Digital Rights Management", and that’s exactly what it does; it controls what rights a consumer does and does not have over the media the consumer has purchased. But these are rights determined by the content provider, not by law, and the revocation of these rights becomes the province of private industry, which has already demonstrated a total disregard for consumer rights.

Other stuff may concern you:

1. This bill makes watching legally purchased DVDs on your home built personal video recorder running Linux illegal and probably the same applies to TV shows.
2. The Conservatives’ bill, however, also contains an anti-circumvention clause that will make it illegal to break digital locks on copyrighted material, which critics say could trump all of the new allowances. CD and DVD makers could put copy protections on their discs, or television networks could attach technological flags to programs that would prevent them from being recorded onto TiVos and other personal video recorders.
3. Cellphones would also be locked down, so when consumers buy a device from one carrier, they would be unable to use it with another. Breaking any of these locks could result in lawsuits seeking up to $20,000 in damages.
4. People caught downloading music or video files illegally could also be sued for a maximum of $500, but uploading a file to a peer-to-peer network or even YouTube could result in lawsuits of $20,000 per file. Remember the mother uploading her baby video dancing in not so famous artist "Prince" music get sue by the artist? That will also may happen to you if this bill passes the congress.
5. Critics feared the bill will mirror the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which similarly brought in restrictive measures and opened the door for copyright owners to enact huge lawsuits against violators.
6. The chorus of opposition was joined last week by a coalition of consumer groups — including Option consommateurs, Consumers Council of Canada, Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and Online Rights Canada (OnlineRights.ca) — that wrote a letter to the government. The consumer groups expressed dismay they had not been consulted on the legislation.
7. Cory Doctorow, co-editor of the influential Boing Boing blog, said the anti-circumvention clause will lead to a revival of digital rights management, or the software that prevents media from being copied. The entertainment industry has for the past few years been moving away from protecting its content with DRM because consumers have shied away from buying restricted media.
8. The NDP is strongly opposed to this bill and we are calling on MPs from other parties to listen to their constituents and join us in the growing chorus against it. Rather, we are pushing for legislation that will ensure that artists and creators are compensated for their work but that also ensures consumers are able to enjoy reasonable rights of access.
9. If Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s Bill C-61 becomes law, all of these copying activities arguably violate the law.
Bill C-61 gives Canadians the right to record television shows with their PVR. However, the recordings may only be kept long enough to allow for the program to be viewed at a more convenient time. By retaining copies of earlier programs is likely violating the law. (Section 29.23 (1)(d)). Recording of an Internet broadcast also violates the law. Bill C-61 explicitly prohibits recording Internet-only broadcasts (Section 29.23 (3)). The copying of the music files also violates the law. The act of circumventing the copy-controls on the CD violates Bill C-61 (Section 41.1). Moreover, the much-promoted provision to allow users to transfer their music onto their device of choice doesn’t apply either, since one of the conditions is that users cannot circumvent a digital lock as part of the music transfer process (Section 20.22(1)(c).
10. Canada’s campus bookstores lamented that amendments proposed to the Copyright Act will continue to financially and academically hurt Canadian university students.

What can be done? Take action NOW!

Don’t simply let this pass.
• No matter where you live in the world, if you are a copyright holder on any kind of work — song, film, article, computer program — please email the officials below to let them know that you do not want this law and that the people who have been demanding it do not speak for you.
• If you are Canadian, please write to your MP to protest the fast-tracking of this bill.
The Canadian government needs to hear that this law is Defective by Design!
• Write to your MP , and email the Industry Minister, the Canadian Heritage Minister, and the Prime Minister . If you are looking for a sample letter, visit Copyright for Canadians .
• If you send an email, be sure to print it out and drop a copy in the mail (no stamp is needed — c/o House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A0A6).
• Don’t stop with email. Go visit. In his latest post, Doctorow suggests that every Canadian "Take 30 minutes from your summer, to meet directly with your MP" . From late June through much of the summer, your MP will be back in your local community attending local events and making themselves available to meet with constituents. Give them a call and ask for a meeting. Every MP in the country should return to Ottawa in the fall having heard from their constituents on this issue.