The Lawyers Weekly - June 25, 2010

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
June 25, 2010 | 27

Digital locks. The bill legally enforces
technological protection measures which
are frequently used, for example, by
software producers, and videogame and
movie distributors. TPM circumvention
would generally be treated as copyright
infringement and subject to liability, even if
the circumvention involves the private use
of legally acquired material. Those who distribute, manufacture or sell TPM-
circumvention tools would also be liable. Software companies will be able to
circumvent TPMs for the purpose of undertaking encryption research. Bill C-32
also provides a regulation-making power to permit digital locks to be broken in
certain cases — for example where the presence of a TPM would unduly
restrict competition in an after-market sector.

;QUOTES For now it
involves a lot of
work for us
because a lot of
our clients want
to know what the
law is about, and
maybe have an
official position
with respect to
the law.

Fair dealing. This key provision, which permits the use of copyrighted material for specified legitimate purposes, adds “education,” “parody” and “satire,” to the existing fair-use purposes of research, private study, news reporting, criticism and review.

Time-shifting. Bill C-32 would legalize the widespread practice of recording content from the television, radio or Internet for later viewing, on devices such as a personal video recorder or videocassette recorder.

Format-shifting. Bill C-32 would legalize the transfer of legally acquired content from one medium to another, such as from a music compact disc to an MP3 player – provided that doing so does not break a digital lock.

Remixing of copyrighted works. Bill C-32 permits people to incorporate legitimately acquired copyrighted material when creating new non-commercial works – such as Internet mash-ups and amateur karaoke shared via Facebook and You Tube— as long as this doesn’t substitute for, or negatively impact the markets and reputation of, the original material.

I think there are going to be many businesses out there that are going to wonder if they still have a business once this law is put into effect.

— By Cristin Schmitz

ALL PHOTOS BY DREAMSTIME.COM

infringement found in Bill C-32
There is an awful
lot at stake for
educational
institutions and
rights holders.

open-ended as drafted and there are very substantial questions about what can be copied for educational purpose,” Sookman said. A “work” can include a range of things. “Does it mean they have the right to copy the entirety of a website?” he quer-ied. “What steps have to be taken to comply with the condition in order to make [the PAM excep-tion] inapplicable? The drafting is so broad and so sweeping that there will be questions for lawyers to have to sort out—both for the rights holders (i.e. the websites and the content owners) and…the educational institutions,” he said.

Montreal’s Sunny Handa, co-
head of Blakes’ information and
technology group, said Bill
C-32’s new $5,000 cap on statu-
tory damages for non-commer-
cial copyright infringement has
been criticized by software,
music and motion picture pro-
ducers as too low. But Handa
noted the bill also stipulates a
new damages minimum of $100,
giving companies targeted by
piracy a weapon to deter non-
commercial infringement by
making examples of some errant
private users. Few companies
have sued under the present
higher statutory damages
scheme which tops out at
$20,000 per work, he noted.