Our government tabled a bill on June 12 (known as Bill C-61) that proposes to amend Canada’s Copyright Act. It has been more than 10 years since Canada’s copyright laws have been changed. In general, the proposed law includes

These amendments are complex, detailed and proving to be very controversial. While the government has stated that the legislative proposal is a “made-in-Canada” bill that balances the interests of Canadians who use digital technology and those who create content, critics of the amendments suggest otherwise.

For example, some commentators believe the federal government has merely adopted the U.S. DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), while others say the proposed Canadian law is quite different in many ways.

In fact, the amendments are motivated more from the requirement to conform with international norms arising from treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, and to which most industrialized nations are now signatory.

It is SOCAN’s experience that changes to existing copyright laws do not typically create more rights for creators. Instead, creators’ rights are either removed, exceptions to their rights are created and users of copyrights are accorded greater latitude in what they can and cannot do with the works of others.

SOCAN has been studying the proposed amendments and will be making submissions to Parliament on those matters. In the meantime, many other creators, associations of creators, copyright users and associations of users are doing the same.

In the end, however, the bill may never be enacted for a number of reasons, the primary one being the fact that we have a minority government with a limited amount of time available before the next election to consider such a complex, controversial bill.

That being said, copyright reform will happen at some point in the future and, as always, SOCAN will be vigilant in making sure the rights it administers are protected.