C-61 II: The Empire Strikes Back

The Twitters lit up this morning when Michael Geist announced that the PMO has sided with a more-restrictive/DMCA-esque/C-61 redux approach to new copyright legislation that will be tabled within six weeks.

I have no doubt this is reliable information – but I’m not going to write about it at any length (or with any vitriol) until something is actually tabled. Arguing about a theoretical is almost as big a waste as summarily ignoring a year long national consultation process (zing!).

I don’t hold out any hope that I’ll be pleasantly surprised by the bill (In fact I mentioned several times in last summer’s posts on the copyright consultation that I suspected the real irony of the process was that everyone involved was going to be disappointed – but it’s hard to argue in detail against an unknown quantity.

Obviously, I stand by my longstanding argument that draconian end-user copyright restrictions will take a huge toll on independent content producers in the new media space. Given that it’s not exactly an industry secret, I’m still shocked at how few creators understand that content locks work two ways – preventing piracy (which they don’t do very well) and locking creators out from accessing platform-specific audiences.

I’ll obviously have more to say once the actual legislation comes down (supposedly June-ish).