TORONTO, CANADA — The Canadian Parliament is on the cusp of approving a new copyright law that exceeds the provisions of the U.S.’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and not everyone is happy about the proposed crackdown on piracy.As a way of drawing public attention to what some artists consider an overreaching of government authority, Toronto’s Edward Day Gallery has mounted a special show of art that would be criminalized under the proposed new law, known as Bill C-61.
“Appropos” is a group exhibition by members of the Appropriation Art Coalition, a faction of Canadian art professionals who oppose Bill C-61 on the grounds it will lock up intellectual property so tightly that legitimate artistic uses of media will be forbidden. Circumventing digital locks is against the law under the new bill, as are activities like “sampling” music and videos to use in larger works of criticism or parody.
According to AAC, Bill C-61 will make it “illegal to access existing material, modify it, comment on it and/or publicly display it. Criticism, parody and satire, under Bill C-61, become criminal acts.”
Essential to the work of contemporary artists, AAC, claims, is limited appropriation of pop-culture icons, music and imagery. That notion is the focus of the exhibit.
“Copyright is meant to nurture the rights of creators, not suppress and criminalize artistic practice,” the group maintains. “It is not the responsibility of any government to legislate art.”
The Canadian Newspaper Association is critical of the bill for having the potential to negatively impact news gathering and reporting. Other critics also have leveled charges that Bill C-61 could harm the open-source software industry by criminalizing software modifications, and others see potential for the law to be used to prosecute consumers who back up their computers onto digital media or transfer from one personal device to another music or videos they have bought. In addition, according to at least one interpretation of the proposed bill, recording television programs could violate the law if the recordings are kept for more than a few days. Even unlocking cell phones could run afoul of Bill C-61.
Bill C-61 was introduced June 12th by Minister of Industry Jim Prentice and Minister of Heritage Josée Verner. Among the proposed changes to existing Canadian copyright law are a prohibition against backing up video and audio CDs and DVDs, a provision that digital media may be transferred between devices owned by the purchaser only once (and only so long as the purchaser retains the original copy), and severe restrictions on the types of media that may be format-shifted (and the ways format-shifting may be accomplished). Downloading copyrighted content from the Web or uploading it to the Web is forbidden except by the content’s owner.
Clause 32 of Bill C-61 specifies a maximum penalty of $1 million and/or five years in prison for circumvention of DRM. Other proposed fines include a $500 statutory damages award for music downloads and fines of up to $20,000 per instance for uploading or downloading copyrighted material at peer-to-peer networks and tube sites.
Canadian residents are not all that fond of the proposed bill. In a recent poll, 45-percent of respondents voiced opposition and 45-percent voiced support. The breakdown by age was telling: 58-percent of 18-34-year-olds opposed Bill C-61 while 37-percent of respondents aged 35-54 and 27-percent of those older than 54 opposed it.
