Copyright Law Rumours

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, I'm always hearin' about rumours circulatin' around the series of tubes but I hardly ever see any. Strange, since I spend way too much time readin' the boogs and browsin' the news sites. Well, I just seen a couipla rumours about changes to the copyright laws and I'm fulfillin' my duty as an irresponsible rumour-mongerin' booger and postin' the rumoured changes that are supposed to be happenin' tomorrow.

• Immediately after tabling the bill, Industry Minister Prentice and Finance Minister Flaherty will trade places. There has already been a lot of opposition to this bill, so it follows Conservative strategy to put a more aggressive blowhard in place to defend bad legislation (like they did when they replaced Rona Ambrose with John Baird as Environment Minister).
  
  
• The fine for downloading illegal songs will be set at $500. "Other provisions in the bill, which is said to be tabled to the House of Commons tomorrow afternoon, will include measures to make it illegal to unlock cellphones or copy music from protected CDs to iPods as well as making it illegal to copy 'time shifted' shows onto personal video recorders if flagged by broadcasters." Music companies get to decide whether or not you can make your own mixes for your car, and broadcasters get to decide which shows you're allowed to record.

Okay, there you go. I reckon all we can do is wait and see if the rumours are true and whether or not the LibCon majority passes this stuff in the House of (no)Comments.

JB