Our enemy has a name: Bill C-61.

Credit is very much due to the Vancouver Sun for its well-thought out and educated reporting on Bill C-61 (June 12, 2008: "New copyright bill aims hefty penalties"). It's quite refreshing to see the mainstream media finally get it right when it comes to technology. (Ars Technica and the Globe and Mail also have very good articles.)

Jim Prentice and the Conservative government have gone to great lengths in the bill to explain the legality of device-shifting and time-shifting. Respectively, these terms refer to moving one's legally purchased media to different playback devices, and recording broadcasts for later playback. However, both of these legal-use scenarios are made absolutely meaningless by the anti-circumvention provisions in section 41.1 of the bill.

For example, Canadians have only recently been able to purchase movies from Apple's iTunes music store, meaning the only content available for video iPods was movies ripped from DVDs. But such a practice circumvents the DVD's encryption and as such would be a criminal act under the new law. Likewise, a recording of a digital broadcast would not be legally possible if the broadcaster chose to lock their broadcast with DRM (digital rights management).

As long as media companies have carte blanche to use DRM to restrict how, when and where we can use the media we've legally purchased, the legal protection for device-shifting and time-shifting is utterly meaningless . This legal double-talk makes me wonder if the government is ignorant of the technologies they are attempting to legislate, or if they are trying to assuage Canadians through misdirection.

I can't decide which I would rather it be.