For those of you who haven't lost all faith in democracy yet...

The latest word from Canadian Copyright watchdog Michael Geist is that our Conservative government is completely ignoring the feedback it received from last year's Canadian Copyright Consultation, which showed that the majority of an overwhelming number of Canadians opposed draconian, U.S.-DMCA-style copyright legislation. After discussion with Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has decided to simply resurrect the majority of Bill C-61 and rush it through parliament within the next six weeks.

Personally, I am shocked and disgusted. It would seem that our government staged this "consultation" for good media-PR and is now choosing to completely ignore the voices of Canadians. That an elected official could be so purposefully un-democratic shakes my faith in democracy.

Obviously, the Prime Minister and his Conservatives see this not as a serious question about the evolution of civil liberties in the information age, but rather the pet issue of a small and vocal minority. The government figures that if they just keep assaulting the people with their zombified legislation, eventually the people will roll over and give up.

That isn't democracy.

Bill C-61 contained strong and broad anti-circumvention measures which, if passed into law, would criminalize a number of common activities, including, but not limited to:

- Ripping a legally-purchased DVD to play on your iPod/iPhone: All DVDs and Blu-Ray discs contain encryption. Ripping a DVD/BD is not like ripping a CD. If you break encryption, under C-61, you are breaking the law.

- Unlocking any carrier-locked cell-phone or jailbreaking an iPhone/iPod: These devices have been deliberately limited by their manufacturers and/or cell-phone providers in order to force you to use them in a specific way. Scores of small businesses who unlock cell-phones for a living would become criminals. If you want to use a phone on a network that doesn't sell that phone, you're out of luck.

- Transcoding DRM-protected content to use on a different media-player: Want to use that DRM-protected iTunes file you bought on a non-Apple device? Too bad: to do that, you'd have to break the encryption, which is illegal. You paid for it, but somebody else gets to decide how you use it.

- Breaking DRM when a company shuts down: Apple shows no sign of going anywhere. But in the past 10 years there have been multiple cases of DRM-protected content providers (Wal-Mart and Major League Baseball, to name a couple) who decided one day to simply shut-down their DRM-authentication servers, leaving all of those who had purchased content unable to play it. The consumers' only recourse was to break the encryption and transcode to a different format, which would be illegal under C-61.

It's not just the action that is illegal. It becomes illegal to create the tools that do these things. It's going to become harder for you to find a copy of Handbrake or whatever other tool you use for ripping DVDs. Companies get to dictate how you use your content, and consumers get the shaft.

There's not much more I can do but the usual: advise you to contact your local MP, and the Prime Minister; and watch this space for further updates. Go back and read my posts on the original C-61 and my response to the bogus copyright consultation to immunize yourself with knowledge.

My fellow Canadians, over the years, my appetite for arguing left-versus-right politics has dwindled. But in it's place has grown a virulent passion for the protection of civil liberties and functional democracy in our country. This latest move by the Conservatives threatens both. We may not prevail, but I for one intend to go down fighting for my rights.