OTTAWA - After taking a two-month leave to prorogue Parliament earlier in the year, the Conservatives are now considering pushing work on a new copyright bill into the summer months.
Industry and government sources tell The Canadian Press that new copyright legislation is expected to be sent to a special House of Commons committee to be studied over the barbecue season, if the opposition will play ball.
Proposed changes to the badly outdated Copyright Act are scheduled to be tabled next Thursday, a late date in the parliamentary calendar for a bill of such major scope.
A joint Canadian Heritage-Industry legislative committee would theoretically be struck, and opposition parties urged to work together with the government to finally pass the bill.
This kick at the can, a followup to the ill-fated Bill C-61 of two years ago, is expected to go some way to appeasing international partners -- especially the European Union and the United States -- and big players in the entertainment industry, who want tougher rules on using copyrighted material.
One government insider said Canada simply cannot ignore the international consensus on the issue and make it acceptable for people to violate copyright, because major corporations will choose not to invest in Canada.
The source said that doesn't mean big business won't feel the pressure to bend to consumer wishes.
"They're going to have to weigh that very carefully, even if they see this as a victory in terms of copyright legislation," said the source.
But that will leave consumer activists out in the cold -- again. The new bill would still make it a crime to pick a "digital lock" on a piece of music, film or technology so that it can be used in a different way. For example, taking a piece of digital music encoded with a copyright lock, circumventing that lock, and burning it on to a CD would not be legal.
Powerful opponents are already readying their artillery against the bill.
User-rights activist Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has again begun to mobilize online followers to combat the legislation. This week, the Canadian Federation of Students posted a slick and funky YouTube video about why students should lead the fight against the new bill, which they argue will unfairly put young people at risk of prosecution.
That type of outcry from consumers tripped up C-61 in the last go around.
The NDP is also highly skeptical of the new legislation. Heritage critic Charlie Angus says the issue of how individual artists, not the major media corporations, will get paid for their work, has still not be adequately addressed.
Angus had argued that a levy be placed on iPods and similar devices, much like it has been placed on blank CDs and cassettes, so that songwriters could receive a cut for their work. That was shot down by the Conservatives.
"I'm wondering what this big year-and-half delay was, because I don't think this government has moved very far off where they've been all along," said Angus. "James Moore is stuck on replay."
Changing the Copyright Act to bring Canada up to speed with the international community, particularly the World Intellectual Property Organization's treaty, has frustrated the federal government -- Liberal and Conservative -- for more than a decade.
Changes are almost always condemned by one group of stakeholders or another, and the heritage and industry ministers wind up in a tug-of-war between protecting the consumer and protecting major cultural industries. Trying to find a political advantage is almost impossible, so the impetus to push for new measures is weak.
"I don't envy the government in this thing at all," said one industry player. "There aren't a lot of wins here."
