Anyone who follows main stream media on a regular basis, probably has heard about the upcoming changes to Copyright legislation in this country.
For those who have not, the long and the short of it is that Canada has been preparing to update it's copyright legislation for many years under a few different governments. The recent string of news stories, have been brought about because the bill was supposed to be tabled this year, was put on hold, was added to the order paper in the House of Commons, and then put on hold again.
Various entities have commented on the lack of consultation on this issue, or the slowness of bringing forth new legislation. One person who I have seen bringing this forth a great deal as of late is Michael Geist. He is a lawyer specializing in the Internet and it's related issues in Ottawa. For those of us tuned into this thing called the Internet, he is a well-known figure who has been talking about things like copyright and net neutrality for a long time, but only recently have I seen his face so much on TV!
No matter what side of this issue you fall on, whether you are an artist, composer, record label, web developer, music lover, writer, reader, student, teacher, consumer etc... copyright effects everyone, and every single Canadian should learn about the issue, and what any proposed changes may mean to you, discuss the issue and make your feelings known.
The hardest thing about this is... until the government tables the legislation, we have no idea what Stephen Harper and Jim Prentice are proposing, but based on past public comments and news reports you can get a good idea, that without any public consultation it will be legislation in the best interests of content creator lobby groups.
Michael Geist calls for this latest delay to spurn talk about legislation on his blog and I fully agree. Not everyone can be completely happy with any new legislation, as concessions will have to be made to both sides, but without hearing what both sides have to say, we cannot ensure that a fair law will come into being.
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