The Canadian "SOPA" / Bill C-11 - The Important Points and Why it's not going to do much...but you should know the facts!

I want to preface this by saying that this information has been my interpretation from the information I've read/found about Bill C-11. Any clarifications and corrections are welcome!

Bill C-11, or the "Copyright Modernization Act" is a much milder version than SOPA or PIPA and really only affects anyone that tries to profit heavily on pirated materials.

Some of the major points:

I'll start with this summary straight from the page:

Specifically, the Copyright Modernization Act will:

• Implement the rights and protections of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Internet treaties;

• Give copyright owners the tools they need to combat piracy;
• Clarify the roles and responsibilities of ISPs and search engines;
• Promote creativity and new methods of teaching in the classroom by providing greatly expanded exceptions for education;
• Encourage innovation in the private sector through exceptions for technical computer processes;
• Provide legal protection for businesses that choose to use technological protection measures or "digital locks" to protect their work as part of their business models; and,
• Give consumers the ability to, among other things, record their favourite TV shows for later viewing, transfer music from a CD to a digital device, and create a mash-up to post via social media. Will the Government take in

To expand and clarify a few things:

• This system gives content creators the ability to choose to put DRM on a product which is then illegal for a consumer to "break".

• Consumers are allowed to create digital backups of content they already own, as long as it's not breaking a digital lock.

• Certain digital locks are deemed alright to break in the interest of fair market competiton (ie. iPhones can legally be "unlocked" from a specific carrier to operate on another)

• ISPs are required to participate in a "notice and notice" system if notified by content owners of an infringing party.

• Most of these tools are aimed at going after P2P sites as is already being done and, as we can, isn't all that effective.

• The bill differentiates between a commercial and non-commercial infringement (are you making money off of what you do? If, like most of us you're not, then chances are you're non-commercial) and sets a limit for non-commercial fines between $100 - $5000 max for all infringements that took place prior to any lawsuit.

• Adds extra provisions to the fair use clause to allow for more educational and creative use (mash-ups are legal...yay?).

• Recognizes search engines and ISPs as true neutral intermediaries and exempts them from having to censor or de-list content.

Those are the main points, and I'd also like to stress that even a Conservative MP has come out when asked about individuals being confronted by lawsuits as saying that the amount of time, money, and effort that a content creator would need to dedicate to each individual lawsuit would far outweigh any benefits.

I'll stress this again in other terms but basically...this act only sets the law in place, this doesn't mean that the resources are in place to follow through. As we've seen already, this is a huge deal when it comes to enacting things like this, and while you may see a few suits pop up I highly doubt that any "non-commercial" users have much to fear.

This is mostly the information I've gathered through reading up on it and I'm personally not too worried, but if anyone has more information I welcome any corrections as I mentioned above.

EDIT 1: Here are two great articles that summarize The Copyright Modernization Act:

• Michael Geist's summary
• TechDirt article

EDIT 2: Changed an entry to make more grammatical sense.