Basically if you have to crack encryption to do what you want with what you've paid for doing so will mean breaking the law.
Which I think sucks, but I'm no law guru so I won't comment beyond that, there are plenty of other smart folks out there tackling the pros and cons. Go read up and decide for yourself if that's a good thing for Canadians.
My question is this: If you can't break a digital lock in order to do what you want with a product you have purchased, shouldn't manufacturers be required to clearly label these products as being "protected".
How am I to know what products I can legally use to my satisfaction if I don't find out that it's protected by a digital lock until I get home? At that point I'm double screwed because businesses have known for years that digital locks don't mean diddly squat and have acted accordingly.
If only there were some universally recognizable logo, like the Explicit Lyrics warning label. Wait a minute ... there IS a logo to warn about digital locks, and it's conveniently available in ready-to-be-printed-as-a-sticker format here! I predict I will be invited to leave many a Best Buy this year ...
EDIT: As it turns out, the xxAA have beaten me to this brilliant evil plan, those bastards! How can I twist my mustache while hatching plots now? Anyway the image they chose is slightly less wordy and looks like this. So keep your eye out for it and vote with your dollars!
4 comments:
Canada was one of the first countries to jump on the blank CD levy, while even today few others have followed suit. Why does any of this surprise you? I certainly can't remember the last time I took the Canadian government seriously, in the last decade they've amounted to nothing short of being a shill for American lobbying interests. Wake me when there's a push to regain some dignity.
I agree but you're missing my point. The law sucks but it's not about me taking it seriously, I'm not interested in what the Canadian government thinks it can encourage it's citizens to do through legislation. I'm interested in what citizens can do to assert their rights to the media industry in an arena industry will understand: their bottom line.
I like that you are implying that citizens have any rights whatsoever as far as the media lobby is concerned. These laws exist precisely to strip any and all rights away, trumping fair use (inclusive of reverse engineering) along the way. It's nothing new though, a lot of this legislation has its roots from the beta wars and even has a lot of the same people involved in it on the media lobby side. As soon as the US adopted the DMCA it was pretty much over for everyone, even the EU which has traditionally shunned such nonsense has gotten to the point where it's just a matter of deciding what sort of restrictions are going to be imposed rather than whether it's a good idea or something people want at all.
I got in to technology early on entirely through the ability and right to tinker, those days are now already gone, ensuring that the current and next generation are limited entirely to passive application development on constrained J2ME platforms and the like. I certainly would not have gotten in to it at all if this sort of legislation existed.
Canada was simply the first country to hop on the legislation bandwagon following the US, but the end times are nigh for the rest of the world, too. Ironically China is one of the only remaining countries where it's possible to innovate anymore!
I still agree, but you're still missing my (admittedly less clear than I thought) point. The rights I'm talking about are the newly minted fair use rights the bill gives consumers for making backup copies, format shifting, etc. If you can't tell what products are unlocked enough for you to assert those rights then they worse than useless and may as well not exist.
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