Prentice on Search Engine
Prentice finally allowed himself to be interviewed on CBC Radio Search Engine, a pretty tech savvy show, regarding his copyright bill. I heard it and was dumbfounded. MP3 Link. (Local Cache)
This guy sounds like he doesn’t even know what is in his own bill. He keeps dodging questions about simple, everyday activities like copying your DRM’d CD collection to an iPod by saying “thats a very technical question” — I keep wanting to throttle him. If the (purported, however laughable that is) author can’t figure out what’s legal or not, how are the rest of us supposed to? Especially when basic English skills applied to the bill seem to indicate that a bunch of daily activities are illegal.
And when asked whats to prevent corporations from putting DRM on everything and leaving no user rights at all? He passes that onto the market. And says that the music industry wont prosecute average Joes anyway.
Mr. Prentice, why bother passing a law at all if its not meant to be used? When someone points out that a law as worded is broken, the correct action is not to exclaim “But we would never use it that way!” with a wink and a nudge to your US lobby buddies, but to sit down and FIX IT!
UPDATE: Video from a session in Parliament. NDP Charlie Angus has been on Prentice from the beginning about this – he rightly doesn’t let up here. Once more, Prentice appears to not have read his own bill, and keeps harping on time and format shifting which are actually NOT permitted (via Digital Copyright Canada):
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