Scary Laws

[c9]

Intellectual Property Law meets the greed of Hollywood. Be afraid!

"To simplify, any device that can record video will be illegal to import or purchase in a year, if it doesn't obey DRM." [Digital Rights Management, a category of anti-copying rules and software --Cam]

"In plain English, [Copy Prohibited Content] means that your recorded program, should you start watching it an hour after it's done recording, will start to delete itself 30 minutes later. Think of the fun you and your family can have trying to keep ahead of the deletion queue!"

We should all be worried about this because US copyright and IP laws inevitably appear in Canada as well, often in identical form. And we're not big enough to warrant special shipments of electronics, or different DVD releases... for all intents and purposes, Canada is merely another portion of the United States for Hollywood!

To quote simplisticton:

Your VCR: illegal. Your PVR: illegal. Like to watch movies on your PSP or your PDA? Illegal. Video iPod: you better believe that's illegal.

Comments

[c9.livejournal.com]

"Dear Canadians,

Every piece of electronics is now going to be incompatible with all your old electronics, and cost more due to shipping it across the ocean. Oh, and you can't buy Hollywood BluRay DVDs until six months after everyone in the US can.

Signed,
The Man."

I think that'll be a non-starter.

[cap-hill-latte.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn’t mean that literally. :-). Though, I think it would be an interesting experiment to try to get off of the media “grid”. Pick and choose your hardware and content based on what appeals to you, and your taste for DRM.

Of course, Ben would be the only person in Canada with the patience to do it. :-).

To your “dear users, everything is broken” point, this is sort of going to happen soon when gov’ts start turning off non-HD TV signals. Dresden (I think, it could have been another city in Germany) did this about a month ago.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Good point. April 2009 for the US, no date set for Canada yet.