Globe and Mail: The never-ending copyright wars

Globe and Mail: The never-ending copyright wars
Jack Kapica

There are two things interesting about this.

First, it shows how zealous some organizations can be to create their own corrections to the 1997 Copyright Act, even though the federal government has promised to revise the act very soon — it is expected to table its revisions perhaps as soon as in the next week or two. And by all accounts, the bill is expected to favour copyright holders.

But will it be tabled?

Just this morning The Globe and Mail reported that the federal government will introduce an unusual confidence motion as early as Monday demanding that the Senate pass the Conservatives’ crime bill by March 1. If the bill fails in the House of Commons, which could be next week, the vote could trigger an election.

There are other issues the Tories are counting as confidence votes — among them the future of the Afghan mission and the budget (expected at the end of February). In short, it looks like the Tories, who have already prepared the Copyright Act revision, are spoiling for an election, which would effectively kill it.

Just like the Liberals’ revisions to the act were killed by the previous election call.

Here we go again.