I sincerely hope that bill C-61 “An Act to amend the Copyright Act” is either very significantly modified from it’s current status or fails to pass in the house.  I’m glad to see that awareness of the issues with the bill is spreading.  I particularly dislike that the amendments as written will disallow circumvention of ineffective locking mechanisms even for private use of purchased media.  I strongly dislike legal protection for ideas I’ve always disagreed with like region-coding digital media.  I can’t think of a good reason why something that’s been released for the general public of one region should be unavailable to people from another indefinitely– it’s digital media, there’s no difference in distribution costs based on distance.  Why is there some perceived need to make illegal activities that are natural to most Internet or iPod users now?

More information about the bill is available at http://www.copyrightforcanadians.ca/action/firstlook/ and http://www.digital-copyright.ca/

You can read the full text of the bill on the Parliament of Canada website where it’s also easy to lookup contact information for your local Member of Parliament.