First Thoughts on Bill C-61

Kill it.

This bill has a fundamental flaw. Superficially, it reduces penalties for "simple downloads", but it bumps them right back up if you are "distributing" them.

Well, what most people don't realize is that most of the peer to peer programs commonly used for file sharing of any sort on the internet depend on the "clients" who are receiving a file becoming "active seeders" of that file as it is downloading - meaning that the minute you are downloading something, you are probably uploading it concurrently - whether or not you realized it.

So, Prentice's "reasonable" penalty of $500/infraction (which is actually quite steep for a 5 minute pop song - about $100/minute of material) pretty much changes nothing.

Worse, this bill really does open up the Canadian environment to US-style lawsuits where greedy corporate entities will pursue anyone they can - because its profitable. This does nothing to stay the hand of corporate greed in Canada.

I'll finish going through the legislation in more detail when I have a few minutes. At first glance, I believe this is a deeply flawed piece of legislation that is little more than the HarperCon$ taking their marching orders from their Rethuglican masters.