We took your voices to Parliament: Copyright edition

Last week, we brought your voices straight to the parliamentary committee reviewing the Copyright Act in Ottawa. Thank you for speaking out! Here's the lowdown.

Earlier this week Laura and I had the honour to testify before the parliamentary committee reviewing Canada’s Copyright Act and brought OpenMedia community’s voices straight to Members of Parliament!

We took this unique opportunity to amplify your concerns on issues such as the implications of the new NAFTA on digital rights, website blocking and digital taxes that would increase connectivity costs for people across Canada.

Thank you for speaking out! We used our testimony to ensure your voices and concerns reached the ears of key decision-makers. You can watch our full testimony here and read the script of our opening statement here.

There is a long battle ahead of us to ensure a balanced copyright regime for people in Canada, but the fruits of our joint efforts are already starting to show.

Right before we testified, MPs voted on Bill C-86, the Budget Implementation Act, which included important overdue fixes to Canada’s notice and notice legal system for identifying and dealing with content that’s allegedly infringing copyright online.

The new plan to fix the abuses to our notice and notice system prohibits the inclusion of settlement demands, which have previously been used by rights holders to take advantage of thousands of Canadians. Notices can also no longer request personal information.

It will work as simple as this: your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will not be obliged to forward a notice that includes a demand for settlement payments or personal information, making it difficult for copyright trolls to abuse the system and extort Internet users.

This is a big win for Canadian customers, but our work to secure a robust copyright regime doesn’t end here. Make sure you have your say on the future of Canada’s copyright via our slick tool at LetsTalkCopyright.ca!

We spoke with committee members after our testimony, and they confirmed it — they are going through every submission received through OpenMedia’s tool. So let’s make them count!