There’s big news coming out of Canada these days, and it isn’t (just) that the CBC has lost the rights to “Canada’s Second National Anthem,” the fabled Hockey Night in Canada theme, to the CTV/TSN tag team. Unfortunately, this news is even worse and may have ramifications for how you use this wonderful thing we call the Internet even if you make your home outside the Great White North.

Not only has the Canadian legislature introduced their own version of America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but there’s also a move towards something called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that’s being railroaded through legal channels as we speak… and if you previously thought Canada had a more lenient attitude towards filesharing and copyright law, you’d best prepare yourself.

Under the proposed Canadian DMCA, there would be a unilateral ban on the publication of any tool or utility that would allow any form of a “digital lock” to be picked, regardless of the purpose in doing so. There are a few limited and very specific exceptions written into the bill, to be sure; for instance, you can view a DVD you personally own on an iPod or similar device. The fun part comes when you examine the fine print and learn that there is no legal way to actually transfer your DVD movie to the device. Bwah? Isn’t that about like making it illegal to turn a key in a car’s ignition, yet driving is still allowed?

If that’s bad, ACTA is even worse, if for no other reason than its potential effects could be felt far outside the Land of the Maple Leaf (no offense intended to Montreal). The sinister beauty of ACTA is that it contains riders and language that would make any form of P2P or file sharing absolutely illegal under any circumstances… even for the purposes of material that actually could legally be distributed over such channels, including Linux distributions and public-domain material such as that found on websites like this one. This specifically includes BitTorrent, under a subsection ominously entitled the “Pirate Bay Killer clause,” despite the fact that even several legitimate companies have embraced BT technology for distributing their files at-cost to consumers. Oh, but it gets even better. Under ACTA, customs agents would have the right to search any media device (iPod, PDA, cell phone, laptop, whatever) you bring with you across the border, and can - at their sole discretion, mind you - confiscate or even destroy any device that, in their estimation, contains infringing material.

Imagine being stopped at the border-patrol station in Detroit, trying to cross the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, Ontario for the afternoon, but the customs agent there insists on holding up traffic because he has to check somebody’s 8GB iPod for contraband MP3s, or because he’s busy taking a sledgehammer to a laptop because a link to a cracking site was discovered in its “My Favorites” directory. This is all possible if ACTA gets signed into law.

Now, I am trying very hard not to be an alarmist here, and am trying to remember that proposed laws such as this usually always start off “extreme” yet, due to the nature of the political process, often get toned down considerably from their original wording. But these two bills are positively frightening in their intent to stamp out any and all vestiges of “fair use” and to effectively punish the Internet and all of its users (even those who have never downloaded one byte of illegal code) for facilitating the spread of piracy over the last 10-15 years.

Besides, the fact that ACTA has been specifically tagged by the Canadian government as “not subject to Parliamentary review” should definitely raise a few alarm bells.

Here in America, knowledge of ACTA is being kept quiet; it seems only the Canadian and Australian media is raising a big stink about it. This is especially curious when you consider the USA appears right at the top of the list of the international consortium that sponsors it. Now, I don’t want to say anything here that’ll get me or WotG in trouble, but I can’t help but wonder why, if this bill affects us too, there hasn’t been more outrage expressed on our side of the 49th Parallel…

If ever there was a time to support a group like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, this would be it.

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