The Harper government introduced a copyright modernization act that went into effect recently.

One immediately consequence is that many Internet users received asinine copyright infringement notices from their Internet service providers.

The good news is that the law limits the damages payable to copyright holders for illegal personal downloads, making it uneconomical for them to sue, blowing copyright trolls out of the water. The bad news is that previously legal activities became illegal, including the most controversial element of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which concerns digital locks. The gist of it is that circumventing a digital lock is a crime even if a) you do it to facilitate otherwise lawful use, and b) the lock itself isn’t worth crap.

To add insult to injury, the Harper government is using omnibus budget bills to modify its own laws; most recently, the government extended the copyright on music to 70 years after the creator’s death in a provision that was snuck into this year’s budget.

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