The dust has settled a bit on Canada's announced changes to the Copyright Act and for all the it could have been worse talk, I fear that it might not. Michael Geist, the Todd Maffin of Canadian law, notes the following in relation to the fair use exceptions:

The Act will include new provisions to facilitate electronic delivery of materials within schools and libraries. This is viewed as addressing the user side of the equation. It is a start but obviously user rights do not command the same attention as the rights holder groups.

The problem with framing the duality is, of course, that users are not in groups - are not that poxy thing "stakeholders". They are individuals and perhaps not part of a duality at all but a more complex thing. It is not clear that the government is interested in this, all the talk of users right being caught up in the bleating over peer-to-peer taking of the property of others, something no one ever had the right to under law. Here is a Federal government site with a number of background economic impact studies on the changes to the Copyright Act and I find this passage in one most alarming¹:

This section addresses these questions from the perspective of libraries, archives and museums (LAMs). It asks how frequently LAMs encounter wrong or inapplicable information. Whether they can correct such RMI themselves and, if not, what alternatives are open to them? What economic costs flow from not making the correction?...LAMs argue that they should be permitted to carry out the circumventions and manipulations of RMI they deem necessary to exercise rights they enjoy under fair dealing provisions. They also maintain that authorizations should extend to the specialized firms they hire to perform these tasks. LAMs worry that uses guaranteed under sections 29 to 30.5 of the Copyright Act will become theoretical if authorization is not granted. LAMs recognize the risk that material stripped of identifying information and made available for consultation will be disseminated on the Internet. They also acknowledge that such dissemination may prejudice copyright holders. However, they do not offer a practical solution to this problem.

Describing the fair dealing rights under sections 29 to 30.5 as institutional rights ignores that the law provides a means for anyone to use copyrighted material for criticism, review and research as long as certain information is provided. By framing the issue as one for libraries, archives and museums or, yikes, "the education community" these rights have effectively been lost through mischaracterization. You see, institutions belong to organizations and can afford lobbyists and lawyers preseparing and presenting their interests. The vast clouds of individuals do not.

Maybe I have this wrong. Geist says: "contrary to some reports, the proposed changes do not touch peer-to-peer downloading, but the government will act to ensure that unauthorized postings of copyrighted work will constitute an infringement." The key is "unauthorized" as the fair dealing provisions are authority for anyone to use the material of others for legitimate purposes, including reviewing - something most blogging about copyrighted material can be considered to fall under. The problem is how to create a digital rights management tool that meets the needs of the scheme of our digital rights management law, protecting against the pillage of peer-to-peer while allowing the fair deal for each of us personally and not through an institutional gatekeeper. We watch.

By the way, nice to see Chuck Charlie Angus, NDP MP and ex-GA, is on the job in this matter [warning - pdf]. I would suggest that he might make an excellent place to contact as this heads towards Parliament if you have any concerns about what you might lose as opposed to your library: email him here.

¹ from "Assessing Economic Impacts of Copyright Reform on Selected Users and Consumers" by Abraham Hollander, Department of Economics, Université de Montréal, Prepared for Marketplace Framework Policy Branch, Industry Canada.