We are in interesting times here in Canada. It appears that a proposal for an amendment to our Copyright act is going to be presented in the very near future. So far we have had an announcement from the government that an amendmaent was going to be tabled in December of 2007, which led to a groundswell protest against the amendment - so far it appears these protests have been succesful, as there has been no sign of the proposal.
http://sfu.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6315846683
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2647/125/
In this atmosphere of uncertainty we have stakeholders coming forward with their christmas wish lists. Some of these statements are laughable, some have no hope of considerastion and some are down right dangerous.
The most dangerous and in my opinion mis-guided proposals comes from the Council of Ministers of Education, requesting an special exemption within the copyright act for the use of the internet in education.
The statement itself is available here:
http://www.cmec.ca/copyright/bulletins2008/note-01.en.pdf
Several scholars, far more worthy than I have commented on this statement - Sam Trosow, a law professor comments at http://samtrosow.ca/content/view/27/2/
- Howard Knopf's Excess Copyright blog is a must read:
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2008/01/a-contrario-scenario-cmec.html