A practical example of how Bill C-61 will screw consumers
Yahoo recently announced that its “Yahoo Music” service will be shutting down. Sony Connect and MSN Music have previously done the same. What all of these services have in common is that they sold DRM “protected” music. The quotes around “protected” are intentional.
This means that consumers who bought music through these online stores are now at risk of loosing all the music they purchased. After the music store’s sites are shutdown the music will no longer be playable because the music players will no longer be able to access the digital keys that unlock the music.
Consumers are relatively fortunate in these specific cases because all three of these companies are not actually going out of business but are just shutting down their music services. Consumers may actually get a refund or some other compensation. If the companies went fully out of business and shutdown consumers would be up the creek.
In Canada this currently wouldn’t be as big of a deal since we can just break the digital locks on the content and play the music. But not if Bill C-61 passes. Circumventing the locks to access content you legally purchase will be illegal. All that in a bill that Jim Prentice claims is for the benefit of consumers.
Sorry Jim, we are not buying it. DRM is bad, legally protecting it is worse.