The word this afternoon is that Industry Minister Jim Prentice will not introduce the Canadian DMCA tomorrow. The thousands of letters and phone calls over the past week have urged the government to adopt balanced copyright reforms that meets everyone’s needs and does not unduly harm education, consumer rights, privacy, and free speech. The delay provides an exceptional opportunity for Minister Prentice to consult more broadly and to factor those concerns into the forthcoming bill in the interests of all Canadians.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that people made a strong noise about this issue. The facebook group got more than 14,000 members in one week. A lot of bloggers started writing about this issue. I wrote to my local MP as well. However, I am not sure if we should start celebrating about this yet. Michael Geist has clarified that he is not sure why the introduction has been delayed. It could be that it was just delayed for a couple of days. Maybe this deal might be introduced tomorrow.

To tell you the truth, I am just too excited to see what is going to happen next. If Harper introduces this then for sure his party will not be coming to power in next 12 years. It’s sort of like a political suicide for him. We also shouldn’t forget that our previous Liberal government also tried to do something similar. However, they failed. I am pretty sure that these Corporate Conservatives will fail too.

For now, here is an interesting video made by a musical artist from Montreal expressing his views on this drama. This law is supposed to protect people like him. Let’s see what he has to say.

Fortunately, there are people like Dr. Geist, University of Ottawa Law professor, who are fighting against this move. If you want you could check out his website.

You are wondering what might happen if this law gets passed. Read the following excerpt from this article…

This puts the whole Canadian tech industry at the mercy of the US industry, unable to innovate or start new businesses that interact with the existing pool of devices and media without getting a license from the States.

how exactly?

If this law passes, it will render all of the made-in-Canada exceptions to copyright for education, archiving, free speech and personal use will be irrelevant: if a technology has a lock that prohibits a use, your right to make that use falls by the wayside. Nevermind that you’ve got the right to record a show to watch later — or to record a politician’s speech so you can hold him to account later — the policeman in the device can take that right away with no appeal.

Here is a video composed by Dr. Geist outlining how you could fight back.

I was totally unaware of this issue as I have been busy with studies. Thanks to Dan from More Notes From Underground for informing about this. Dan writes from Toronto, Canada like me. He does have a very nice informative style of writing. You should check out his blog and leave a nice comment for him.