Everyday Scenarios

I’m a filmmaker making a documentary about the dirty 30’s. I found a DVD with some news footage of the dustbowl on the prairies that I would like to use. The material is not under copyright: it entered the public domain years ago. But because of Bill C-61, it’s illegal for me to copy it from the disc. I could face penalties of up to $20,000.

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I love hockey. I tried to record the exhibition game on TV last night while I was out, but my digital video recorder didn't switch on. It says the broadcaster flagged the game as non-recordable. A friend tells me you can get a black market recorder that would work, but if you're caught it's illegal to the tune of $20,000. I thought the minister said recording TV was legal?

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When I studied journalism at college, I had to install this special software on my computer to see the news clippings the professor used to teach us. I spent a long time studying that stuff and taking notes. But after the course ended, my computer wiped it all out! Apparently the law says they have to install that software to make sure everything gets deleted. My notes are virtually worthless now.

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Our band is making good money playing gigs and selling CDs and MP3s. We decided not to sell our souls to a major label. Recently we turned our most popular song into a ringtone. But then we found out the phone companies lock out any competition, only allowing ringtones sold through their service. It's seriously illegal to work around locks. Even if we did it we could get hit for $20,000. It's no problem for the big guys - they have sweet deals with the providers. For us the terms are terrible. If we want our customers to be able to play our tune, we get to choose between being screwed by the cell companies or being screwed by the recording companies.

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My dad loves to read. Now he's getting old and he's losing his vision. He's legally blind. I want to get him ebooks. The text on the readers is too small for him to read, but there's this special software that can blow it up or read it aloud. That would mean breaking the digital locks on the ebooks. Luckily copyright law has a special provision for blind people allowing them to circumvent digital locks. In theory anyway. Because guess what: the tools to do that are illegal. So no books for my dad.