Canada’s industry minister, Tony Clement, has finally come clean on what everyone and their dog already knows. His iPod, which he’s had since 2006, is chock full of music he legally wouldn’t be allowed under current copyright legislation to put there, regardless to the fact he owns those same songs on CD. Even James Moore, who’s on the entirely wrong side of the new copyright legislation, has finally admitted he’s already broken it with purchase of a DVR.
Mr. Clement, stickhandling the copyright file for the Conservative government along with Heritage Minister James Moore, is poised to introduce new copyright legislation within days. But until the law is updated to permit Canadians to transfer music onto MP3 players from CDs they have purchased, Mr. Clement stands on the wrong side of Canada’s copyright law.
“Well you see, you know I think I have to admit it probably runs afoul of the current law because the current law does not allow you to shift formats. So the fact of the matter is I have compact discs that I’ve transferred, I have compact discs from my children or my wife that I’ve transferred onto my iPod. None of that is allowable under the current regime,” Mr. Clement, a music buff who also legally purchases songs from iTunes to build a digital database that now stands at 10,452 songs.
“It shows that the current regime is not realistic and is not modern to encompass how people obtain their entertainment in today’s world,” said Mr. Clement, calling the current law “antiquated.”
“That’s what happens in a family. You do tend to share music that way and I think most people would find that to be perfectly acceptable behaviour. But our current law is so antiquated, it doesn’t contemplate that situation.”
Good lad. Now, let’s see if his partner in crime’s learned anything.
Mr. Moore, meanwhile, admitted to reporters last year he, too, ran afoul of the copyright law as an early adopter of the PVR. A spokesman on Wednesday said Mr. Moore was not immediately available to clarify whether any of the songs on his iPod put him offside of the law.
Gonna assume the answer is a resounding yes, otherwise he might not be quite so inclined to take the silent route. Now, if we can just convince these two fine gentlemen to admit they’ve copied tapes before for family/friends, or had tapes copied for them by family/friends, perhaps there might be an education in the near future on why exactly file sharing isn’t quite as wrong as they say it is. Hey, a guy can hope, can’t he?
Edit: Let’s try posting this a second time, seeing as my internet decided to pick a minute and a half before I hit post to crap out on me. Don’t do this to me, TekSavvy.