An Act to amend the Copyright Act (39th Canadian Parliament, 2nd Session)

Bill C-61
An Act to amend the Copyright Act.
Citation	Bill C-61
Enacted by	House of Commons of Canada
Legislative history
Bill	Bill C-61
Introduced by	Jim Prentice and Josée Verner
First reading	June 12, 2008
Status: Expired

Bill C-61, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, was a bill tabled in 2008 during the second session of the 39th Canadian Parliament by Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. The bill died on the Order Paper when the 39th Parliament was dissolved prematurely and an election was called on September 7, 2008. The Conservative Party of Canada promised in its 2008 election platform to re-introduce a bill containing the content of C-61 if re-elected.

The bill was the successor to the previously proposed Bill C-60. Specifically, the Conservative government claimed that the bill was intended to meet Canada's WIPO treaty obligations. Bill C-61 attracted widespread criticism from critics who claimed that it did not strike a fair balance between the rights of copyright holders and consumers. There was also confusion between C-61 and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement which also had significant copyright implications for Canada.

Jim Prentice claimed that it would "expressly allow you to record TV shows for later viewing; copy legally purchased music onto other devices, such as MP3 players or cell phones; make back-up copies of legally purchased books, newspapers, videocassettes and photographs onto devices you own". However, the bill would have made it illegal to circumvent DRM technologies effectively rendering the rights granted useless for DRM protected digital media.

This bill was superseded by Bill C-32 introduced on June 2, 2010.

The proposed bill contained the following changes on what constituted copyright infringement and what did not for personal use.

Time shifting, limited format shifting, copying for personal use, and device transferring of media were permitted but with significant limitations. Copies of shows and videocassettes could be made but were not allowed to involve DVDs, shows with a "no recording flag" or any other format encumbered by "digital locks". Additionally, a transfer of media was allowed only once per device owned by the purchaser of the original copy. The bill also gave rightsholders the autonomy of imposing additional clauses on the consumer (e.g. Amazon's non-transferability clause, promotional use only, do not sell/transfer, etc.). Format shifting was required to comply with an additional twelve processes (pdf).

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