The “digital lock” portion of (Canadian) bill C-32 will severely damage consumer rights. Many companies use such “digital locks” to promote artificial monopolies and reap multiple profits on the same goods and services.
Some examples of things which will be made illegal:
- Open source software playing proprietary formats. VLC, and just about any open source software that plays DVDs, Bluray, and any future formats.
- Format shifting. Want to watch a DVD that you own on your ipod? Illegal.
- Interoperability between competing software. If Microsoft decides that it doesn’t want OpenOffice to be compatible with their files, they add a trivial “digital lock” and now it’s illegal for OpenOffice to read Microsoft Word documents.
There are many more cases where this new law can be used to enforce monopolies, require users to pay multiple times for the same product on different devices and platforms, exact massive licensing fees for legal compatibility, and prevent smaller players from entering what should be a free market.
“Digital locks” are trivial to implement and easy to bypass. A lock operates on the principle that the person who unlocks the lock is not the same as the person you want to keep out, however in this case they are the same person. The method for unlocking the item in question (or key) must be in the hands of the user in some form (the “intended” software) in order to use the item. To an expert this means that it is always possible to unlock content. The premise of the system is flawed.
The last thing we need is another unenforceable, illogical law that exists solely to empower corporations and revoke commonly held rights from Canadian citizens. Laws should foster respect and protect our freedoms, not breed contempt.
