On October 25, 2012, the Canadian government began the process of bringing Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act, into force. The Governor in Council is implementing a "staged" approach where provisions of the new law will be enacted in several steps.
Most of the provisions of the Bill, including the introduction of legal protection for technological protection measures, new exceptions for format shifting, time shifting, and user-generated content and the expansion of the "fair dealing" exceptions to include education, parody and satire will come into force on the date when the Government's notice is published in the Canada Gazette (presumably, the next issue on November 7, 2012).
The introduction of a number of other sections will be delayed until the international WIPO treaties involved are ratified and in force in Canada.
The government has not yet specified when the new "notice and notice" regime, which will require Internet service providers to send notices to their users in response to allegations of copyright infringement, will become effective. There are outstanding discussions concerning the regulations required to make the new regime effective.
In any event, the government's announcement is a key step in the introduction of Canada's new copyright laws as passed four months ago. The new laws will have broad impact and now is the time to consider their effect.
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