Canada e-copyright law overhaul introduced

OTTAWA, June 12 (UPI) -- Canada's Conservative government introduced copyright legislation Thursday that would make almost all electronic copying illegal.

The proposed reform is the first in 10 years to the country's copyright laws and addresses new technologies, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

The bill would make it illegal to make back-up copies of a DVD, give a music-loaded iPod to a family member or store TV shows on a TiVo device for later viewing.

"The time shifted recording could not be kept indefinitely. It could not be stored to build a library of recordings," the bill says.

Fines ranging from $500 to $20,000 are listed in the bill for sharing a recorded TV program with a co-worker or family member, the newspaper said.

As the law now stands, Canadians can legally transfer media from a CD or TiVo onto their iPod or other personal media player only if no copy protection measures are bypassed.

Canadian copyright expert Michael Geist told the newspaper the new legislation was unfair and merely a copy of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.