E-7718 Repeal sections of Copyright Act Petition Tracker | Signature Growth — Canadian Petition Tracker
Track E-7718 — Repeal sections of Copyright Act — with 9 signatures and counting. Sponsored by Heather McPherson. See signature growth trends and provincial breakdown on PetitionTracker.ca.
Canonical URL: https://petitiontracker.ca/petition/e-7718
Petition Details
- Status: Active — open for signatures
- Closing date: February 2, 2027
- Sponsor: Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona)
- Category: Intellectual property
Signature Statistics
Provincial Distribution
- British Columbia: 3 signatures
- Ontario: 3 signatures
- Alberta: 1 signatures
- Manitoba: 1 signatures
- Quebec: 1 signatures
Petition Text
Petition to the Government of Canada
Whereas:
• The Copyright Modernization Act came into force on November 7th 2012;
• There was substantial pressure from the United States of America to enact copyright legislation similar to their Digital Millennium Copyright Act;
• The Copyright Act now prohibits circumvention of Technological Protection Measures (TPMs), with some limited exceptions;
• Many of the exceptions to copyright infringement detailed in the Copyright Act cannot be exercised without bypassing some form of TPM;
• This prohibition is in tension with the Charter rights of Canadians to freedom of expression and prevents the use of adaptive technologies used by people with perceptual disabilities because it prohibits circumvention even where no copyright infringement occurs;
• This prohibition has facilitated widespread anti-competitive behaviour by corporations, resulting in significant costs to citizens and residents of Canada, such as "tied selling" of consumables including printer ink cartridges;
• Legal restrictions on circumventing TPMs limit certain repair activities and contribute to electronic waste;
• These negative effects were anticipated at the time the Copyright Modernization Act was drafted, but were considered a reasonable price to pay to facilitate trade with the USA;
• The United States of America has recently imposed significant tariffs on imports from Canada;
• Canada has many innovative technologists who could produce innovative, consumer-friendly, reasonably-priced devices that would enable people all over the world to break these technologically-imposed monopolies; and
• Parliament has attempted to mitigate some of these effects with bills C-244 and C-294, with limited effect.
We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to repeal sections 41.1 to 41.21 of the Copyright Act.