Canada to tighten digital copyright law

Canada's administration announced today that it will introduce new legislation aimed at tailoring the country's copyright law toward the Net age. The country has been an outlier in the world, with courts ruling that file-swapping is legal, for example.

Specifically, the new proposals are aimed at implementing elements of the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization treaties. Those are the agreements that led to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States, and which remain controversial among online libertarians.

The Canadian Recording Industry Association, which has lost a string of important copyright cases trying to track down file-swappers, is praising the government's announcement.