Read the hype on every new web browser released or due out this year, and you’ll see claims that every one of them is “faster” than all the others. You could compare super-specific tests and decipher all the code-brain terminology, and you’d still be left wondering which browser starts quicker, uses less memory, and slides through dynamic interfaces like Gmail the fastest. Since our squadron of independent analysts had the week off, we ran the latest editions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera 9.5, and Safari for Windows through some unscientific but highly geeky tests ourselves on a plain old Windows computer. Take a look at the full (and somewhat unexpected) results after the jump.

The testing system

For the sake of rating all four of the latest new-and-improved browsers in the same environment, I tested the most current releases of Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.5, Safari for Windows 3.1.1, and the third Release Candidate of Firefox 3 (which is pretty darned close to the final version dropping Tuesday) on my Windows Vista laptop. Each browser was installed completely fresh, and, in the case of Internet Explorer 7, re-set to its new-install settings.
Here are the specs of my test system, for comparisons and curiosity:

• OS: Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
• Processor: 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• Memory: 2 GB

I looked far and wide for free, easy-to-grasp benchmarking software that could cover all four of the browsers I wanted to test, which covered every major aspect, and came up short. Instead, I tested the browsers the way most people experience them—click, wait, then watch each page load. Using Rob Keir’s simple but millisecond-accurate timer, I launched every action with a dual tap of the enter and “\” keys (pictured at right) to set the timer, then tapped the “\” key again when what I wanted to load had arrived. I re-ran tests when I thought I’d been slow, and each score below is an average of three or more trials.
Scientific and precise? Heck no. Easy to understand and free from selective prejudice? Very much so. I did use two tests assembled by inquisitive programmers for the more technical stuff, and noted that below. Now, onto the results!

 

Test 1: Startup time—Winner: Opera!

Taking a page from Mark Wilton-Jones’ oft-linked tests, I timed each browser loading “cold” (straight off a re-start, not having run already) and “warm” (having run at least once that session). Vista can be very fickle at boot-up (at least on my system) and slow things down considerably, so I used each browsers’ best times from launching to loading a locally-saved Google home page (which both cuts out network variations and explains the speedier boot times):
A pleasant surprise that Firefox 3 boots faster than 2 (from deep-seated memory, at least), as well as how quick Opera moves in general, at least compared to Safari in this test.
Next, I opened each browser two times and headed to a random bookmark to jog it a little. Here’s their speeds at their next “warm” boot-up:

Surprisingly consistent—note that Firefox’s seeming lapse is less than 0.2 seconds, which could certainly fall under margin of error.

 

 

Now for the real test. I placed a folder of eight links—from the super-clean Google homepage to the image and Flash-heavy Gizmodo and YouTube sites, and a few familiar stops in-between—in each browser, ran to the Lifehacker page and back to “warm” it up, then timed each browser’s version of “open all in tabs” from first click until the last little circle stopped spinning. Opera, unfortunately, uses a more subtle coloration change to indicate load speed, so I had to rely on the status bar as well. The results:

You probably won’t cry over a two-second delay when loading eight tabs, but Safari and Opera were surprisingly swift at multi-tasking in general (and we’ll see why later).

 

Test 2: JavaScript & CSS—Winner: Safari!

JavaScript loading times get a lot of attention from folks like, say, Steve Jobs these days. That’s because with the increasing prominence of AJAX interfaces on sites like Gmail, Twitter, and other webapps, a browser’s ability to perform multiple quick computations can be far more important than a nanosecond advantage at text and table rendering.
You’ll never get every browser team agreeing on what’s a fair JavaScript test, as each platform has its own quirks and rules of working with it. Sean Patrick Kane’s JavaScript speed tests has pulled attention from all over, however, not least because he’s worked to make it more fair to all comers.
Here’s the stats from Sean’s test (in miliseconds):

I also tested each browser’s ability to render Cascading Style Sheets, the design templates of a page, using nontropp’s downloadable form:

I’m thinking Safari’s big lead in CSS rendering is how it creates that everything-snaps-at-once feel when loading pages. And, for a browser that somewhat auto-loads with my OS, Internet Explorer has yet to bring a worthwhile statistic to the table.
At this point, you might certainly wondering just where Firefox 3’s vaunted speed/performance/stability improvements might actually, you know, matter. Follow along, then, to the other side of speed.

 

Test 3: Memory use—Winner: Firefox 3!

Unless you’re rocking a workstation with more memory than you can spare, browsers shouldn’t be using all your RAM and slowing other apps to a trickle. Firefox 2 was notorious for bloating far beyond its fighting weight after steady use, but developers’ hard work seems to have paid off, at least by my tests:

The blue portion is each browsers’ memory use when first started, and the red extensions their size (according to Windows Task Manager) with those same eight tabs above opened. Again, few people will have eight tabs open, but I scaled it to see where the differences lie. I wanted to double-check Firefox’s night-and-day improvement, so I closed and launched it again. This time, it was using 117MB—not a slim amount, but a still marked improvement over its peers. Of course, if you do have memory to spare, both Safari and Opera, as seen higher up, can put it to quick-footed use.

TAKEN FROM /lifehacker.com

First, we all had mild Asperger’s. Now, Internet addiction disorder? Give a geek a break. In the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Jerald Block proposed that Web abuse be added to his field’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Block cites research from South Korea, where, he says, the affliction is considered a serious public health problem, and the government estimates that 168,000 children may require psychotropic medications. In China, the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital puts the number of teenage pathological computer users at 10 million.

Like other addicts, users reportedly experience cravings (for better software, faster machines), withdrawal (logging off may cause irritability), a loss of sense of time (wee-hour fixes), and negative social repercussions (it’s so much easier to date an avatar). Sound familiar? Your friend the World Wide Web may be a monkey on your back. Or not. Just ask yourself this: If Google were a drug, would I smoke it?

TAKEN FROM

The Performing Rights Society (PRS), which collects royalties for musicians in the UK, has accused Lancashire police of committing copyright infringement by playing music in police stations and to callers on hold without an appropriate license. In a writ submitted to the High Court, the PRS has called for an injunction and payment of damages.

The PRS contends that playing music that is audible to others constitutes a public performance, meaning that it can’t be done without a license. The Lancashire police stations play music in the background, at office parties, and in staff gyms, even though they have not purchased licenses that enable them to do so legally. PRS says that it has attempted to collect licensing fees from police all over the country, but Lancashire is one of 11 that have refused to pay up, which is why PRS decided to take legal action.

PRS took similar action against car repair chain Kwik-Fit last year, demanding payment of £200,000 in damages simply because car mechanics frequently played their radios loud enough for others to overhear. PRS insists on a license regardless of the means by which the music is performed, so those of you in the UK had better think twice before humming a tune within earshot of another human being.

According to news publication This is Lancashire, Niamh Noone—the head of legal services for the Lancashire police—had told officers not to cooperate with the PRS. When the group responded by threatening to take the matter to court, Noone told them to file the writ.

TAKEN FROM arstechnica.com

Last fall, the Associated Press claimed that it was ready to change to face the new internet world — and that meant not just being a gatekeeper, but joining in the conversation. As we noted at the time, though, AP execs said all that, only to immediately follow that up with plans that looked like it was trying to become a new type of gatekeeper. It didn’t help that the company had also just sued VeriSign’s Moreover division for linking to AP stories along with a title and a tiny excerpt. That sort of thing is clearly fair use — but the AP doesn’t seem to think so.

And, now, it’s expanding its target list. Rather than just going after the big aggregators (surprisingly, Google settled), it appears that the Associated Press is going after bloggers for merely posting a linked headline and a tiny snippet of text from the article. In this case, Rogers Cadenhead informs us that the AP sent 7 DMCA takedown notices last week to his site, the Drudge Retort (a site that mocks the Drudge Report). In six cases, a blog post on the site quoted just a small snippet of text from an AP article (between 33 and 79 words — nowhere near the full length of the article). In every case, they also contained links back to the original AP article. Five of the six used a different headline than the original AP article. The other complaint was about a comment to a blog post, which also included a very short snippet and a link.

On the face of it, it’s nearly impossible to see how this isn’t fair use, even though an AP representative insists it’s not:

The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of “fair use.” AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes “hot news” misappropriation.

Hopefully, they won’t send a takedown notice for quoting that. This is pure bullying on the part of the Associated Press, and a clear overstepping of its legal rights. It’s most certainly not a sign that the organization has adapted to the internet age. In fact, the most amazing thing is that these types of uses (a snippet and a link) clearly help drive more traffic to those AP articles. This is a pure “shoot-self-in-the-foot” move by the Associated Press — and if they have any sense of decency they should issue a very public apology.

In the meantime, since the Associated Press apparently no longer wants traffic, we’ll start looking for other sources when linking to stories. I can’t promise we won’t link to any AP stories (they’re everywhere), but given the opportunity we’d prefer to link to a news organization that’s happy to accept our traffic, rather than one that might sue us for pointing people their way. This is quite unfortunate, as there are many AP reporters who read this site, and with whom I have come to build a strong relationship. I think they’re quite good reporters, and it’s too bad they work for such a short-sighted organization.

Update: Someone from the AP has posted a response in the comments. It makes some claims that simply do not seem to represent reality, including trying to define what is and is not “the link-based culture of the Internet.” It claims that it won’t go after snippets — but doesn’t explain why that’s exactly what it did. And then it responds to a blog post from Jeff Jarvis that I have not seen and did not reference. If the AP seriously wants to respond, why not respond to what is actually happening or what we actually said, rather than someone else. Update 2: I should also note that the comment from the AP includes what appears to be a bit of a sales pitch suggesting that bloggers license AP articles

Last fall, the Associated Press claimed that it was ready to change to face the new internet world — and that meant not just being a gatekeeper, but joining in the conversation. As we noted at the time, though, AP execs said all that, only to immediately follow that up with plans that looked like it was trying to become a new type of gatekeeper. It didn’t help that the company had also just sued VeriSign’s Moreover division for linking to AP stories along with a title and a tiny excerpt. That sort of thing is clearly fair use — but the AP doesn’t seem to think so.

And, now, it’s expanding its target list. Rather than just going after the big aggregators (surprisingly, Google settled), it appears that the Associated Press is going after bloggers for merely posting a linked headline and a tiny snippet of text from the article. In this case, Rogers Cadenhead informs us that the AP sent 7 DMCA takedown notices last week to his site, the Drudge Retort (a site that mocks the Drudge Report). In six cases, a blog post on the site quoted just a small snippet of text from an AP article (between 33 and 79 words — nowhere near the full length of the article). In every case, they also contained links back to the original AP article. Five of the six used a different headline than the original AP article. The other complaint was about a comment to a blog post, which also included a very short snippet and a link.

On the face of it, it’s nearly impossible to see how this isn’t fair use, even though an AP representative insists it’s not:

The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of “fair use.” AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes “hot news” misappropriation.

Hopefully, they won’t send a takedown notice for quoting that. This is pure bullying on the part of the Associated Press, and a clear overstepping of its legal rights. It’s most certainly not a sign that the organization has adapted to the internet age. In fact, the most amazing thing is that these types of uses (a snippet and a link) clearly help drive more traffic to those AP articles. This is a pure “shoot-self-in-the-foot” move by the Associated Press — and if they have any sense of decency they should issue a very public apology.

In the meantime, since the Associated Press apparently no longer wants traffic, we’ll start looking for other sources when linking to stories. I can’t promise we won’t link to any AP stories (they’re everywhere), but given the opportunity we’d prefer to link to a news organization that’s happy to accept our traffic, rather than one that might sue us for pointing people their way. This is quite unfortunate, as there are many AP reporters who read this site, and with whom I have come to build a strong relationship. I think they’re quite good reporters, and it’s too bad they work for such a short-sighted organization.

Update: Someone from the AP has posted a response in the comments. It makes some claims that simply do not seem to represent reality, including trying to define what is and is not “the link-based culture of the Internet.” It claims that it won’t go after snippets — but doesn’t explain why that’s exactly what it did. And then it responds to a blog post from Jeff Jarvis that I have not seen and did not reference. If the AP seriously wants to respond, why not respond to what is actually happening or what we actually said, rather than someone else. Update 2: I should also note that the comment from the AP includes what appears to be a bit of a sales pitch suggesting that bloggers license AP articles

TAKEN FROM techdirt.com

Speaking on the DefectiveByDesign anti-DRM campaign site, Ray Beckerman said the case of Electro vs. Barker has become very important for the web’s future.

Barker was being defended by Beckerman who made a motion to dismiss the case because the RIAA had forgot to provide any acts or dates or times of copyright infringement as the law normally requires.

The RIAA argued that by merely making files available on the Internet Barker was making a copyright infringement.

Beckerman said that it was a shocking argument because if it were accepted by the court it would probably shut down the entire Internet. If you send any file on the Net the RIAA will be allowed to suspect that you are in breach of copyright.

What was more disturbing is that the RIAA called up its mates in Washington to back it up. Apparently the United States Government has put in motions supporting the RIAA. µ

TAKEN FROM www.theinquirer.net

Question: Which of these uses the most power: TV and radio signals, cellular networks or Wi-Fi? The answer is TV and radio, the signals of which are so much stronger that they are measured at an order of magnitude larger than those of mobile phones (dB-millivolts per meter against dB-microvolts per meter).

A clearer comparison: A typical Wi-Fi router puts out a signal at around 3 watts. A typical FM radio station will output 10,000 to 20,000 watts.

That’s all the background you’ll need to chuckle along with this report. Members of a Sante Fe group are claiming that they are “allergic” to Wi-Fi, and that failing to remove access points from public buildings amounts to “discrimination” against people with disabilities. Amazingly, an official enquiry is being conducted, but at least City Councilor Ron Trujillo has retained his senses. He told New Mexico’s KOB that “It’s not 1692, it’s 2008. Santa Fe needs to embrace this technology, it’s not going away.”

I’m honestly at a loss for words, despite the misuse of the term allergy, and the poorly argued reasons for hating technology (”the public libraries are our last refuge”). I shall instead comfort myself with the the hilarious tin-foil-hat antics of Bill Bruno, whose house features “specially shielded walls”. He also has a microwave proof car (he appears to be immune to the carcinogens in the exhaust fumes) and a quite amazing stingray-shaped Wi-Fi detector.

TAKEN FROM blog.wired.com

Response times, availability, and stability are vital factors to bear in mind when creating and maintaining a web application. If you’re concerned about your web pages’ speed or want to make sure you’re in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here’s a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.

I’ve tried to include a wide variety of tools that are easy to use, and have tried to keep them as OS and technology-independent as possible so that everyone can find a tool or two.

1. YSlow for Firebug

YSlow grades a website’s performance based on the best practices for high performance web sites on the Yahoo! Developer Network. Each rule is given a letter grade (A through F) stating how you rank on certain aspects of front-end performance. It’s a simple tool for finding things you can work on such as reducing the number of HTTP request a web page makes, and compressing external JavaScript and CSS files. A worthwhile read is the Ajax performance analysis post on IBM developerWorks that outlines practical ways of using YSlow in your web applications.

2. Firebug

 

Firebug is an essential browser-based web development tool for debugging, testing, and analyzing web pages. It has a powerful set of utilities to help you understand and dissect what’s going on. One of the many notable features is the Net (network”) tab where you can inspect HTML, CSS, XHR, JS components.

3. Fiddler 2

Fiddler 2 is a browser-based HTTP debugging tool that helps you analyze incoming and outgoing traffic. It’s highly customizable and has countless of reporting and debugging features. Be sure to read the “Fiddler PowerToy - Part 2: HTTP Performance” guide on the MSDN which discusses functional uses of Fiddler including how to improve “first-visit” performance (i.e. unprimed cache), analyzing HTTP response headers, creating custom flags for potential performance problems and more.

4. Cuzillion

Cuzillion is a cool tool to help you see how page components interact with each other. The goal here is to help you quickly rapidly check, test, and modify web pages before you finalize the structure. It can give you clues on potential trouble-spots or points of improvements. Cuzillion was created by Steve Saunders, the ex-Chief Performance at Yahoo!, a leading engineer for the development of Yahoo’s performance best practices, and creator of YSlow.

5. mon.itor.us

monitor.us is a free web-based service that grants you a suite of tools for monitoring performance, availability, and traffic statistics. You can establish your website’s response time and set up alerts for when a service becomes unavailable. You can also set-up weekly, automated benchmarks to see if changes you’ve made impact speed and performance either positively or negatively.

6. IBM Page Detailer

The IBM Page Detailer is a straightforward tool for letting you visualize web components as they’re being downloaded. It latches onto your browser, so all you have to do is navigate to the desired site with the IBM Page Detailer open. Clicking on a web page component opens a window with the relevant details associated with it. Whenever an event occurs (such as a script being executed), the tool opens a window with information about the processes.

7. Httperf

Httperf is an open-source tool for measuring HTTP server performance running on Linux. It’s an effective tool for benchmarking and creating workload simulations to see if you can handle high-level traffic and still maintain stability. You can also use it to figure out the maximum capacity of your server, gradually increasing the number of requests you make to test its threshold.

8. Pylot

Pylot is an open-source performance and scalability testing tool. It uses HTTP load tests so that you can plan, benchmark, analyze and tweak performance. Pylot requires that you have Python installed on the server - but you don’t need to know the language, you use XML to create your testing scenarios.

9. PushToTest TestMaker

PushToTest TestMaker is a free, open-source platform for testing scalability and performance of applications. It has an intuitive graphical user interface with visual reporting and analytical tools. It has a Resource Monitor feature to help you see CPU, memory, and network utilization during testing. The reporting features let you generate graphs or export data into a spreadsheet application for record-keeping or further statistics analysis.

10. Wbox HTTP testing tool

Wbox is a simple, free HTTP testing software released under the GPL (v2). It supports Linux, Windows, and MacOS X systems. It works by making sequential requests at desired intervals for stress-testing. It has an HTTP compression command so that you can analyze data about your server’s file compression. If you’ve just set up a virtual domain, Wbox HTTP testing tool also comes with a command for you to test if everything’s in order before deployment.

11. WebLOAD

WebLOAD is an open-source, professional grade stress/load testing suite for web applications. WebLOAD allows testers to perform scripts for load testing using JavaScript. It can gather live data for monitoring, recording, and analysis purposes, using client-side data to analyze performance. It’s not just a performance tool – it comes with authoring and debugging features built in.

12. DBMonster

DBMonster is an open-source application to help you tune database structures and table indexes, as well as conduct tests to determine performance under high database load. It’ll help you see how well your database/s will scale by using automated generation of test data. It supports many databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL and (probably) any database that supports the JDBC driver.

13. OctaGate SiteTimer

The OctaGate SiteTimer is a simple utility for determining the time it takes to download everything on a web page. It gives you a visualization of the duration of each state during the download process (initial request, connection, start of download, and end of download).

14. Web Page Analyzer

The Web Page Analyzer is an extremely simple, web-based test to help you gain information on web page performance. It gives you data about the total number of HTTP requests, total page weight, your objects’ sizes, and more. It tries to estimate the download time of your web page on different internet connections and it also enumerates each page object for you. At the end, it provides you with an analysis and recommendation of the web page tested – use your own judgment in interpreting the information.

15. Site-Perf.com

Site-Perf.com is a free web-based service that gives you information about your site’s loading speed. With Site-Perf.com’s tool, you get real-time capturing of data. It can help you spot bottlenecks, find page errors, gather server data, and more - all without having to install an application or register for an account.

TAKEN FROM sixrevisions.com

We’re done. Firefox 3 is going to be launched very soon. In anticipation of this long-awaited event, the folks in the Mozilla community have been writing extensively about the new and improved features you’ll see in the browser. The new features cover the full range from huge and game-changing to ones so subtle you may not notice them until you realize that using Firefox is just somehow easier and better. The range of improved features is similar — whole back-end systems have been rebuilt from scratch, while other features have been tweaked slightly or redesigned in small ways. Overall the result is the fastest, safest, slimmest, and easiest to use version of Firefox yet. We hope you like it.

Here’s a list of the features covered in this Guide.

• Add-on manager
• Bookmarks
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Color profile support
• Download manager
• Font and text rendering
• Full page zoom
• History
• HTML Canvas
• Location bar UTF-8 support
• Malware protection
• Microformats API
• Offline web application support
• Password manager
• Performance improvements
• Phishing protection
• Plugins
• Site Identification button
• Smart Location Bar
• Tabs
• Themes
• Video and audio feeds
• Vista parental controls support
• Web application protocol handlers
• Conclusion

TAKEN FROM www.dria.org

The Canadian government today introduced its long-awaited, much-derided, totally-not-influenced-by-US-interests copyright reform bill (C-61) today. How do we know it wasn’t influenced by US interests? The Canadian government says so.

“Our government has committed to ensuring Canada’s copyright law is up-to-date, and today we are delivering by introducing this ‘made-in-Canada’ bill that balances the interests of Canadians who use digital technology and those who create content,” said Industry Minister Jim Prentice in a statement today.

Made in Canada? What could possibly go wrong?

Consumer benefits

While there are some things to like from a consumer perspective, nothing revolutionary or even particularly interesting is present. Canadians will now have the right to legally record TV shows, copy legally-acquired music onto devices such as iPods, and make backups of books, newspapers, videocassettes, and photographs. That’s… about it, and people are doing all those things already.

The other major benefit to noncommercial copyright users is that statutory damages will be capped at a mere CAN$500. Compared to the huge statutory rates payable in the US—Jammie Thomas paid more than US$9,000 per song—this seems like a far more rational approach. Until you look at the details.

Ah, those pesky details. In every case we’ve mentioned, the details make even the “consumer-friendly” parts of the bill a bit less friendly.

Take time-shifting as an example. Canadians have been doing it for years, but it hasn’t been entirely clear that the practice was legal. The new bill does allow the time-shifting of both television and radio programs “to which you have legal access, including on-demand programs,” but it limits this to a single recording with no further copies and explicitly rules out keeping the shows indefinitely. Canadians can’t build up a library of shows this way as they could with a VCR.

When we come to backup copies, the list is a curious one: books, newspapers, videocassettes, and photographs. This is not accidental. The government’s “fact sheets” on the bill indicate that DVDs are not included, and CDs don’t seem to be, either. While a “backup right” might sound consumer-friendly, it doesn’t apply to things that consumers actually want to back up: DVDs, computer software, CDs. Backing up books is not, so far as I can tell, a huge priority for people, in part because your toddler doesn’t tend to destroy books by shoving them into the DVD player the wrong way.

Limitations on statutory damages for noncommercial copyright infringement have long been called for by consumer advocates in the US, and the Canadian bill initially seems to offer some relief here. But when applied to the digital world, the CAN$500 cap only applies to people who download infringing content.

“Posting” music “using the Internet or peer-to-peer (P2P) technology” or uploading a copyrighted picture or video to YouTube, Facebook, or your blog does not qualify for any protection, and anyone who does so remains liable for up to CAN$20,000 in statutory damages. In addition, judges have discretion to impose punitive damages in all cases.

That’s it for consumer rights, and what’s there isn’t particularly interesting.

Creator benefits

Creators gain some important new rights and have other rights clarified to address P2P. The new bill makes clear that swapping copyrighted files is illegal and provides a “making available” right to creators. Making such a right explicit makes it far easier to go after file-swappers, since there is no question of having to prove that other people are downloading the file in question; if someone is making it available, that person is infringing.

In addition, rightsholders can go after those who bypass or break DRM schemes, giving them more ability to tie up content and devices simply by adding a bit of encryption. Courts in the US have placed limits on this practice (you can’t slap some useless encryption into your company’s garage door opener, for instance, and then try to lock out competitors on anticircumvention grounds), so we’ll have to wait and see how a similar right actually develops in Canada.

Technological protection measures, also known as DRM, get full-on DMCA-style protection under the new bill. It is illegal to circumvent DRM or to provide circumvention services or devices. While other countries have allowed circumvention for legal uses, the Canadian bill only allows people to bypass DRM for the purposes of reverse engineering, security testing, and encryption research.

A union of Canadian consumer groups this week sent a letter to the government (PDF) urging that any new copyright policy “should seek to protect creators, the public, and the public interest, not the technology that limits access to content,” but that request was ignored.

The government is unapologetic about its approach to DRM, even as it admits that it will be controversial. In a “backgrounder” on the bill, the government says that it is aware that “some groups fear that the legal protection of [DRM] will unduly hinder public access to works. Others view such protections as potentially threatening to free speech and privacy.”

The rebuttal to these ideas is telling: “a majority of rights holders have been asking for years for Canada to get in line with the current international consensus on protecting copyright in the digital era.” Ask and you shall receive, copyright holders! The government does point out that companies are under no obligation to use DRM and consumers are under no obligation to buy products that contain it, but that’s cold comfort in the wake of the Sony BMG rootkit debacle.

The bill also increases the “moral rights” of creators, a European concept that basically gives an author or composer some rights over controlling how and where his or her work is used. The Canadian bill would make it illegal to “distort or mutilate a copyright performance,” as the fact sheet has it, something which has the potential to cripple mashups, criticism, and certain forms of satire and remix if handled in the wrong way.

Finally, rightsholders get term extensions: music is now covered for 50 years after first publication and photographs are copyrighted for the life of the photographer plus an additional 50 years.

Just the beginning? 

The government also makes clear in several parts of today’s announcement that the bill is only one part of its copyright overhaul; the secretive development of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will also be part of the “government’s broader intellectual property strategy.”

That approach appears to fit perfectly with the way that the new copyright bill was developed: in secret, without public consultation. Now that the bill is out in the open and Parliament has a chance to whack away at it, we’ll be watching to see whether a groundswell of protest can lead to a more consumer-friendly product after derailing an earlier version of the same bill last December.

The new bill is being pitched as a way to bring Canada into the modern age and “ensure that Canada’s copyright protection will be among the strongest in the world.” How “strongest in the world” and “balanced” (another term that pops up repeatedly) can coexist is left as an exercise to the reader.

TAKEN FROM arstechnica.com