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Danielle Laboissier Parr published an article in the Calgary Herald on June 19th, 2010 that can’t be called news. It has more in common with a paid political advertisement than it does with anything factual. The article is titled “Why gamers should love copyright bill”.

Parr begins by stating a fact: that Bill C-32 is flawed. She then turns to the argument that strong copyright with strengthen the videogame industry in Canada both for creators and consumers, and that (and I quote directly here) “the absence of protection of intellectual property means operating on a pirate island”.

She then goes on to say that creative sectors need assurances that they can take risks and that we need a legal framework to support this new economy. If I can take a moment to translate that, what she has just said is that these businesses want legal protection for their product from the government, and they want protection for their old business models which they keep trying to shoe-horn into a new economic reality.

Parr suggests that the Canadian “brand” suffers without strong copyright laws, and that jobs are at stake. Her problem here is that this argument isn’t cited or backed up by the facts. Canadian industry is booming in the creative sector and investment in the digital entertainment realm has only increased over the past decade. None of Parr’s arguments (or should I say MP James Moore’s talking points) can be validated in the real world. What’s better is that she goes on to contradict herself immediately in the next paragraph, saying that the Canada is the third largest video-game-producing country in the world.

The scary bit begins right after this – saying “We must do everything we can to maintain Canada’s market position”. Ah, so there it is. It’s about our market position. It’s about the 14,000 jobs in the digital entertainment sector… not the 30 million other Canadians who buy the media. Let’s forget about consumer convenience and confidence, and focus instead on making sure that these industries can make as much money as possible no matter the consequences for the personal rights of everyday people.

Parr states that “we detected a jaw-dropping 300 per cent increase in the number of games illegally downloaded via Canadian ISPs between 2007 and 2008”. Where did she get these figures? They’re uncited and it’s unclear who “we” is, making the validity of the entire piece worrisome.

Parr goes on to say that the law shouldn’t restrict how companies must do business, yet she’s fine with that same law dictating what we can do with their product after we’ve bought it. From here the article descends into factual fallacy:

• Digital locks prevent cheating – this isn’t true.
• Modding in the gaming sense is the inclusion of user generated content. Modding in terms of the chip sense is a hardware hack of a software issue, and the current digital locks provision is too general to be effective in preventing it.
• Digital locks do not make trial or demo versions possible; they’re separate code bases that are released digitally. In the case of Xbox Live and PSN there is server-side account verification – NOT a digital lock.
• Parr tries to state that digital locks provide great confidence in the digital market place… but publishers seem to have no problems with it as it is. The largest music market in the world is digital and it has no digital locks on its files anymore. This is a clear example of how digital locks are not needed.

It all comes down to this line:

“If consumers do not like the conditions of sale or terms of service for one digital product or service, they can take their business elsewhere.”

I couldn’t have said it better, Ms. Parr. Bill C-32 is about pushing consumers around and it’s about stagnating the Canadian economy. If I can’t do what I want with it, then I won’t buy it, and the media industry will suffer. The article started off saying why we, as gamers, should love Bill C-32. It turns into a love letter to restrictive digital locks and finishes with an admonition that if we don’t like it we can take our money elsewhere. Fair enough – be careful what you ask for, because you’re going to get it.