If you’re Canadian, please write a letter to your MP and Minister Jim Prentice about Bill C-61. If you want to do it quickly Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights has set up a quick way to write in.
Copyright needs restrictions because an over-broad copyright helps neither creators nor the public at large. Creators are denied the capability of building on the past and the public loses works that build on others and is discouraged from appreciating existing works. Would you write a better story if Shakespeare’s heirs could sue you for using words coined by Shakespeare? Shakespeare’s copyrighted words would include “lonely”, “fixture”, “madcap”, “torture”, “accused”, “advertising” and many many more words and phrases.
If you want more details as to why a more pervasive copyright should be opposed, read these speeches by Thomas Babington Macaulay in the 1840s. It’s amazing how little things change. The same arguments that were shot down 150 years ago are still being brought up as fresh new reasons why copyright needs to be everywhere. For a modern context see Eric Flint’s Salvos Against Big Brother columns particularly A Matter of Principle.