Cost of illegal download in Canada: $500

It is being rumoured that the Conservatives will introduce changes to Canada's Copyright Act tomorrow (Wednesday June 4th), then throw it off to committee (which will hopefully remove the highly offensive bits), then return to it in the fall.

Other rumours:

• Immediately after tabling the bill, Industry Minister Prentice and Finance Minister Flaherty will trade places. There has already been a lot of opposition to this bill, so it follows Conservative strategy to put a more aggressive blowhard in place to defend bad legislation (like they did when they replaced Rona Ambrose with John Baird as Environment Minister).
• The fine for downloading illegal songs will be set at $500. "Other provisions in the bill, which is said to be tabled to the House of Commons tomorrow afternoon, will include measures to make it illegal to unlock cellphones or copy music from protected CDs to iPods as well as making it illegal to copy 'time shifted' shows onto personal video recorders if flagged by broadcasters." In other words, music companies get to decide whether or not you can make your own mixes for your car, and broadcasters get to decide which shows you're allowed to record. How is this a good thing for me, as a consumer? Furthermore, how does limiting my rights to mix and record media which I have legally purchased help deter fraud and illegal downloading?