Taken from: Copyright For Canadians.

All the ways you can act now in one page (with a hat tip to Michael Geist’s 30 Things You Can Do):

Act federally!

1. Email a letter to your MP - Our letter writer makes it easy - but don’t forget to customize your own message!
2. Write to the Prime Minister of Canada. Contact information here, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it him.
3. Write to Josée Verner, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, one of the two ministers responsible for copyright policy in Canada. Contact information here, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it her.
4. Write to Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry - the other minister responsible for Canada’s copyright policy. Contact information is here, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it him.
5. Write to James Rajotte, the Chair of the Parliamentary Committee that will likely review consider the bill. Tell him what Canadians think about this legislation, and demand a comprehensive committee review that hears from everyone with an interest in copyright in Canada. Contact information is here, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it him.
6. Send a letter the old fashioned way: put pen to paper and mail it in. Digital Copyright has some text suggestions on their letters page. Mail may be sent postage-free to any Member of Parliament at the following address:

House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

7. Talk to your local M.P. Here’s how:
   • Call the Parliamentary switchboard toll-free at 1-800-599-4999, give your postal code and ask for your M.P.’s Parliamentary or constituency office telephone number or email; or
   • Go to the Government of Canada Directory Website and look up your M.P.’s number by either area code or name.
8. Ask your MP to sign the Copyright Pledge. The copyright lobby has the troubling habit of financing M.P.s who coincidentally support extreme copyright policies. Copyright policy is too important to Canada to permit conflicts of interest to cloud the perspectives of our politicians.
9. Ask each political party where it stands on copyright. Copyright policy could prove to be a divisive issue in the months ahead - ask each political party for their views on the issue.
10. Write to Canadian Heritage’s Copyright Policy Branch. The Copyright Policy Branch hosts a large body of civil servants focused on copyright policy. Contact information here.
11. Write to Industry Canada’s Intellectual Property Policy Directorate. The IPPD is Industry Canada’s counterpart to Heritage’s Copyright Policy Branch. Contact information here (scroll to the bottom).
12. Write a letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs on Canada’s international copyright position. Canada could potentially be a leader on balanced intellectual property laws, but instead chosen to be a follower. DFAIT should be standing up for Canadian interests at such international meetings as well as during bi-lateral trade negotiations with the United States. Contact information here.
13. Write to Library and Archives Canada to ask that it support the preservation of Canadian heritage. The LAC should be a leading voice against the use of DRM that could lock Canadians out of their own heritage. It could advocate for DRM-free deposits, reforms to facilitate Canadian digitization programs, and the preservation of all user rights. Contact information here.
14. Write to the Competition Bureau of Canada. Both DRM and anti-circumvention laws raise significant competition concerns. The Competition Bureau must become engaged on this issue by advocating pro-competitive reforms and investigating cases of alleged abusive use of DRM. Contact information here.

Act provincially!

1. Write to your local Member of Provincial Parliament or Member of the Legislative Assembly. There is a strong provincial dimension to copyright reform, particularly given its impact on education, privacy, consumer issues, and property rights. The provinces have remained largely silent on copyright, yet they may be forced to address many of the unintended consequences that arise from federal Copyright Act reform. Contact information for Ontario MPPs here.
2. Write to your Provincial Minister of Education. Earlier this month, I wrote about the troubling advocacy of Canada’s Ministers of Education, who are seemingly willing to trade an unnecessary Internet exception for anti-circumvention legislation. Contact information for Ontario Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne is here. Sandra Pupatello here. For the other Ministers of Education here.
3. Write to your local school board. Local school boards can play an important role in the copyright reform process by engaging teachers, parents, and students (witness the recent reaction of several boards to the Captain Copyright issue). Contact information for Ontario school boards here.
4. Write the leaders of your post-secondary educational institution. Excessive copyright costs our educational institutions millions of dollars each year, many of which flow out of the country without balancing cash flows coming back to Canada (because of different copyright laws in other countries). Inflexible classroom use rules also deny Canadian students educational opportunities. The Presidents, Chancellors, and Boards of Governors should be championing your interests.
5. Post-secondary students - contact your student’s union and see what they are doing, and ask how you can help.
6. Write the Office of Consumer Affairs or your provincial consumer protection ministry. The use of DRM raises numerous consumer concerns, potentially requiring specific consumer protection provisions and labeling requirements. The federal OCA can be contacted here. Provincial contacts here.
7. Write to your federal or provincial privacy commissioner to ask for their support in protecting your personal privacy against DRM. Several of Canada’s privacy commissioners have publicly called on the government to address the privacy concerns associated with copyright reform, a position which deserves public support. Privacy commissioner contacts here.

Act digitally!

1. Join the Facebook group, Fair Copyright For Canadians.
2. Sign a Petition! Add your name to to the over a thousand who have already signed Digital Copyright Canada’s Petition for Users’ Rights.
3. Spread the digital word! Fly the banner! Post the buttons!
4. Add your name to the Online Rights Canada mailing list - you can access it right here, on the right hand side of this website. Online Rights Canada is the grassroots advocacy group that brought you this website. ORC brings together EFF and CIPPIC to focus on online rights issues.
5. Blog about balanced copyright.
6. Buy online DRM-free alternatives. The copyright lobby argues that DRM is a pre-requisite to offering digital content online, yet there are many DRM-free online music services. For example, eMusic, the largest such service, is now the second largest online music service worldwide.
7. Support music labels that offer their music without DRM or copy-controls. This one is easy since virtually every Canadian label does not use copy-control technologies. The exceptions are the foreign labels represented by CRIA such as Sony BMG.
8. Ensure that your local retailer will accept returns on DRM’d products. Many retailers sell DRM’d products without altering return policies to account for the fact that the products may not function as expected. Raise this with your local retailer and encourage them to adopt liberal return policies for DRM’d products.
9. Ask your ISP what it is doing to stand up for your rights. Canada’s Internet service providers play an important role in defending user rights by only disclosing subscriber personal information with a court order, informing subscribers of requests for their personal information, and by lobbying for an expanded fair dealing provision. Ask your ISP for its policies on these issues.
10. Use Creative Commons licensing. Creative Commons, which adopts a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright provides an exceptional (and exceptionally easy) method of supporting both copyright and access. More information on the Canadian licenses here.
11. Read license terms. Digital distributors use contract to limit or eliminate user rights. Until legislation blocks the use of such terms, consumers should proactively read license terms and reject those that unfairly limit their user rights.

Act locally!

1. Raise the issue with your local library. The library community has been very engaged on copyright and will undoubtedly be a vocal stakeholder for any future reforms. At the local level, libraries can be encouraged to establish copyright policies that fully support user rights and to educate the local community on important access issues.
2. Talk to your local school board - here’s how:
   • Go to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) “Canadian Education on the Web” site - they have a webpage linking to the website of every school board in Canada. Get the contact information for your school board and give them a call; or
   • Call your provincial or territorial ministry of education and give them your postal code - they will give you your local school board’s contact information.
3. Raise the issue with your local school. If you are in school or have children currently in school, inquire how the school addresses copyright issues. Does it take full advantage of user rights? Is it aware of how the education exceptions may be limited by anti-circumvention legislation?
4. Participate in a local meeting on copyright. There are a growing number of local “meetup” style meetings that bring together citizens concerned with balanced copyright - Copynight is one such example. If there is a meeting group in your area, go. If not, get one started.
5. Support more balanced copyright positions from artists and creator groups. Many artists and creators are increasingly abandoning policy positions that favour U.S. style reforms and instead embracing a more balanced approach. If you are a musician, consider joining the CMCC. If you are an artist, consider joining the Appropriation Art coalition. Filmmakers should consider supporting DOC. If you are a writer, consider pushing for change within Access Copyright.
6. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper regarding Canada’s copyright policies.
7. Write an op ed for your local paper.
8. Track media coverage of copyright. Media coverage on copyright sometimes fails to question the sound bites from the copyright lobby. Challenge the media when it presents imbalanced copyright coverage through a letter to the editor or a public comment on a blog.
9. Educate yourself. CopyrightforCanadians.ca hosts and links (check the blogroll) to a great deal of information on why balanced copyright is in Canada’s interest. Here are just a few good resources:

• Our own FAQ on the bill… when we get the bill, that is.
• CIPPIC’s Copyright Reform webpage.
• Michael Geist’s 30 Days of DRM. Everything you need to know about DRM, a wiki, and advocacy tips.
• In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law, a book published last year by Irwin Law under a Creative Commons license.
• Michael Geist’s podcasts, including his 2006 Hart House lecture, Our Own Creative Land, and, more recently, his presentation to the Canadian Federation of Students, Copyright Choices and Voices (slides and audio).

10. Educate others. Once you know more about copyright reform issues, tell others. Educate friends, family, and co-workers.

Michael Geist has put together a series of articles that spell out how Bill C-61 will effect Canadian consumers using real life examples. This is much easier to read than the text of the bill itself, which is pretty damned dry. It's reprinted after the jump, so hit Read More.