The Retail Council of Canada represents more than 43,000 store fronts of all retail formats across Canada, including department, specialty, discount, and independent stores, and online merchants. It board of directors include representation from Canada’s largest retailers. The RCC’s comments on digital locks in Bill C-32:

We join the chorus of many manufacturers of consumer electronics and many artists themselves who believe that overly rigid technical protection measures are bad for artistic creativity, bad for innovation and last but not least, bad for retailers’ business and business in general. If Bill C-32 as now exists had been on the books in 1980, we would not have had the VCR, the personal computer and countless other products that we have depended upon.



There should be no prohibition of devices or services that have substantial non-infringing uses. Consumers should be free to do whatever they want with their hardware and software, as long as that use is for private purposes and is otherwise non-infringing. That is all that is required by the treaties and that is as far as Canada should go.

Previous Daily Digital Locks: Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired (PRCVI) BC, Canadian Consumer Initiative