Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Davenport for his work on the committee and for his kind words. I am glad he raised that excellent question around the provisions for people with perceptual disabilities. The bill says that they can circumvent a lock provided they put the software, or DVD or whatever back in original condition after they are finished with it.
How exactly are they going to do that? It sounds good in theory, but there are very few people with exceptional disabilities who would likely have access to the wherewithal to break the digital lock to begin with, let alone have the ability to put it back where it was and basically recreate the software in the original form. That is an unreasonable provision.
An amendment that would have worked well would have been to say that we would make the exception clear for people with exceptional disabilities. If they actually infringe copyright by breaking the digital lock and then pass material on to someone who does not have that disability, that would be infringement of copyright, and it ought to be. I find it entirely unreasonable to say that people cannot use it themselves, they cannot break it for their own personal use, unless they put it back the way it was to begin with.