In an extremely important blog discussion, The Anti-Piracy Scam, Bill Patry, a renowned IP lawyer at Google, calls
out the RIAA for labeling Canada a haven for piracy
because it does not implement dmca-like legislation; he also discusses the real ramifications of DMCA for our
ability to use intellectual content:

I have pointed out repeatedly that chapter 12 of title 17 has nothing to do with piracy. ... Instead, as Professor Tarleton Gillespie fully explained in "Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture" (reviewed in this blog post), chapter 12 is concerned with creating and controlling access, to creating a command and control business model in which U.S. corporations will be able to change, fundamentally the way we interact with culture; specifically toward a pay per view, pay per listen, or pay per read world in which we will never own a copy of a work, in which a combination of technological protection measures and the power to override limitations on copyright through contract -- made possible by the Seventh Circuit's ProCD opinion -- means we will all be licensees, subjects to whatever terms and conditions are unilaterally imposed, and which cannot be circumvented on pain of criminal prosecution brought on behalf of a government that is "Pro-IP."

...

It is the private sector - to be specific, U.S. corporate interests -- that will determine, on a rolling, ever changing basis what conduct will be permitted; this includes what playback devices (e.g., DVD players, CD players, music and video enabled phones) can come to market and what functionalities they will have or not have; it also includes what uses we can make of lawfully acquired works: you buy a lawfully made DVD in England, sorry you can't play it in Canada; you purchased a download of a song, sorry you can listen to it only three times, or only on this device; you buy an eBook; sorry, you "bought" it only for two weeks, and only for play on a specific device (e.g., Kindle). None of this requires legislative approval: all of it -- and much much worse -- can be controlled through the rights granted in chapter 12 because those rights are rights to control access, broadly speaking and without being tied to acts that would otherwise violate the exclusive rights granted by copyright. Once chapter 12 is implemented into domestic law, it is U.S. corporate copyright interests that will shape what consumer goods can be used in your country and how citizens of your country will be able to access and use lawfully acquired copies of works. No legislature that is amending its copyright law should do so without understanding the momentous delegation of power they are handing to U.S. corporate interests.

Further in his comments, Bill states:

My beef (spoken as a vegetarian) is not with contracts or with price discrimination at all, but rather with how that interacts with delegation of legislative powers backed up by very strong civil and criminal penalties, and that is what the DMCA does.

I am all for the free market: if copyright owners want to copy protect their works, saddle them with DRMs, and generally make them unattractive to consumers, that is their choice. My problem comes when the government translates market decisions into civil and criminal laws, directly and through delegated powers. Without chapter 12, if I wanted to engage in fair use of something I purchased that was designated as a license, I could, and be subject at best to a contract suit.

BTW, I want to applaud Google for permitting and encouraging the free flow of discourse around these important topics.