>This week, it released the first of these reform ideas (PDF) focusing on the principle of fair use. In addition to "criticism" and "news reporting" and the rest of the items in the fair use preamble, the CRA proposes the addition of three more: "incidental uses, non-consumptive uses, and personal, non-commercial uses." They might sound minor, but these suggestions are bound to provoke controversy.
As you say it is "and personal, non-commercial uses.". This drafting fails as it is not clear if the last clause is a disjunct or not. The article's author misquotes this through out as "personal and non-commercial". There are differences between his version and the draft quoted.
Bear with me.
If activity denies a business of revenue which they otherwise rightly would receive then it is arguably commercial.
Hence a "personal" use could be format shifting, say. But if the business offered (or were going to offer!) the work in that format then the personal use would not be "personal and non-commercial".
tl;dr the wording is subtly ambiguous and needs clearing up
I'm not sure where the right balance lies, but here are another seven words:
Copyright must reform, or face irrelevance. Soon.
We've got a generation of people who are actively contemptuous of copyright law, and backed up with capable technology. If the system doesn't become more reasonable, people will turn more and more to straight-up piracy instead of trying to obey the law.
