The federal government of Stephen Harper seems poised to make life a little more miserable for teachers in Canada as it prepares release of a new copyright law.

Release of the legislation was delayed this week after a firestorm of opposition ignited on the Internet based on leaked peeks at the new law.

Most surrounded the fact that the legislation was going to be the most restrictive in the developed world, a flawed mirror of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

As well as giving in to large U.S. corporations, such as American record labels, the Act apparently has no free exemption for educators to use material taken off Internet websites.

The Tory government had, of course, promised not to hamper the use of the Internet by educators, but that was abandoned in the now-delayed bill.

Once details of the bill were leaked, tens of thousands of Internet users sent emails to the government, put together YouTube videos and joined a protest FaceBook group.

Whether anyone in this government know what any of those things are is debatable. This is, after all, a prime minister who once said his son was "listening to my Beatles records and asking me what all these lyrics mean."

It would have seemed more plausible had his son asked what this big black plastic disc was, but then maybe not.