An anonymous reader writes "The ongoing fight against the Canadian DMCA is the focus of a new documentary film called Why Copyright? Produced by Michael Geist and available as a streamed version, OGG download version, or a torrent, the film features Red Hat founder Bob Young, sci-fi writer Karl Schroeder, the owner of Skylink Technologies (which fought the DMCA garage door opener case) and many other voices from across Canada."
While our voices and people of reasoning will make a good case for not extending the powers of copyright, beyond what they are now, I have to ask will it be enough to make a difference. We just need to look at the UK where proper reasoning was overridden by political and financial gain. Once again its a question of whether it is the governance for the few or the governance for the many.
It will be interesting to see what will happen in Canada as the governing party is in a minority and likely to be overturned by the centrist coalition if they spit out absurd legislation. However, I think the deeper issue is Canada's commitment to the WIPO treaty. It might be time to review that commitment and ensure it takes into account the new reality of on-line media. Or we could just do like Taiwan and pull-out of the treaty.
Or we could just do like Taiwan and pull-out of the treaty.
What treaty is that? It doesn't sound plausible to me. Taiwan is a bit like Japan - it is very rare to see pirated software here. Also because Taiwan always looks for international recognition of its statehood, it spends lots of time trying to sign treaties since being able to sign treaties is evidence of it is a state as part of the declarative theory of statehood [wikipedia.org].
Compared to say Europe all of our political parties except the NDP are right wingers, they're about the closest ones these days to being left. Which is fun of course when you try to explain it to people.
no, in the US ALL canadian parties are left-wing, which is why i want to move to canada.
Sadly it's too early in my career to allow me to do so, and i'm not going to get that "Skilled worker" experience when jobs are being slashed at 100k/mo
Someone's a self-deluding soft conservative... the idea that the Liberal's are heavy-left is laughable at best. At best, they're somewhat left of center. Maybe. While the old PC party was somewhat right of center. The NDP and the old reform/now conservatives are clearly the extremist parties in this country, and anyone who suggests otherwise has a very skewed view of the general tenor of the Canadian electorate.
The Dion and his "Green Shift tax" lost the election. Dion is gone and hopefully the Liberals will drop the "Green Shift tax" from the platform. With Bob Rae no longer contending for leadership and a better platform in the next election the Liberals should make acome back.
The point to the coalition is to defeat the government without causing a new election. If the governor general is even halfway reasonable, she'll allow the coalition to form the government rather than call another election.
Or maybe Harper will finally get it that in a minority government you need to try to work with the other parties at least some of the time. Yeah...
the main reason the current governing party is in place is because it is distintly centrist at the moment....
Bahahahaha! Tell that to the women that would've had their right to sue for equal pay revoked. Or the parties that would've had their funding removed.
Sorry, the conservatives are, at best, proposing a soft-right agenda right now, and only because they got bitch slapped over these issues. Now, that's not to say I disagree with a soft-right agenda... but to say they're even remotely "centrist" is to
The Canadian government has become so dysfunctional that no legislation of any kind will likely be passed for the next few years. Hopefully, a Liberal government under an intellectual prime-minister will be less likely to introduce a stupid unpopular and essentially self-defeating copyright law.
We don't know if it will be enough, but it's a step forward. It's definitely a giant step from bitching about copyright on Slashdot. For now, all we can do is hope and thank Michael Geist for daring to speak up like this for so many people.
I wasn't able to find a smaller version than the 2,92 gigs one (the.torrent on Mininova).
Since I indirectly use Bell Canada's network, I'm throttled to a max of 30k/s even if this is a legal download. 2,92 gigs feels too much to me when that documentary could probably be nice enough to watch at about 700 megs... If anyone finds or publishes a smaller version, please let me/us know!:-)
You can download a smaller version here. It's a 176MB.MKV file.
I'm also on Bell for DSL and I'm currently torrenting it at 600KBps.
Thanks for the mkv. That's what I was looking for.
As for your download speed, I'm surprised and curious. I really generally only have a max of 30k/s, but that's for week day nights, otherwise, it is much slower! Take a look at this Bad ISPs wiki page for Canada [azureuswiki.com], Bell is at 5+. Whatever that means, I failed to circumvent (for legal downloads of course) the throttling. There's bypass solutions [dslreports.com] but that has not worked for me...
I don't know what to tell you. I use a fairly vanilla copy of Azureus with a Smoothwall box doing some basic QOS kinda stuff. No special tricks at all.
Maybe now that Bell can legally throttle its competitors, Bell now will throttle only its competitors, and not its own customers, giving it an unfair advantage in quality of service.
As for your download speed, I'm surprised and curious.
Bell's throttling is active between 4 PM and 2 AM everyday. Outside of this period the download speed will be limited by other things -- such as swarm health and connexion quality.
I wasn't able to find a smaller version than the 2,92 gigs one (the.torrent on Mininova).
Since I indirectly use Bell Canada's network, I'm throttled to a max of 30k/s even if this is a legal download. 2,92 gigs feels too much to me when that documentary could probably be nice enough to watch at about 700 megs... If anyone finds or publishes a smaller version, please let me/us know!:-)
This is a perfect example of political speech being hampered by throttling.
I'm a victim of Bell's throttling as much as the other guys but the main issue here is that this could be compressed to 700Mb and be downloadable in 1/4 the time. The person who put up the torrent apparently is not very familiar with some realities.
Just wondering is the 30k/s throttled for everything or just bittorrent? I've been testing my Shaw (Canada Cable) connection, and I seem to be capped/limited to 118KBps down / 58KBps up even though I pay for 10 Mbps (1.25 MBps) up and 1 Mbps (125 KBps) down. No matter what I do no normal connection won't exceed this. I have even tried direct transfers from a friend of mine three blocks away who has the same plan and we find we can't exceed 58KBps. I've also tried bittorrent and big downloads from Micros
I think the throttling done applies to all up/down data and applies for 24h after you close the torrent sharing pipes. That's what I've been told but haven't confirmed myself. I'm not using Bell Canada directly (a reseller), and I guess their throttling strategies change from place to place.
Hmm...interesting. I'm also on Bell Canada's network (in my case "directly"), and currently pulling the iso at ~520KB/s, with an estimated 2 hours from start to finish.
I've been wondering about all of this throttling talk, because I haven't seen any evidence of it. Are they only throttling the "indirect" users? (I assume that your ISP buys bandwidth from Bell?)
Massive download. Check. OGG. Check. Torrent. Check. Christmas release. Check. All the geek's bases are covered. His sense of timing perfected. But does he have a movie that anyone else will be watching?
Massive download. Check. OGG. Check. Torrent. Check. Christmas release. Check. All the geek's bases are covered. His sense of timing perfected. But does he have a movie that anyone else will be watching?
Exactly! Let me know when this airs on the CBC.
Until it's aired on "main stream" sets nationwide, or at least publicised somewhere OUTSIDE the circles which created it, it's not useful to the cause it advocates.
This is when you know that government is broken. This isn't about compromise or mob rule or sticking up for the rights of minority groups. This is about a select few trampling on the interests of the masses and the erosion of the long-standing deal between creators and their audience that says "we the people will respect your copyright for a fixed term and you will release your work to the public domain when that term has completed." In all our living years, how much of these respected copyrighted works have actually become part of the public domain? Some, but far from a lot. And that bit about "This land is your land" song having already been in the public domain being claimed otherwise only goes to show how broken the abused copyright system actually is.
A deal related to copyright was made long before we were born and that deal has been held up on one end and altered at the other with NO benefit compensating the people for any changes made.
In all our living years, how much of these respected copyrighted works have actually become part of the public domain?
Far fewer than the number that disappeared into some out of print catalog until no remaining copy could be found.
Vearing a bit off topic, the purpose of copyright is *supposed* to be making more works available. So why is it that Disney is allowed to create pent-up demand by putting a work back 'in the Disney vault' as their commercials say, using copyright as a bludgeon to remove works from availability?
So why is it that Disney is allowed to create pent-up demand by putting a work back 'in the Disney vault' as their commercials say, using copyright as a bludgeon to remove works from availability?
To allow a copyright holder the opportunity to profit from their intangible works, copyright law correctly gives the holder the sole right to determine how to distribute said work. This includes the right to *not* distribute it.
However, as a society, we agreed that in order to prevent the culture derived from these works from being locked up indefinitely, these granted rights would be mitigated by relatively short term limits allowing for their use in creating new culture. Unfortunately due to the creatio
Actually, the purpose of copyright has nothing to do with profit. Aiding a publisher to profit is merely a means to the end of encouraging MORE publication. Using copyright to un-publish something is entirely against the spirit of copyright even where it is within the letter of the law.
The Constitution explicitly grants the congress the power to impose copyright "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Since any power not granted to the federal government by the Constitution is reserved to the
Apropos of this documentary (which I just finished watching) and Lawrence Lessig's free eBook, "Free Culture", (mentioned here recently,) which I finished reading a few days ago, I wrote a short story about how more law schools could get into the fight against the content behemoths' flood of legal action against so-called IP pirates. Because we're talking about IP, a lot of people just don't get a visceral connection to what is at stake. Hollywood certainly won't dramatize this issue, but what if some indy
I watched this documentary from the torrent d/l several days ago. While technically proficient (and for a 47 min doc curiously large as far as files go) I couldn't help thinking it wasn't going to change many of the minds of the very people it seems to be aimed at: those who hold the future of Canada's copyright laws in their pens. Yes, it reaffirms to some small extent what we in the (legally marginalized) P2P community have been writing for a decade and it certainly amplifies many of the warnings raised b
i think the biggest reason our side has been slowly but steadily losing ground is the refusal of most of these organizations to take a harder line.
Copyright cartels present dingbat-right outlook, these advocates present center-left, and because nobody puts the real far-left in their faces, legislators assume a good compromise is "Between" the two sides. (ever hear that old axiom: "You know you've ruled well when both sides are unhappy" ?)
You can't reverse existing momentum or gain momentum of y
Will it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
While our voices and people of reasoning will make a good case for not extending the powers of copyright, beyond what they are now, I have to ask will it be enough to make a difference. We just need to look at the UK where proper reasoning was overridden by political and financial gain. Once again its a question of whether it is the governance for the few or the governance for the many.
Re:Will it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Great job Michael keep it up!
It will be interesting to see what will happen in Canada as the governing party is in a minority and likely to be overturned by the centrist coalition if they spit out absurd legislation. However, I think the deeper issue is Canada's commitment to the WIPO treaty. It might be time to review that commitment and ensure it takes into account the new reality of on-line media. Or we could just do like Taiwan and pull-out of the treaty.
Parent
Re:Will it matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or we could just do like Taiwan and pull-out of the treaty.
What treaty is that? It doesn't sound plausible to me. Taiwan is a bit like Japan - it is very rare to see pirated software here. Also because Taiwan always looks for international recognition of its statehood, it spends lots of time trying to sign treaties since being able to sign treaties is evidence of it is a state as part of the declarative theory of statehood [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know what political sites and news you've been following but we have no centrist parties able to form a coalition.
We have Liberals: Heavy Left-Center
We have NDP: Heavy Left
We have Bloc: Destroy Canada for the 'idealism' of Quebec
Very centrist.
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Your Liberal Party is actually left of centre? Australia has so [wikipedia.org] much [wikipedia.org] to learn from you...
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Compared to say Europe all of our political parties except the NDP are right wingers, they're about the closest ones these days to being left. Which is fun of course when you try to explain it to people.
The same applies in the US.
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no, in the US ALL canadian parties are left-wing, which is why i want to move to canada.
Sadly it's too early in my career to allow me to do so, and i'm not going to get that "Skilled worker" experience when jobs are being slashed at 100k/mo
Re: (Score:2)
Someone's a self-deluding soft conservative... the idea that the Liberal's are heavy-left is laughable at best. At best, they're somewhat left of center. Maybe. While the old PC party was somewhat right of center. The NDP and the old reform/now conservatives are clearly the extremist parties in this country, and anyone who suggests otherwise has a very skewed view of the general tenor of the Canadian electorate.
Re: (Score:2)
The Dion and his "Green Shift tax" lost the election. Dion is gone and hopefully the Liberals will drop the "Green Shift tax" from the platform. With Bob Rae no longer contending for leadership and a better platform in the next election the Liberals should make acome back.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The point to the coalition is to defeat the government without causing a new election. If the governor general is even halfway reasonable, she'll allow the coalition to form the government rather than call another election.
Or maybe Harper will finally get it that in a minority government you need to try to work with the other parties at least some of the time. Yeah...
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the main reason the current governing party is in place is because it is distintly centrist at the moment....
Bahahahaha! Tell that to the women that would've had their right to sue for equal pay revoked. Or the parties that would've had their funding removed.
Sorry, the conservatives are, at best, proposing a soft-right agenda right now, and only because they got bitch slapped over these issues. Now, that's not to say I disagree with a soft-right agenda... but to say they're even remotely "centrist" is to
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Get it while you can! (Score:3, Insightful)
Smaller torrent version anywhere? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wasn't able to find a smaller version than the 2,92 gigs one (the .torrent on Mininova).
Since I indirectly use Bell Canada's network, I'm throttled to a max of 30k/s even if this is a legal download. 2,92 gigs feels too much to me when that documentary could probably be nice enough to watch at about 700 megs... If anyone finds or publishes a smaller version, please let me/us know! :-)
Re:Smaller torrent version anywhere? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.vuze.com/details/2OQKU47Y56JSCE6RXQ2W5JNDSL3KBEM7.html [vuze.com]
I'm also on Bell for DSL and I'm currently torrenting it at 600KBps.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You can download a smaller version here. It's a 176MB .MKV file.
I'm also on Bell for DSL and I'm currently torrenting it at 600KBps.
Thanks for the mkv. That's what I was looking for.
As for your download speed, I'm surprised and curious. I really generally only have a max of 30k/s, but that's for week day nights, otherwise, it is much slower! Take a look at this Bad ISPs wiki page for Canada [azureuswiki.com], Bell is at 5+. Whatever that means, I failed to circumvent (for legal downloads of course) the throttling. There's bypass solutions [dslreports.com] but that has not worked for me...
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Maybe Bell likes me today.
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Maybe now that Bell can legally throttle its competitors, Bell now will throttle only its competitors, and not its own customers, giving it an unfair advantage in quality of service.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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As for your download speed, I'm surprised and curious.
Bell's throttling is active between 4 PM and 2 AM everyday. Outside of this period the download speed will be limited by other things -- such as swarm health and connexion quality.
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I would much prefer a google video version like the Zeitgeist movies have.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTFEwXi1Pnk [youtube.com]
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I assume you mean 30 kilobyte/s not 30 kilobit/s?
Anyway, I downloaded the .ogg file from the original summary and it was only ~400 megabytes and plays in VLC Player. That's only 4 hours download.
Re:Smaller torrent version anywhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't able to find a smaller version than the 2,92 gigs one (the .torrent on Mininova).
Since I indirectly use Bell Canada's network, I'm throttled to a max of 30k/s even if this is a legal download. 2,92 gigs feels too much to me when that documentary could probably be nice enough to watch at about 700 megs... If anyone finds or publishes a smaller version, please let me/us know! :-)
This is a perfect example of political speech being hampered by throttling.
Net neutrality is mandatory for democracy.
Parent
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I'm a victim of Bell's throttling as much as the other guys but the main issue here is that this could be compressed to 700Mb and be downloadable in 1/4 the time. The person who put up the torrent apparently is not very familiar with some realities.
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I think the throttling done applies to all up/down data and applies for 24h after you close the torrent sharing pipes. That's what I've been told but haven't confirmed myself. I'm not using Bell Canada directly (a reseller), and I guess their throttling strategies change from place to place.
Re: (Score:1)
Hmm...interesting. I'm also on Bell Canada's network (in my case "directly"), and currently pulling the iso at ~520KB/s, with an estimated 2 hours from start to finish.
I've been wondering about all of this throttling talk, because I haven't seen any evidence of it. Are they only throttling the "indirect" users? (I assume that your ISP buys bandwidth from Bell?)
nice doc (Score:2, Insightful)
we don't really need the gigants standing on our shoulders.
we need to be standing on the shoulders of gigants
I really liked the end. +5 Insightful to the vid ;)
Preaching to the choir (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Preaching to the choir (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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"Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee."
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Massive download. Check. OGG. Check. Torrent. Check. Christmas release. Check. All the geek's bases are covered. His sense of timing perfected. But does he have a movie that anyone else will be watching?
Exactly! Let me know when this airs on the CBC.
Until it's aired on "main stream" sets nationwide, or at least publicised somewhere OUTSIDE the circles which created it, it's not useful to the cause it advocates.
Download size (Score:1, Informative)
.OGG is only 424 mb . Just right ogg link and save .
A documentary? (Score:2)
Wow. Good topic, bad choice of medium. An essay would have been a much better choice.
This reminds me of the Garfield comics where he would watch a 7hr documentary about the Q-tip, or a 13h documentary about aluminum foil.
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People still read?
Point: If you want to reach the most number of people, use video because they are addicted to video & avoid reading like it was a plague.
The will of a few overpowers the will of the many (Score:4, Insightful)
This is when you know that government is broken. This isn't about compromise or mob rule or sticking up for the rights of minority groups. This is about a select few trampling on the interests of the masses and the erosion of the long-standing deal between creators and their audience that says "we the people will respect your copyright for a fixed term and you will release your work to the public domain when that term has completed." In all our living years, how much of these respected copyrighted works have actually become part of the public domain? Some, but far from a lot. And that bit about "This land is your land" song having already been in the public domain being claimed otherwise only goes to show how broken the abused copyright system actually is.
A deal related to copyright was made long before we were born and that deal has been held up on one end and altered at the other with NO benefit compensating the people for any changes made.
Re:The will of a few overpowers the will of the ma (Score:4, Interesting)
In all our living years, how much of these respected copyrighted works have actually become part of the public domain?
Far fewer than the number that disappeared into some out of print catalog until no remaining copy could be found.
Vearing a bit off topic, the purpose of copyright is *supposed* to be making more works available. So why is it that Disney is allowed to create pent-up demand by putting a work back 'in the Disney vault' as their commercials say, using copyright as a bludgeon to remove works from availability?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
So why is it that Disney is allowed to create pent-up demand by putting a work back 'in the Disney vault' as their commercials say, using copyright as a bludgeon to remove works from availability?
To allow a copyright holder the opportunity to profit from their intangible works, copyright law correctly gives the holder the sole right to determine how to distribute said work. This includes the right to *not* distribute it.
However, as a society, we agreed that in order to prevent the culture derived from these works from being locked up indefinitely, these granted rights would be mitigated by relatively short term limits allowing for their use in creating new culture. Unfortunately due to the creatio
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the purpose of copyright has nothing to do with profit. Aiding a publisher to profit is merely a means to the end of encouraging MORE publication. Using copyright to un-publish something is entirely against the spirit of copyright even where it is within the letter of the law.
The Constitution explicitly grants the congress the power to impose copyright "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Since any power not granted to the federal government by the Constitution is reserved to the
Taking the fight fictional (Score:2, Interesting)
Apropos of this documentary (which I just finished watching) and Lawrence Lessig's free eBook, "Free Culture", (mentioned here recently,) which I finished reading a few days ago, I wrote a short story about how more law schools could get into the fight against the content behemoths' flood of legal action against so-called IP pirates. Because we're talking about IP, a lot of people just don't get a visceral connection to what is at stake. Hollywood certainly won't dramatize this issue, but what if some indy
Mind Changer? (Score:2, Interesting)
I watched this documentary from the torrent d/l several days ago. While technically proficient (and for a 47 min doc curiously large as far as files go) I couldn't help thinking it wasn't going to change many of the minds of the very people it seems to be aimed at: those who hold the future of Canada's copyright laws in their pens. Yes, it reaffirms to some small extent what we in the (legally marginalized) P2P community have been writing for a decade and it certainly amplifies many of the warnings raised b
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I agree here.
i think the biggest reason our side has been slowly but steadily losing ground is the refusal of most of these organizations to take a harder line.
Copyright cartels present dingbat-right outlook, these advocates present center-left, and because nobody puts the real far-left in their faces, legislators assume a good compromise is "Between" the two sides. (ever hear that old axiom: "You know you've ruled well when both sides are unhappy" ?)
You can't reverse existing momentum or gain momentum of y
smashing (Score:2)
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There is a link to the torrent in the summary, you lazy schmuck!
Re:okay i'm interested (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:okay i'm interested (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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