An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Recording Industry Association and the MPAA's Canadian
subsidiary are demanding
that Canada adopt copyright laws that go beyond even the DMCA. The
groups demand anti-circumvention law, three strikes and you're out
legislation, and increased secondary liability for websites. The
demands come as part of the national copyright
consultation in which hundreds of Canadians have spoken out against such
reforms."
Not an employer, more like a subcontractor. They are enlisted by artists to "handle" the royalties on their behalf. If the CRIA disappeared today, artists would still be pretty much in the same place. The big guys would be pissed, but they're free to hire their own 1st-tier droogs. The small guys probably wouldn't notice a thing.
So what we have is the average Canadian, thinking their government should do one thing, and a few vested parties (with A LOT of $$$) disagreeing. I know how this plays out on this side of the border, but will Canadian govt actually listen to it's people? Eh?
Greg
Not with Harper in power. He likes to roll over and play dead for anything corporate. Fortunately its a minority and the senate is still there to protect the interests of the people of Canada. On a side note, I haven't seen anything from CBC so I don't know how many Canadians actually know this is happening. If I am wrong it would be nice to see a link to the article.
The Liberals are at the same corporate trough as the Conservatives. Remember Paul Martain? Do you remember him, our former prime-minster? The one who didn't want to pay Canadian taxes on his ships so he registered them outside the country and staffed them all with foreign workers, yet still called his shipping company 'Canadian Shipping'. Do you remember him? Do you remember the private copying levy that the Liberals introduced back in 1997? Where we have to pay extra money on all blank media we buy here to compensate the poor media companies and the losses they incur? The Liberals have ZERO problem with enacting the same laws.
If you want a leader who's against new copyright laws you have to look to the ones who're anti-american like the Bloc, and the NDP, or Green.
Listen, can't we all just recognize that all parties are completely inept? I mean the NDP would be happy taxing us to death for the poor, the downtrodden, whatever, I can't vote for the Bloc out here in BC (even though I would -- just to see what happened) and the green party is nothing but conservatives dressed in green - I like none of their policies. The liberals are a bunch of wankers who can't seem to get any sort of cohesion, and the conservatives are fucking nuts.
I'd say Pirate Party.... hopefully you'll get one soon. In the last few days, the UK Pirate Party [pirateparty.org.uk] has registered as an official party in the UK!
Do you remember the private copying levy that the Liberals introduced back in 1997? Where we have to pay extra money on all blank media we buy here to compensate the poor media companies and the losses they incur?
Actually, this was a godsend in disguise, because it essentially created a giant loophole for Bittorrent operators in Canada. The CRIA hasn't been nearly as successful as their American counterpart because infringing citizens can happily point to the levy and say, "You're already getting your cut, so STFU."
The Liberals are neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in the polls and are looking for an issue to galvanize the elusive 18-35 year old citizens into voting.
If only there was something contentious, like making it illegal to copy legally purchased materials or record TV. Something like "You could go to jail or face $20,000 for owning a modded XBox." Telling young professionals that content will be decided not by the CRTC, but by cable providers and American lobby groups. If you buy a DVD for your kids and let them use a ripped copy to skip the ads and keep the copy clean, that's a violation of WIPO, which could jail you and bankrupt you. Using any operating system that bypasses security features would do the same, too.
If only there was a way to contact your local Liberal [liberal.ca], Bloq [blocquebecois.org], and NDP [www.ndp.ca] MPs and let them know how you, as a citizen and registered voter, think this is worth an election.
Imagine the ads: Have a guy walking down the street, listening to an MP3 player. A van pulls up next to him, and RCMP with guns order him to the ground. One policeman grabs the player, looks through it, says, "full of mp3s" to another one. They arrest him and put him in the van.
Announcer: "This is the Conservative plan for copyright reform."
I'd be willing to go so far as to say C-60 was written by people who had no idea what they were writing. That's really our fault for not letting our MPs know that we're available for technical consultation. When lobbyists show up with dozens of clippings about "copyright violations cost $TRILLIONS OMG!!!" and tell them that "consumers demand protection against stolen goods" they will listen. If we're not telling them, "we like our existing laws, and we want to own our o
Here, we will find out if Canadians have more balls than us Americans who live south of the 49th parallel. Hopefully, the Canucks will tell them all to eat shit, and that will give the voters in the states a little motivation to get off THEIR dead asses to protest.
Will the corrupters of the U.S. get control of Canada, too?
By some measures, the U.S. government is the most corrupt in the world. For example, this Rolling Stone article: The Great American Bubble Machine [rollingstone.com]. (The full article is in the paper edition, available at any library.)
The U.S. government spends more money on surveillance and war than any country in the history of the world. That taxpayer money partly helps those who want corruption to profit, and hurts U.S. taxpayers, and the entire world. For just o
And you wonder why I have no qualms subverting your business model
pass whatever laws you've been PAID to pass.
that's quite a different matter from getting buy-in from the citizenry. they won't follow really bad laws.
in the US, we already ignore copyright (many of us do) as a way of protesting the current status quo.
civil disobedience works and is justified here. ignore any bad laws passed. they don't apply to you. they were corrupt and so are null and void. use your own good common sense! the understanding of what's right and wrong is inside you; you don't need to look at BOUGHT AND PAID FOR laws for your morality.
once the media industry decided to play fair, we'll take off the mitts and also play fair. until then, its lawlessness. on both sides.
Apparently their misinformation campaign is working just as well as their fear campaign. You do realize that nobody has settled or gone to court because of downloading, right?
Their fear campaign is indeed working on me. Regardless of the fact that they have not gone after anyone for downloading yet, they still have the ability. My risk assessment has determined that the risk is not worth it. I have busted my ass for years to get where I am and now I'm busting my ass trying to secure my family's future. I can not afford having that all come crashing down. Note that if you use torrents, you are almost certainly sharing, even if you are only sharing a small piece of the complete puzzle. It amuses me that I can afford the cost of getting caught putting people's lives at risk by speeding in my car, but I can't afford the cost of getting caught sharing music.
Perhaps not, but those that do are raising hell as loudly as they can...
Remember when they wanted to add the blank media tax for "piracy"? Some stores like Staples refused to do it (or at least, media prices did not change).
People very rarely say "Oh look, I'm ignorant about an important issue! Oh no!" They need to realize it's important first... right?:)
In this case, it's a very new technology, and debates like this aren't of much interest outside geek circles. Clearly those of us who are concerned do what we can to raise awareness, but in a lot of ways it's still a very new issue, and it takes a while for things like this to reach the public awareness.
In this case, it's a very new technology, and debates like this aren't of much interest outside geek circles.
When most modern means of control are at least related to technology, perhaps the average person needs to question whether it is in their interests to leave such matters to "geek circles." The amount of effort needed to have at least a familiarity with these issues is nearly trivial; there is no need to become an expert in anything in order to understand that this is a bid for power that should rig
In a lot of ways Canada, like the US under President Obama, has done alright on Net Neutrality issues. Copyright is another matter. Canada has been staggering backwards for quite some time on that issue. Net Neutrality is threatening to everyone but the ISPs that stand to profit from it, Copyright is a much uglier matter.
It's been a long time since I heard anyone say "but we pay tax on blank cds, it's okay to copy here! We already had this fight over tapes decades ago!" The way things are going I guess we just pay that tax for the hell of it.
"Canada has been staggering backwards for quite some time on that issue."
How do you figure? The courts decided that downloading was cool and since then we've resisted attempt after attempt (this is what, five?) to pass a DMCA. There hasn't been any going backwards. Yet.
NCFPM (National Coalition of Five-hundred Pound Men) demands that Taco Bell increases sour cream levels in the Nachos Belle Grande!
Cell Phone companies demand the right to increase text messaging rates using a logarithmic scale, and to charge a monthly rent for those you don't immediately delete!
ICBE (International Coalition for Bathwater Equality) demands that whenever bathwater is thrown out, a baby is included!
A friend of mine said once that the global corporations, by nature of the vast resources they control, actually formulate government policy and the elected politicians are the ones tasked with selling those policies to the public. There are minor exceptions such as privatizing Social Security in Bush II's second term in which public opposition is too strong to put through the policy, but these are few and far between.
In the case of the DMCA, this couldn't be closer to the truth. The problem is that the politicians have had difficulty selling the idea to Canadians at large, and prioritizing it in a minority government.
With the comment submission process, the elites can make the already formulated policies more palatable to Canadians. Perhaps there will be a few minor compromises. But in the end, they'll get what they want once they find the right "marketing" formula.
Personally, I find the idea that my internet access could be cut off after three false accusations of piracy to be frightening. I don't pirate anything, but the methodology for associating individuals with IP addresses is rife with errors and false positives.
the next time you produce a movie why don't you just keep it locked in your vaults and don't let anyone touch it or see it, then nobody will be able to copy/download/upload or pirate it. if someone can see it you can bet they will find a way to make a copy to either share freely or to sell on the black market. and even those that technically don't know how to do it will just get one of those copies so in the long run you are wasting your time and money...
those that just want to go to the theater will go anyway even if it is available free because they can go with friends & family or on a romantic date and enjoy the show (popcorn and sodapop too) and you still get your billions in return for your investment, so please quit acting like a paranoid selfish kid afraid that somebody is going to take a piece of your candy...
Could I get a link to where you're hearing this from? I've only read last year that the CRTC was considering classing it as an essential service, but I never heard anything further about it.
I seem to recall quite a few incidents where the RIAA, MPAA and their members and brethren have been caught using unlicensed code on their websites.
Now, if this code is part of the navigation, chances are it'll be included on every single page served. Now, even if say http://www.riaa.com [riaa.com] only got 100 visitors per day, and each visitor only visited two pages, that'd be 200 counts of breach of copyright.
At an average $22,500 per copyright violation, that comes up at $4,500,000... per day.
Step 1) Write code Step 2) Find RIAA using that code unlicensed Step 3) Profit
Even if they somehow get the damages reduced in court, they'll be arguing that their own claims for damages are completely out of proportion.
Plus, as a group who is supposedly on the side of the creators, it'd look really bad if they tried to claim ignorance, unfair damages, that code isn't worth as much as songs etc.
Basically it's a win-win situation.
So, to all you bright people out there, I urge you to get hacking!
But don't go putting code onto their webservers without them knowing it - that defence doesn't fly well in RIAA cases, and it'd be unfair to use it against them;)
I demand that my members of parliament, regardless of party affiliation, stand up to these greed-interested lobby groups and champion the best interests of the people they serve - the people who elected them to their positions.
As a voting Canadian, I assure the people in power that I do have influence over their job security should my demands not be met. Given that I am confident that my demands are not dissimilar to the demands of other Canadians, I would strongly suggest that the decision-makers of Canada pay close attention to my demands lest they find themselves out of work and replaced with someone who _is_ willing to represent the best interests of the people of my great nation.
Further, I, as a proud Canadian, demand that lobby groups that do not serve the best interests of the people of my great nation fuck the hell off.
The MPAA/RIAA/etc gets their draconian copyright laws but with two modifications:
1) When the copyright on a work expires, they are required to publish a high quality public domain version of the work in a well-documented format. (e.g. a high bitrate MP3 or lossless FLAC for audio. MPEG-2 for video.)
I did attempt to submit this as a story a year ago. Didn't make the cut:
rbrander writes "Canadian copyright watchdog Michael Geist has written the story of How the U.S. got its Canadian copyright bill". The arm-twisting was pretty up-front: "Canadian officials arrived ready to talk about a series of economic concerns but were quickly rebuffed by their U.S. counterparts, who indicated that progress on other issues would depend upon action on the copyright file."... "the USTR...made veiled threats about 'thickening the border' between Canada and the U.S. if Canada refused to put copyright reform on the legislative agenda."
So, bottom line: It isn't the industry telling a nation of 30M people what to do, it's an industry saying "We pull strings and US trade negotiators dance the mamba for us. Do as you're told or they'll dance that mamba all over your timber, cattle, grain, and steel sales to a trading partner 10X your size."
Not many people know that Canada is the US' largest trading partner: much larger than China, larger than China and Britain combined. But the converse is staggering: the US is 80% of our TOTAL world trade. When the US negotiators hit the table saying "No discussion of of all our trade issues about the big-ticket items until you cave on the little wee Intellectual Property issue", the Canadian government has very little choice but to comply. That goes across party lines.
Any law that makes every citizen of the country a criminal is pointless and unenforceable.
I'm always amazed at the industry spokespeople, and often wonder what planet they are from, because they
certainly aren't from the same planet I'm from.
It's not just copyright. We have a concerted lobbying campaign going on by the car dealers
claiming that privately imported vehicles are the enemy of all that is free and right and holy
and will cause the end of civilization as we know it,
even though the sales of such vehicles are much smaller than, say, Lexus. They have a particular bee in their
collective
bonnet about right-hand drive vehicles, since these are the most obvious imports.
America hasn't "made us do" any of these things. Our trade ministers and premiers are the ones to blame. We've had a really bad run of crooked bastards over the past decade, and the problem stems from the fact that we have a rapidly expanding Albertan market that's got more in common with southern States than a Canadian provinces, and it just so happens that their own mini Bush is the guy calling the shots here in Ottawa.
If we had leaders with even average-sized balls, they could put a foot down and shift the trade relationships back in our favor - or simply cut the off and see what (doesn't) happen. War ? I can't even type that word without chuckling... The only reason our industries are being exploited is because our leaders set it up that way, under presumed ulterior motives. There's no need to blame the Americans.
Oh, and if you defend their position, you are ultimately working for their cause. Even if you're just stating their position (and thereby promote it).
No, that is not the way discourse works. Just because you don't agree with them, doesn't mean that no one should hear what they have to say. And don't go trying to twist my words around into something that you and I both no I don't mean. My point is that there is a time and a place for debate, attempting to silence or stifle one side of the debate, during that time, is not acceptable.
That doesn't mean that creationism should be taught in schools; it means that if someone on the board argues that it shoul
Why is this moderated "Troll?" The OP is correct. The companies are trying to reclassify an activity that has been legal (either truly a right retained by the people or so seldom enforced it is a right by default) to make it a criminal (or severly punished civil) act.
Who gives convicted sex offenders (by the letter of the law) the time of day to argue the appropriateness of the law that places them under that classification. Copyright offenders (under the new law) will be written off as well as people sim
Seriously.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who the fuck are they to demand that a country do their bidding? Go to hell already.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
hundreds of Canadians have spoken out against such reforms
Did you notice the typo? They misspelled "deforms".
Re:Ladies and gentlemen (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you're going to poke fun at Canadian culture, at least spell it right, Eh?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
CANAD-A?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Canada wants more money....
Re:Seriously.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not an employer, more like a subcontractor. They are enlisted by artists to "handle" the royalties on their behalf. If the CRIA disappeared today, artists would still be pretty much in the same place. The big guys would be pissed, but they're free to hire their own 1st-tier droogs. The small guys probably wouldn't notice a thing.
Parent
Will Canadian Pols Roll Over (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Will Canadian Pols Roll Over (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
A Direct Quote From Comedian Robin Williams: (Score:5, Funny)
Stephen Harper is like Bush, but without the charisma.
Parent
Re:Will Canadian Pols Roll Over (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh please!
The Liberals are at the same corporate trough as the Conservatives.
Remember Paul Martain? Do you remember him, our former prime-minster? The one who didn't want to pay Canadian taxes on his ships so he registered them outside the country and staffed them all with foreign workers, yet still called his shipping company 'Canadian Shipping'. Do you remember him? Do you remember the private copying levy that the Liberals introduced back in 1997? Where we have to pay extra money on all blank media we buy here to compensate the poor media companies and the losses they incur? The Liberals have ZERO problem with enacting the same laws.
If you want a leader who's against new copyright laws you have to look to the ones who're anti-american like the Bloc, and the NDP, or Green.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'd say Pirate Party.... hopefully you'll get one soon. In the last few days, the UK Pirate Party [pirateparty.org.uk] has registered as an official party in the UK!
Wait--that was a good thing. (Score:5, Informative)
Do you remember the private copying levy that the Liberals introduced back in 1997? Where we have to pay extra money on all blank media we buy here to compensate the poor media companies and the losses they incur?
Actually, this was a godsend in disguise, because it essentially created a giant loophole for Bittorrent operators in Canada. The CRIA hasn't been nearly as successful as their American counterpart because infringing citizens can happily point to the levy and say, "You're already getting your cut, so STFU."
Parent
Re:Will Canadian Pols Roll Over (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, well, well...
The Liberals are neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in the polls and are looking for an issue to galvanize the elusive 18-35 year old citizens into voting.
If only there was something contentious, like making it illegal to copy legally purchased materials or record TV. Something like "You could go to jail or face $20,000 for owning a modded XBox." Telling young professionals that content will be decided not by the CRTC, but by cable providers and American lobby groups. If you buy a DVD for your kids and let them use a ripped copy to skip the ads and keep the copy clean, that's a violation of WIPO, which could jail you and bankrupt you. Using any operating system that bypasses security features would do the same, too.
If only there was a way to contact your local Liberal [liberal.ca], Bloq [blocquebecois.org], and NDP [www.ndp.ca] MPs and let them know how you, as a citizen and registered voter, think this is worth an election.
Imagine the ads:
Have a guy walking down the street, listening to an MP3 player. A van pulls up next to him, and RCMP with guns order him to the ground. One policeman grabs the player, looks through it, says, "full of mp3s" to another one. They arrest him and put him in the van.
Announcer: "This is the Conservative plan for copyright reform."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, bill C-60 was bad. C-61 is worse.
I'd be willing to go so far as to say C-60 was written by people who had no idea what they were writing. That's really our fault for not letting our MPs know that we're available for technical consultation. When lobbyists show up with dozens of clippings about "copyright violations cost $TRILLIONS OMG!!!" and tell them that "consumers demand protection against stolen goods" they will listen. If we're not telling them, "we like our existing laws, and we want to own our o
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Here, we will find out if Canadians have more balls than us Americans who live south of the 49th parallel. Hopefully, the Canucks will tell them all to eat shit, and that will give the voters in the states a little motivation to get off THEIR dead asses to protest.
Will corrupters of the US get control of Canada? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will the corrupters of the U.S. get control of Canada, too?
By some measures, the U.S. government is the most corrupt in the world. For example, this Rolling Stone article: The Great American Bubble Machine [rollingstone.com]. (The full article is in the paper edition, available at any library.)
The U.S. government spends more money on surveillance and war than any country in the history of the world. That taxpayer money partly helps those who want corruption to profit, and hurts U.S. taxpayers, and the entire world. For just o
As a Canadian let me say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck you.
We've been opposed to this shit since the beginning of your so-called "reforms," and now you go one further and try to make it even more draconian?
And you wonder why I have no qualms subverting your business model and giving money in a more direct manner to the artist instead.
Re:As a Canadian let me say... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you wonder why I have no qualms subverting your business model
pass whatever laws you've been PAID to pass.
that's quite a different matter from getting buy-in from the citizenry. they won't follow really bad laws.
in the US, we already ignore copyright (many of us do) as a way of protesting the current status quo.
civil disobedience works and is justified here. ignore any bad laws passed. they don't apply to you. they were corrupt and so are null and void. use your own good common sense! the understanding of what's right and wrong is inside you; you don't need to look at BOUGHT AND PAID FOR laws for your morality.
once the media industry decided to play fair, we'll take off the mitts and also play fair. until then, its lawlessness. on both sides.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
ignore any bad laws passed. they don't apply to you.
Try saying that when they finally decide to make copyright violation a criminal offense and want to put you in jail or on probation for file sharing.
Re:As a Canadian let me say... (Score:4, Interesting)
You think you can jail 3/4 of a country?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently their misinformation campaign is working just as well as their fear campaign. You do realize that nobody has settled or gone to court because of downloading, right?
Re:As a Canadian let me say... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
hundreds?? (Score:5, Funny)
hundreds of Canadians have spoken out
Who does that leave?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That leaves Jimmy, Sally and Suzy from Canada. I don't know them but I'm certain they're really, really nice.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember when they wanted to add the blank media tax for "piracy"? Some stores like Staples refused to do it (or at least, media prices did not change).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
When most modern means of control are at least related to technology, perhaps the average person needs to question whether it is in their interests to leave such matters to "geek circles." The amount of effort needed to have at least a familiarity with these issues is nearly trivial; there is no need to become an expert in anything in order to understand that this is a bid for power that should rig
Next weeks headline (Score:3, Funny)
Net Neutrality and Copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Canada has been staggering backwards for quite some time on that issue."
How do you figure? The courts decided that downloading was cool and since then we've resisted attempt after attempt (this is what, five?) to pass a DMCA. There hasn't been any going backwards. Yet.
Reforms? (Score:2)
Why the hell would adding draconian laws favorable only to certain industries be called "reforms"?
While We're Being Ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
NCFPM (National Coalition of Five-hundred Pound Men) demands that Taco Bell increases sour cream levels in the Nachos Belle Grande!
Cell Phone companies demand the right to increase text messaging rates using a logarithmic scale, and to charge a monthly rent for those you don't immediately delete!
ICBE (International Coalition for Bathwater Equality) demands that whenever bathwater is thrown out, a baby is included!
"Democracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend of mine said once that the global corporations, by nature of the vast resources they control, actually formulate government policy and the elected politicians are the ones tasked with selling those policies to the public. There are minor exceptions such as privatizing Social Security in Bush II's second term in which public opposition is too strong to put through the policy, but these are few and far between.
In the case of the DMCA, this couldn't be closer to the truth. The problem is that the politicians have had difficulty selling the idea to Canadians at large, and prioritizing it in a minority government.
With the comment submission process, the elites can make the already formulated policies more palatable to Canadians. Perhaps there will be a few minor compromises. But in the end, they'll get what they want once they find the right "marketing" formula.
Personally, I find the idea that my internet access could be cut off after three false accusations of piracy to be frightening. I don't pirate anything, but the methodology for associating individuals with IP addresses is rife with errors and false positives.
Re:"Democracy" (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
i know the perfect solution (Score:5, Insightful)
those that just want to go to the theater will go anyway even if it is available free because they can go with friends & family or on a romantic date and enjoy the show (popcorn and sodapop too) and you still get your billions in return for your investment, so please quit acting like a paranoid selfish kid afraid that somebody is going to take a piece of your candy...
Of course (Score:4, Informative)
These surveys which I refer to are the ones which they admitted they extrapolated from the American data, without actually considering Canada at all... [michaelgeist.ca]
So it makes total sense to demand stricter laws.
Well this will make things interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
In Canada, broadband is classified as an essential service, so any 3 strikes law will fail. You cannot deny a person what is deemed a right.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Could I get a link to where you're hearing this from? I've only read last year that the CRTC was considering classing it as an essential service, but I never heard anything further about it.
Isn't it time someone sued their pants off? (Score:5, Interesting)
I seem to recall quite a few incidents where the RIAA, MPAA and their members and brethren have been caught using unlicensed code on their websites.
Now, if this code is part of the navigation, chances are it'll be included on every single page served. Now, even if say http://www.riaa.com [riaa.com] only got 100 visitors per day, and each visitor only visited two pages, that'd be 200 counts of breach of copyright.
At an average $22,500 per copyright violation, that comes up at $4,500,000 ... per day.
Step 1) Write code
Step 2) Find RIAA using that code unlicensed
Step 3) Profit
Even if they somehow get the damages reduced in court, they'll be arguing that their own claims for damages are completely out of proportion.
Plus, as a group who is supposedly on the side of the creators, it'd look really bad if they tried to claim ignorance, unfair damages, that code isn't worth as much as songs etc.
Basically it's a win-win situation.
So, to all you bright people out there, I urge you to get hacking!
But don't go putting code onto their webservers without them knowing it - that defence doesn't fly well in RIAA cases, and it'd be unfair to use it against them ;)
And I Demand... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a voting Canadian, I assure the people in power that I do have influence over their job security should my demands not be met. Given that I am confident that my demands are not dissimilar to the demands of other Canadians, I would strongly suggest that the decision-makers of Canada pay close attention to my demands lest they find themselves out of work and replaced with someone who _is_ willing to represent the best interests of the people of my great nation.
Further, I, as a proud Canadian, demand that lobby groups that do not serve the best interests of the people of my great nation fuck the hell off.
How about a compromise? (Score:5, Interesting)
The MPAA/RIAA/etc gets their draconian copyright laws but with two modifications:
1) When the copyright on a work expires, they are required to publish a high quality public domain version of the work in a well-documented format. (e.g. a high bitrate MP3 or lossless FLAC for audio. MPEG-2 for video.)
2) Copyright terms will be shortened to 5 years.
Possible interesting strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want 50, ask for 100 and let yourself be argued down a bit.
"US strong-armed Canada on DMCA" (Score:5, Interesting)
I did attempt to submit this as a story a year ago. Didn't make the cut:
rbrander writes "Canadian copyright watchdog Michael Geist has written the story of How the U.S. got its Canadian copyright bill". The arm-twisting was pretty up-front: "Canadian officials arrived ready to talk about a series of economic concerns but were quickly rebuffed by their U.S. counterparts, who indicated that progress on other issues would depend upon action on the copyright file." ... "the USTR...made veiled threats about 'thickening the border' between Canada and the U.S. if Canada refused to put copyright reform on the legislative agenda."
The link for that submission was: http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/443867 [thestar.com]
So, bottom line: It isn't the industry telling a nation of 30M people what to do, it's an industry saying "We pull strings and US trade negotiators dance the mamba for us. Do as you're told or they'll dance that mamba all over your timber, cattle, grain, and steel sales to a trading partner 10X your size."
Not many people know that Canada is the US' largest trading partner: much larger than China, larger than China and Britain combined. But the converse is staggering: the US is 80% of our TOTAL world trade. When the US negotiators hit the table saying "No discussion of of all our trade issues about the big-ticket items until you cave on the little wee Intellectual Property issue", the Canadian government has very little choice but to comply. That goes across party lines.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Silly Americans.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html [cia.gov]
And we have yet to touch the arctic.
Pointless "laws" (Score:3, Insightful)
Any law that makes every citizen of the country a criminal is pointless and unenforceable.
I'm always amazed at the industry spokespeople, and often wonder what planet they are from, because they certainly aren't from the same planet I'm from.
It's not just copyright. We have a concerted lobbying campaign going on by the car dealers claiming that privately imported vehicles are the enemy of all that is free and right and holy and will cause the end of civilization as we know it, even though the sales of such vehicles are much smaller than, say, Lexus. They have a particular bee in their collective bonnet about right-hand drive vehicles, since these are the most obvious imports.
...laura
Re:What if Canada doesn't comply? (Score:4, Insightful)
America hasn't "made us do" any of these things. Our trade ministers and premiers are the ones to blame. We've had a really bad run of crooked bastards over the past decade, and the problem stems from the fact that we have a rapidly expanding Albertan market that's got more in common with southern States than a Canadian provinces, and it just so happens that their own mini Bush is the guy calling the shots here in Ottawa.
If we had leaders with even average-sized balls, they could put a foot down and shift the trade relationships back in our favor - or simply cut the off and see what (doesn't) happen. War ? I can't even type that word without chuckling... The only reason our industries are being exploited is because our leaders set it up that way, under presumed ulterior motives. There's no need to blame the Americans.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and if you defend their position, you are ultimately working for their cause. Even if you're just stating their position (and thereby promote it).
No, that is not the way discourse works. Just because you don't agree with them, doesn't mean that no one should hear what they have to say. And don't go trying to twist my words around into something that you and I both no I don't mean. My point is that there is a time and a place for debate, attempting to silence or stifle one side of the debate, during that time, is not acceptable.
That doesn't mean that creationism should be taught in schools; it means that if someone on the board argues that it shoul
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who gives convicted sex offenders (by the letter of the law) the time of day to argue the appropriateness of the law that places them under that classification. Copyright offenders (under the new law) will be written off as well as people sim