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Googling May Break Copyright in Canada 333
twray writes "From The Globe&Mail: Could it be possible that Canada will make Google or any other Internet search and archiving engines illegal?
Bill C-60, which amends the Copyright Act and received its first reading in the House of Commons on June 20, suggests it could be illegal for anyone to provide copyrighted information through "information-location tools," which includes search engines."
so? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so? (Score:2)
Re:Does it matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
>>copyrighted material, while you are denied to do so?
No but that isn't what this is about.... google would be considered an "information-location tool" so if by chance it indexes a site which hosts copyrighted material (yes I know the possibility is shocking) they are liable.
Re:Does it matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just waiting for someone to claim (Score:2, Funny)
Take that, Canucks (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Take that, Canucks (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, we sue the things we don't hate in the US. It's like we're a country of sadists of something..
Re:Take that, Canucks (Score:2)
It's the same groups that are lobbying governments worldwide to enact these sky-is-falling-laws though. It is already illegal to publish copyrighted material that you don't have permission for doing that. We need a fair way for copyright holders to enforce their rights against people who are breaking the law. That can be done without most of the content of th
Re:Take that, Canucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Take that, Canucks (Score:5, Interesting)
I *do* think that if you provide something via the regular, non-authenticated Web, you should be prepared to allow people to mirror that item, and not to have control over when that item *stops* being offered. Because that's just how the Web *works*, and trying to apply meatspace rules to the Web, where costs of replication and distribution are vastly different from meatspace, just doesn't make sense.
Re:Take that, Canucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Over at Groklaw, PJ touches on this in an article about Internet Archive being sued article [groklaw.net] She makes good points such as recommending that site owners utilize subscriptions to protect content that they do not wish to be open to the public domain. The is also a discussion of the robots.txt file that many sites use and search engines honor voluntarily.
Search engines are tremendously effective tools for bringing visitors to web content. Without them, many web sites would go unnoticed. I don't see that attacking the search engines will be effective. I believe that simple solutions such as those PJ has touched on are readily available and easy to implement rather than resorting to such extensive legislation, and I agree that this is what we as citizens need to convey this to our respective governments.
Re:Take that, Canucks (Score:2, Informative)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/13/0
Re:Take that, Canucks (Score:5, Funny)
America: No, You didn't support us in our silly War that we're still stuck in. We are going to Tariff you!
Canada: How about we pass some silly laws so yours look less silly? you know, people are talking...
America: Can you start a war with Albania for no reason so our voting public can be annoyed at you and forget about Iraq?
Canada: Maybe... but lets just start with the silly laws.
America: Okay, have a cigar.
Run To America! Fear The Iron Fist of Canada ! (Score:4, Funny)
Breath.
The bill has not been passed into law. The bill has been vaguely considered. The likely scenario is that some crotchety old bastard who doesn't even own a TV in the northern wastelands of Canada who was elected by his four neighbors, which live 100 miles away (giving him a solid 90% of the vote), was given a wet dream bill by a lobbyist going through the motions to receive his paycheck. Someone politician owns a computer a thousand blood thirsty lobbyist representing any industry hurt by said bill are going to descend upon the capital and decry the bill as the music industries attempt to trying to eat Google, libraries, and small children. The liberals are going to recoil in disgust at the realization that bill might help the music industry, and the conservatives with a hard on for Google or some other corporation will promptly decry the bill as undue government interference. It will then be completely lobotomized and be reworded to either say, "It is illegal to provide copywrite information location tools powered by babies pulled from their mother's wombs" or turned into a poison pill of a bill and be reworded to say, "Canada will construct a tower of dead babies from which the music industry can lord over the small people of Canada as Gods".
Whatever version they pick it will be written in both French and English.
Both sides will make long winded speeches that has nothing to do with the law being discussed. These speeches will get chopped up and put into campaign literature.
The campaign literature will also be in both French and English.
It will be a unanimous voted on either way, either against making a tower of dead babies or for making it illegal to run a device powered by dead babies. Whatever the case, at the end of the day, the political system will defeat this bill in its own kludgy and ham-fisted way.
So breath, no one has to move to the US to escape the iron fist of the Canadian government.
Re:Run To America! Fear The Iron Fist of Canada ! (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the scoop. The Bill is ISP friendly (no liability for being the means of communication by which copyright infringement occurs), and will likely be Google-friendly by the same provisions. What we have is a Bill diluted from the insane brainchild of the Liberal-Heritage Ministry-Copyright Lobby circle jerk thanks to various factors, largely thanks to the efforts of everybody-who-isn't-a-blood-sucking-copyright-lobb y-group.
The Bill will go for second reading when parliament resumes, and will probably get passed before the minority Liberal government calls a vote in late winter/early spring. PM Martin has control of the government thanks to his willingness to give the NDP the budget ammendment reach-around, the Conservative leader's brilliant alienation of his only allies (the separatist Bloc Quebecois), and the voting tendencies of the Canadian public (no matter what the Liberals do to prove they are corrupt, voters in Ontario will still vote for them whether or not Stephen Harper keeps ramming his foot in his mouth).
Re:Run To America! Fear The Iron Fist of Canada ! (Score:3, Informative)
They're a big party and the processes to prevent kickbacks, etc aren't there. When the cat's away the mice will play.
The leader of the opposition, Mr Harper is less hardcore moral conservative than Bush but he still freaks a lot of people out with his charter rights violating morality. Here, getting gay marrage through was pretty much a breeze, as stopping it would have required a declaration from parlaiment that they were passing legislation in direct contravention of
Re:Run To America! Fear The Iron Fist of Canada ! (Score:2, Insightful)
So they're just like our Repubicans and Democrats. Bada bing!
Re:so? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, just dont base any canadian Google in Canada and Just keep google in U.S
Yeah, 'cause the US would never pass draconian laws like this...
Right?
Right?
<crickets chirping>
Why bother w/this then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would that mean that library networks that allow you to find copyrighted material are illegal too? All of the libraries I've been in recently have an online card catalogue which is usually accessable in-house and over the web... Granted they might not be caching materials and making thumbnails but who knows? Maybe the libraries even use site:library.org with Google to do searches.
But, cautions Mr. Knopf, Bill C-60 has received first reading only, and that "there"s a lot of time for them to take this out or to fix it."
He warns that "we shouldn't cripple the Googles of the world by imposing copyright chill on the very basis of their architecture. In fact, they perform a very useful service to copyright owners by enabling easy detection of infringement. The owners should go after the actual infringer, rather than effectively shooting the messenger."
Then why even bother to draft it? This seems like an awful waste of time and energy if you know the bill could cripple the search engine industry and that's not what you want.
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who fault is this? Is it my responsibility not to leave my directories of music files open for the public to copy? Or is it my responsibility not to copy files from open directories?
Either way, google is the tool. As liberal as I am... guns do not kill without a person pulling the trigger.
Google (and MSN too [tech-recipes.com]) provide a service. It is not their fault if people use it for evil.
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:2)
So, are you saying that they are coming out of the gate with high-stakes to piss everyone off and create a stir and then they will re-write the bill completely to only go after DRM-free music files and e-books which aren't cached and thumbnailed?
So basically they would be coming up w/an entirely new bill that has nothing to do w/the current one?
I just find that hard to believe. If they wanted to do that they wouldn'
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:4, Funny)
I've know of people who have had relative die by accidential discharge without anyone pulling the trigger. I'm not it's not unheard of while climbing over a fence to have some idiot lean a shotgun over. He'll jostle the fence, or the shotgun will get enough force applied to discharge the weapon without anyone pulling a trigger. It's one of the reasons you should always crack a shotgun open when you climb over a fence. I'm fairly sure, it's a good safty precaution to have it cracked all execpt when shooting if it's the style of shotgun you can do that with (breach loading, not a pump if I understand shotguns enough).
Oh, for the record, I'm a big believer in an armed society is a polite society. Guns have their place, and having them be common in society isn't such a bad thing.
Kirby
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:3, Insightful)
But what about these cases:
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx? ID=30 [nraila.org]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://iresist.com/cbg/guns.html [iresist.com]
From the last link:
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:2)
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:2)
Someone else remarked on this with ways in which a gun can be fired accidentally. Thanks to technology and robot drones, we have ways in which Iraqis can be killed without a human pulling the trigger as well.
Of course, it's a human that designed it, and likely it's not fully autonomous (yet). I just read a short story by Philip K. Dick which is very pertinent, and has a really cool twist ending; it was "Second Variety", about the killi
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:2)
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:2)
The same reason people buy lottery tickets, you just never know....
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:2)
What does Canada stand to gain from this? Let's look at:
Pros -
Protect copyright holders, except this is hard to enforce, since google is US based, and we're talking about broad-reaching wordage that would have to expand to about 50 pages to get to the specificity it would require to actually be, you know, pertinent.
Cons -
Fuck over THE largest influence on
Re:Why bother w/this then? (Score:2)
Because it scares the hell out of a lot of people, and gives you negotiating leverage. And if you don't care all that much about search engines, even better. It's Politics 101.
Canadian "draft" (Score:2)
Canadian politicians waste a lot of their time on proposals and posturing, knowing full well that it's not going to pass into law. The one advantage to the public is that a few politicians gains some education as to why a proposal is a bad idea. Of course the politicians themselves see it primarily as an opportunity to grandstand and garner some attention for all the "work" they do.
Don't forget all the civil servants and contractors who'll be hired to "study" the issue so amendments and changes can be
This doens't really make any sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This doens't really make any sense (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This doens't really make any sense (Score:2)
Short and sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at some of the stuff here in the states- I mean, a bunch of 200 year old Supreme court judges making laws about P2P when they dont even use email????
I thought Canadians had a reputation for being reasonable....
If Google is outlawed, only Outlaws will Google.
I have to go, I need to google tyrany.
Re:Short and sweet (Score:2)
Canada vs. Google (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Canada vs. Google (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Canada vs. Google (Score:5, Funny)
Asked about the impending transfer of soverignty from her ex-Majesty to Google, Canada was rather disappointed but unwilling to cause a fuss. Quebec was outraged but plans to observe the traditional proprieties with a full surrender ceremony.
Think for a second. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think they're aiming at things such as torrent & eMule search engines not Google and Yahoo.
Re:Think for a second. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Think for a second. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thing lawyers and businesses always follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter of it.
Not searchable, not usable (Score:2)
The sad fact is that most users use search to find anything. In fact, a great number of users will put a domain name in the search engine to find a site, rather than enter the address itself.
So, what this means is that Canadian e-business will go straight down the tubes.
Brilliant foresight.
It's a lawyer's world afterall (Score:5, Insightful)
Most regulations, such as this one, exist not to protect anyone, but just to make lawyers rich. It doesn't matter which side the lawyer takes, plaintiff or defendant, they both stand to make good money off of ambiguous and overly broad laws. Stuff like this just proves the old saying, "in a town with only 1 lawyer, the lawyer will starve but in a town with 2 lawyers they will never go hungry."
On both sides of the border we make no pretense of electing people who actually know what they're doing. Almost every politician is a hack these days whether in America or Canada, and that probably applies to most countries in general. Look at that POS proposed by Leahy and Specter in the US recently [blindmindseye.com]. These lawyers and buisnessmen don't know a damn thing about the ramifications of their legislation most of the time, and when they do, malice is frequently their motivation for the diabolical implications of its scope. Is it any wonder why liberty-minded people tend to just eschew regulation altogether these days since most of the time, we have to choose between scoundrels and blithering idiots for our lawmakers?
Politicians Don't Draft Bills (Score:4, Funny)
As for Bill C-60, I figure it's better if some lawyers make some $ than the government infringing on my fair use rights, so I'll write my MP and tell them to support it, then wait till the Supreme Court sorts out the mess.
Re:Politicians Don't Draft Bills (Score:2)
I amuse me. Laugh at the geek.
Re:RTFS (Score:2)
Re:Politicians Don't Draft Bills (Score:2)
Thats it....back in my day...! (Score:5, Funny)
Surfing random IP Addresses.
For the ones that have decent content, I'll carve the number into my wooden desk.
Re:Thats it....back in my day...! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Thats it....back in my day...! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thats it....back in my day...! (Score:2)
In high school I was suspended for breaking copyright law on my desk. Just a little tip: Signing somebody else's name on it doesn't work.
Random? (Score:5, Funny)
Check out 64.233.179.104 [64.233.179.104] -- there's all sorts of neat stuff there. Better hurry before the cops shut it down.
Actually, we used ... (Score:3)
Think man! (Score:2)
Next you'll be saying we should write addresses on our body in honey, only to be savaged by grizzlies overnight.
Oh, almost forgot - "eh"! Sorry, required by law.
Re:Thats it....back in my day...! (Score:2, Funny)
We need new directives in robots.txt (Score:2)
If some countries want to implement asinine policies, at least sites should have the decency (and the means) to let global information services, such as Google, respect those policies.
Re:We need new directives in robots.txt (Score:2)
Lawmaking and The Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
Except the analogy breaks down when confronted with the fact that there are companies in position to achieve, or at least maintain, obscene profit levels by preventing the expansion of intellectual traffic flow.
Re:Lawmaking and The Internet (Score:2)
The Internet is a lot like a Civilization railroad: you can move stuff around, to all corners of the globe (and off it!), for essentially zero cost. It is an inflection point, and we haven't finished absorbing it yet.
Listen up... (Score:2)
Gutless Governors (Score:2)
Robots.txt? (Score:5, Informative)
who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
Just chill out and don't worry, Canada is not so stupid as to pass a bill that could possibly be as damaging as this.
Re:who cares? (Score:2, Funny)
I am Canadian, you insensitive clod, and I'm bloody well TERRIFIED.
So what are you going to do about it? (Score:2)
Re:So what are you going to do about it? (Score:2)
"Providing" (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone makes it available, it would have been "provided" whether or not Goggle indexed it and provided a link to it.
Holding a search engine liable would leave them all open to sabotage by people posting copyrighted stuff and getting it indexed.
Re:"Providing" (Score:2)
If they want this law to have any teeth against P2P services, it must be written broadly enough to hurt google too.
Just do a search for:
"index of" metallica mp3
and you will see that Google provides just as good a p2p search engine as any DC++ server.
Surely its about intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this can be banned, then we have to hold the Yellow Pages publishers guilty if a bank robber looks up the address of banks...
(IANAL, as if you couldn't guess...).
Meta Tags (Score:2, Interesting)
Recently I looked into META tags, and saw a copyright META TAG. I found it odd, but this _could_ provide a solution for indivuals. But in further looking, I see the robots: NOINDEX rule, which w
It's automatic, actually (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, under the Berne Convention any information is copyrighted. Copyright is automatically granted to the creator of a work. Proving your authorship in court -- and proving that an infringer should have had knowledge of your authorship -- is the tricky part, and this is where copyright notification and registration come in handy.
Just testing us... (Score:2)
Yes, sometimes we're shocked and react and post on slashdot and comment, etc.
But how many stupid laws that have been voted can you count? How many patents are you infriging when you breathe? How many copyrights do you violate when you whistle a tune? Are we really awake?
Mr. Knopf (Score:2, Interesting)
O Canada! What is going on? (Score:3)
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and fr[censored]!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and fr[censored]!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
Music caching is the issue (Score:2)
They even tried going after the makers of CD players at one time for the data caches in the electronics.
Totally Misread (Score:2)
Re:Totally Misread (Score:2)
LOL.
There is a petition against most of this bill. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ [digital-copyright.ca]
Indeed, that is something that all Canadians who are against this bill should sign, no doubt.
The Bill itself... (Score:4, Informative)
Just goes to show... (Score:3, Interesting)
But with a recent NYTimes piece making a case for the death penalty for script kiddies... and the pervasive atmosphere of ignorance driven hysteria towards IT, my question is how long before we actually start seeing the witch hunts begin in an earnest attempt to gain strong governement control of the internet?
And if a programer floats like a duck, what then?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how this is an issue? (Score:3, Informative)
IANAL.
However, the copyright holder needs to contact the source in question to have material removed. And, as far as I can tell, can only file an injunction. Reading C-60 myself, it reads as if it's making an exception specifically for search engines such that it isn't illegal copyright violation until such an injunction is filed.
Makes sense that, if you ask a search engine to remove your content, they would comply. Just like most comply with robots.txt and whatnot.
Geee... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's not go to Canada. 'Tis a silly place. (Score:4, Interesting)
Great. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ummmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
My god.... Canada just might succeed in making every 12 year olds dream come true.... no more school.
Has anyone who posted so far read TFA? (Score:2, Insightful)
Clearly that is not the intention of the bill, and that sentence will be rewritten before the bill is passed if other lawmakers agree that it has that implication.
So what's the fuss?
It doesn't matter what parliament thinks (Score:3, Informative)
Disclaimer: this is ivory-tower thinking. Of course it matters.
Re:That would be too stupid even for law makers (Score:2, Funny)
With a number as low as 355, all I can say is....
"Less filling, tastes great!"
Re:Why (Score:2)
*subjective
Re:Who's It Up To? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright doesn't provide universal control over a work -- indeed, it's quite limited. Reproduction, public performance, preparation of derivative works; these (and perhaps some minor ones I forgot) are the actions prohibited without the copyright owner's approval. Search -- allowing a third party to answer questions by telling another third party about your copyrighted work -- is not on the list.
Extending that franchise is a big step -- a very big step. You're taking actions which are presently available to the public at large, and imposing restrictions upon them -- and, in doing so, making for lots of extra beurocracy in the process. Search, in particular, is a case where this kind of legal restriction simply isn't in the public interest: Why should I be restricted by a 3rd party from telling you about a resource? There are already laws on the books regarding contributory copyright infringement, so telling you about how to access a resource illegally is already out of the question (except in cases where making such actionable would have a chilling effect on legitimate activities; hence the manner in which Grokster's big loss was tied to their intentional promotion of infringing activities by their userbase).
The legal balance already overwhelmingly favors copyright holders over the general public -- the DMCA and similar legislation being largely responsible for that -- and moving it even further in that direction does the public as a whole an unjustified level of harm.
Re:Who's It Up To? (Score:2)
If content replication is such a big deal, they should outlaw ISP and corporate use of caching proxies to reduce border traffic from frequently visited pages as well.
AFAIK, Google does not index/cache pages that require registration. If you are so worried about your pages getting GCached, simply hide them behind a registration/login form.
Re:Who's It Up To? (Score:2)
Now, mind you, I likewise believe that permitting the Internet Archive, Google Cache and such to function is clearly in the public interest, and that the law (and the courts' interpretation thereof) should reflect such. Your strawmen are just that -- strawmen -- and as such don't merrit serious atten
Re:Who's It Up To? (Score:2)
Nationalize Google? (Score:2)
That's the fundamental difference.
They only tell you, how to achieve higher ranking, thus offering a mechanism you can use, should your policy happen to include trying to be as visible as possible. But they do not impose a policy.
Your attempt to base any demands on Google's use of open-source is particularly disturbing (and is sure to add more weight to arguments against it)... You are attaching strings to it, tha
Re:Where's our share? (Score:2)
I glad they are making money and helping people along the way.
Re:Where's our share? (Score:3, Insightful)
Google does not threaten our privacy because it only indexes things that are already available on the internet. Google isn't breaking into private systems and posting their content on the web, it is just making already visible content easier to find.
They have their rig
Re:Where's our share? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Google is a service company, their products(Keyhole, Search Appliance, etc) are extensions of their services really.. They provide a service that leverages other things.
Mining the information of 8 billion pages is not a product, it is a service. One that is hugely useful.
2. You are not, in any way, forced to use Google's services/products. Thus, they are not a the end all of the world, you can simply choose to not work with them. Really, it is easy.
Re:What were you thinking? (Score:2)
My post is entitled "where is our share?" as in "is google giving back enough?"
Re:What were you thinking? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are made they use linux(and other open source tools) but dont 'give back' enough? Well, they seem to be following the terms of the GPL, etc... Just because you wish they open sourced their algorithm(something they have no reason, legal or ethical or logical, to do) doesn't mean they are bad people because they don't. It means you are just demanding something you have no right to.
"Our share" is the service they provide to us. They are a company, not a socialist sta