

Technology Issues Ignored in Canadian Elections 41
Jem Berkes writes "Today's Toronto Star has a good article on Canadian political parties' positions on important technology issues such as Copyright reform/WIPO, spam, and privacy. With the elections only a week away, it's surprising that these important issues have attracted little or no debate. The current Heritage Committee, for instance, has recommended that Canada ratify WIPO, and few citizens (let alone politicians) are even aware of this issue."
What about in the US? (Score:2)
The Green Party addresses F/OSS (Score:4, Informative)
Canadian Heritage Committee report (Score:4, Informative)
I was a bit surprised by what I read about the positions of the Liberals, Conservatives and especially the NDP. I would have hoped for a more civil-libertarian position from them.
Issues mentioned in the article that affect Cdns include copyright reform, a national ID card, anti-spam legislation, use of open source software by government, etc.
Canadians pay a levy on recordable media (incl blank CD's) which supposedly is collected to compensate artists for copying (as mentioned often on /. it's legal here! with some conditions) of their work. I know no-one who believes the artists will get the money.
re: the Canadian Heritage committee copyright report... MP Sarmite "Sam" Bulte is the 2-term Liberal candidate in MY riding & is campaigning hard for re-election. I had somehow forgotten that she chaired the Canadian Heritage committee; the report (referred to in article) has much in it that affects people in the tech / web sector. In particular, if I see her shaking hands outside the High Park TTC station again, I'll bring up some issues with her!
Many groups are unhappy with the report's recommendations, including educators.
The report is available as PDF [parl.gc.ca].
USians and other non-Cdns may find similarities & differences with your own countries' policies illuminating.
Re:Canadian Heritage Committee report (Score:1)
Here's some advice on talking with Sarmite. Do it in person, or via a written letter. Emails are ignored.
As for your views.
The proposed ISP liability is sufficiently narrow to avoid many problems. But once informed, ISPs should have some formal system to follow.
"licensing schemes for copyrighted educational materials". Yeah bring it on!
There are a few exceptions to add so that research and fair use are not stifled. But this is what we should be working for. The Unive
Re:Canadian Heritage Committee report (Score:2)
Thanks for the cogent reply, emaveneau -- I'll read the EFF links later today.
I'll look for Sarmite Bulte and Peggy Nash (NDP) with (better-)informed questions. Alas, too late for a paper letter before election day.
The CD levy... I'd like to see a GST clawback (fill out a form, keep receipts, whatever) on blank media used for archiving data. For now, as a "least-bad" mechanism, it feels more like "give every driver a speeding ticket" than a tax.
Have you a link / resource where I can see which artists
Following the money of the CD levy/tariff. (Score:1)
The info you want is hard to find but here's what I've found so far.
The Canadian Private Copying Collective, CPCC is a non profit umbrella group overseeing distribution of funds.
The CPCC's has handed out $26 million CDN and will hand out a further $28 million CDN. [cpcc.ca]
Depending on the year it has distributed funds [cpcc.ca] as follows
66% to eligible authors and publishers, 18.9% to eligible performers, 15.1% to eligible reco
NDP Policy (Score:1, Interesting)
The NDP does not yet have a policy on Open Source Software, but I did speak to Jack Layton about it last fall. I hope to be able to bring (or send) a proposal on this matter to the next national convention .
See this journal entry [slashdot.org]
Any other NDP member/FLOSS folks want to help? Contact user "temojen", or send a message to the NPI mailing list.
(Posting anonymously because I'm at work & don't have my password here)
Yes (Score:2)
I wrote message #9500466 [slashdot.org]. It seems the NPI list has been cancelled though.
Re:NDP Policy (Score:2, Informative)
I just RTFA and now i'm confused... (Score:4, Funny)
Huh, maybe a Conservative government wouldn't be so bad after all. I still have to decide who i'm voting for (either Conservative or Green), but maybe now I won't cringe so badly when our new dictator is announced.
Oh, who am I kidding? This is Canada - I might as well start practicing my "horrified suprise" face now.
Re:I just RTFA and now i'm confused... (Score:1, Insightful)
Conservatives (Score:3, Informative)
The Liberals have all the business friends, they make billions of dollars of 'loans' to large companies to keep them around. Guess who makes donations to the Liberal party.
The Conservatives want to lower corporate taxes, but their plan is to only lower the taxes by the amount the handouts are reduced by.
So yes the companies will get $1 billion in tax cuts, but that will be made possible by not giving $1 billion in handouts to other companies.
Minority government (Score:2)
The Ontario Liberals are certainly acting like everyone will forget sometime in the next 5 years.
Suprising? (Score:1)
Compared to things like health care, government waste, gay rights, etc, tech issues aren't really that important on a national scale. We might like to think they are, but they aren't top issues.
Re:Suprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even when the levies were imposed some time ago on recordable media they went through without much more than a whisper, despite a good number of people protesting by writing their letters.
I doubt very much if there's going to be any serious
Re:Suprising? (Score:2)
Here's a radical idea. Currently, we elect leaders by area - each district gets so many leaders, who make the rules fo
Re:Suprising? (Score:1)
The problem with your idea is that nobody wants to go into a voting booth and have to make 50 choices instead of ONE (in the case of Canada).
Re:Suprising? (Score:1)
The idea has merit though -- I'd like to be able to vote on "mini-referendums" regarding all kinds of issues so I'm not voting for "whoever's policies I disagree with the least," like you mention doing against Harper (and I'm behind you 100% on that tip).
It'd be nice t
Re:Suprising? (Score:2, Insightful)
Surprising? I think not. (Score:5, Insightful)
No it's not, and you go on to explain why:
Unfortunately for our children, Joe Average sees that his friends and family are getting in trouble for what used to be expected of him to do, but doesn't ever make the connection. It's up to us to explain to our less paranoid friends and family exactly *why* things are headed in the wrong direction. Of course, it's somewhat difficult to do without sounding paranoid schizophrenic yourself, but do it anyway. At this point, it's our civic duty.
Surprised much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly us geeks care, but most of the populace do not. The situation is the exact same in the US, where most people on the street will have no fscking clue what the DMCA even is.
no surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
This is no surprise at all. Besides not being relevant to Joe Average, these issues are not all that relevant even to techies this time round. Why?
Because there are FAR more important issues.
For me, I'll do anything to prevent Harper (Bush of the north) from getting in. He basically want's to turn Canada into the current USA, something I and all my friends are dead set against.
When thin
FUD (Score:1, Insightful)
It's called FUD, and you seem to have fallen a victim of it in this election.
Look at the policies of the Conservatives, they aren't much different from any of the parties...The NDP have planks in their platform that are the same as the conservatives ie in regards to prortional representation; economic policy is similar to Liberal with slower growth for govenrmental depts. ie more money for other areas such as tax cuts; We
There are bigger issues (Score:2, Insightful)
The Liberals, in their stupendous arrogance, have gone and done a lot of stupid things. They've commited fraud on the scale of a hundred million dollars in Quebec. They've let the health care system atrophie and waste away. In short, they've fucked
Re:There are bigger issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably not. I bet most people voting conservative simply don't understand political issues at all. They probably think that the Conservatives are the old Progressive Conservatives, and are simply voting for them out of habit or due to the Liberal screw ups.
Re:Bla (Score:1)
Sarmite says no DMCA regulation of tech in Canada (Score:2, Interesting)
[Homer] Wooh Hoo!! [/Homer] IMHO this means no DMCA regulation for technology in Canada!
Take a look at the the user feed back during the Copyright Reform Process. Over 700 su [ic.gc.ca]
Re:Sarmite says no DMCA regulation of tech in Cana (Score:2, Informative)
She also seems unaware of the fact that proposals to tax educational use of the Internet are an exemption of copyright where the intentions of the copyright holders are ignored and instead a royalty-collective society receives what amounts to "a tax
This is *NOT* what she has said. (Score:1)
I do not share this interpretation of Sarmite Bulte's words.
I was subjected to a speech from her at the Rethinking Copyright [ottawaconference.alai.ca] conference, and checked my interpretation with a number of other people there (some lawyers or law students, some other laypersons like myself). We all came to the same conclusion that she didn't understand technology law, and didn't separate many-to-many mediums of communication like the Internet
Canadian Libertarian Party (Score:1, Interesting)
As someone has pointed out, the Green Party does have a pro-open source platform. But they're not the only ones. Libertarians favour people's rights (fair use, etc) over artificial state-created monopolies like copyrights and patents. Even though Canada's Libertarian party is in a state of rebuilding, they
Slashdotters' Interests not that COmmon (Score:2)
At this point... (Score:1)
-- Where is my $ for all this .... (Score:1)
Tell me, which R&D did I conviently provide the intellectual property?
Where does a subject go for compensation?
Who cares about the election. We live in a GRC Science R&D test site and project pilot zone.
I have had enough of these corporate government and police agencies exploiting my intellectual property, infringing my rights and invading my privates... I mean privacy.
http://www.privacyassociation.org
Fuck all of this subtle inuendo of watch m