Canadian Prime Minister To Music Lobby: Here's Your Copyright Term Extension 121
An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian government's decision to extend the term of copyright
for sound recordings in the budget may have taken most copyright
observers by surprise, but not the music industry. The extension
will reduce
competition, increase
costs for consumers, and harm
access to Canadian Heritage, but apparently all it took was a
letter from the music industry lobby to the Prime Minister of
Canada. Michael Geist reports on a
letter sent by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the music
lobby on the day the change was announced confirming
that industry lobbying convinced him to extend the term of copyright
without any public consultation or discussion.
Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Votes mean nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
When all the candidates on the ballot are bought and paid for by the corporate interests
Re:Votes mean nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
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...I think someone needs to read up on world history and the relative performance of various political systems.
Which is far preferable to leaders who are picked by birth, rule by divine authority and are ans
Re:Votes mean nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Leaders picked by birth are basically 50/50 wether they are power hungry despots or benevolent dictators...
Politics on the other hand almost always attracts a specific kind of person, those who want power and will do whatever is necessary to acquire it. Succeeding in a democratic system requires getting enough people to vote for you, which requires sufficient media coverage otherwise the voters won't even be aware of your existence. With such a system, it's no wonder that large media companies hold so much power.
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Leaders picked by birth are basically 50/50 wether they are power hungry despots or benevolent dictators...
That depends on the society. Your description fits European hereditary systems (oldest surviving son of the current ruler).
In West Coast native society, heredity chose which families the next chief came from, but matrons of the community chose which child from the candidate families would be the next chief. Needless to say, a more thoughtful and caring child was more likely to be chosen under that system.
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Democracy is just a sham anyway. It only really works to your advantage if you happen to be one of the dumbest people in the country.
...I think someone needs to read up on world history and the relative performance of various political systems.
Well, what stats are you looking at? Plato (in the Republic) discussed various forms of government [wikipedia.org], and democracy was the second-worst, eventually inevitably (according to him) degrading into tyranny.
And if you look at the track record of historical democracies, the giving of greater power to the public at large is often a prediction that a transition to a totalitarian, tyrannical, or autocratic form of government will follow. The people at the bottom of the socioeconomic system are desperate and will c
Re: Votes mean nothing (Score:2)
This is a case of non-democracy - an executive decision by the PM. If a democracy was less executive, at the very least calling for a vote of parliament, or better yet, citizens' vote, we wouldn't have this problem. Even a citizens initiated bill like you have in California would have some hope of overturning something like this.
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In essence, the way you describe it is true, but it's not that simple. This is not something the Prime Minister of Canada has the direct authority to change. He is adding it to the upcoming budget, which is a piece of legislation that must receive a majority vote in parliament to pass. His decision can make this happen because his party currently holds a majority of the seats in parliament and they vote however he orders them to so long it's
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If there are smarter, more competent people out there than "the current mob" (politicians) - what do they know that makes them not bother running for parliament?
Oh, I don't know, maybe they prefer not to get Kennedied.
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"Stupid" and "smart" are largely irrelevant. It's a question of values. Stephen Harper is probably one of the smarter and craftier people in Canadian politics. Look where it's getting us - the PM has very different values from most of us, and is putting his smarts to work enforcing those values on his people. "Smart" is not a good character trait in a politician, as "smart" people tend to want to (and actually do) try to subvert the system for their own ends.
What you need to do is elect someone who shares y
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"Majority" choice my ass. In republics we elect oligarchs to rule for us. I wish it was mob rule like in an Athenian Democracy.
Vote left (Score:5, Insightful)
When you don't vote then that's a signal to the rich and powerful that they can get away with even _more_ than they did the last time around. What do you think happens when their lap dogs win in a landslide? Same thing as anyone who wins an overwhelming victory, it emboldens them.
Vote the most popularist person you can get. Here in the States I'll vote Hilary even though she's a a corporate douche because at least she won't gut the last round of medical reforms (which I have several friends/family dependent on).
Moreover we're adults. We shouldn't pout and cross our arms and say if I can't have everything I'll take nothing. Take what you can get. The Phrase "it can always get worse" really _does_ mean something...
Re: Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:2, Insightful)
Who voted for them? Does it matter? You have to vote for someone and there is nobody the industry cannot buy. No money, no politics. Now open that pretty mouth wide while we shit into it.
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There are plenty of people the industry cannot buy, but under a democratic system the large established media companies can always ensure that these people never have enough mass media coverage and thus the voters aren't aware that they exist and don't vote for them.
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There is no evidence that there was any financial gain except by the music industry.
Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, he did it 'cause he believes the copyright industry really, really needs more time than lifetime + 70 years to recover their investment.
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Actually its not life + 70 years its 70 years period.
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For now, until that 70 years is up.
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Let's wait 70 years and see.
Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:5, Informative)
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More likely coverage. Harper's government has been picking on the media companies until recently and now seems to be rewarding them. You don't win elections without positive coverage from the media.
There's a lot of negative things to be said about Harper but he is very smart and patient.
Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like there is an option to vote for someone who isn't a corporate whore.
The main difference between a prostitute and a politician is that the prostitute only sells her body, not her soul.
You're wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Politicians don't have souls.
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Of course not anymore after the sale.
Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:5, Interesting)
We have more than two political parties in Canada. The choice isn't limited to "Conservatives or Liberals". You can vote for NDP, Green Party, etc.
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We have more than two political parties in Canada. The choice isn't limited to "Conservatives or Liberals". You can vote for NDP, Green Party, etc.
Good joke, I laughed.
The policies of the NDP, Greens, and Liberals are very similar - so much so that the last election which granted a conservative majority in parliament was drummed up to the liberal vote being split between three parties, where the conservative voting bloc had one. The conservatives won a parliamentary majority with a minority of the popular vote.
So when you say "You can vote NDP, Green, Liberal..." all I see is: "You can vote liberal, liberal, liberal..."; it's honestly not a lot differ
Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:4, Interesting)
The main difference between a prostitute and a politician is that the prostitute only sells her body, not her soul.
I think the main difference is that prostitutes keep their promises.
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You can change that. Run for office yourself and refuse to become a corporate whore. Talk to friends and family and encourage others to do the same. That's what democracy is about - not just whining about what you don't like.
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I love it when idiots claim to know the obvious but fail to see it. Ron paul in the states ran verry little tv ads nor sucked up to any corporations and had quite alarge and popular following that generated huge amounts of donations.
All i heard is crying that its too dificuly. But thats just code for not everyone thinks the way you do. You don't start at the top either, You generally start at the bottom or mid level and work up.
But hell, lets just pick impossible goals, go at them in the most difficult way
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The Conservatives changed the rules to make it very hard and expensive to get on the ballot. Up until the last election there had always been close to a dozen names on the ballot for my MP, this made it easy to do a protest vote for someone like the Rhino party, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Last election there was only 3 or 4 names on the ballot as it is expensive ($10,000?). I don't think even the Green party was on the local ballot.
Parliamentary system so all we vote for is our representative.
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Oh yeah, swell idea. I never heard that one before, why didn't anyone have this awesome idea before? Just run for office! People will vote for you and ... erh... no. Wait. They won't. Because they don't even know you run for office. So you run an ad campaign and ... erh... well, that works if you're kinda filthy rich. But if you are, why the hell should you run for an office, politics is pretty much working in your favor. But, ya know, you could do it as a hobby. The fate of a country as a rich boy's play t
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When idiots like Ron Paul can rake billions in campain contributions through small personal donations and remain a senator for several terms while not only running for higher office and repeatedly failing yet influencing those who won to some degree, it is proof that what you say is nothing more than crying that it is too hard for you to understand how to do it.
And yes, i say idiots because they failed to moderate their niche message enough to attract mainstream support yet had huge success operating from
Re: Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:1)
Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them... (Score:4, Funny)
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...and make decisions with their wallet...
Keep getting reelected.
A few months ago I had to get shoulder surgery and had one arm completely immobilized for 6 weeks. Rather than sit at home doing nothing until I could work again, I took a job doing polls at a local mall. Often, the questions had to do with how people felt about controversial issues such as patent law, gay marriage, medical/recreational marijuana and psychedelics, contraception, etc... And despite being in a solidly Red section of the state, the poll results were almost always sol
Sure, a "letter" (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFY.
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Probably a bit more than a check. To the person who mentioned 'no financial gain' get fucking real, of course there was gain, there is absolutely no other reason to do this than being bribed outright and openly.
Revolution, burn them all, burn their families, burn their lands, take everything, we have logistics via computers and do not need these people
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there is absolutely no other reason to do this than being bribed outright and openly.
I can think of a reason: The good of the country and its peoples are best served by having a long copyright.
Of course, I'm not saying I agree with that reason, or that it is true in any way. However, if it were true, then a politician would be doing exactly the right thing in supporting it.
Re:Sure, a "letter" (Score:4, Informative)
Well this government has been using copyright(1) to deny citizens access to taxpayer funded research and I'm sure they'd love to keep unfavourable research secret forever, I doubt they're looking that far in the future.
1. All government stuff is under the Queens copyright in Canada.
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That's how they do it in third world countries, in civilized countries you just get a nice job after you leave office or family members get big contracts for their companies.
Re:Alberta not lesson enough? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know Canadian politics, so not sure what you mean by your comment.
In the recent provincial election in Alberta (generally regarded as the core of the Conservatives (Stephen Harper's seat is in Alberta). It gets stereotyped as the Canadian version of Texas), the Progressive Conservative Party (who have held government in that province since 1971 (and before them, the also right-wing Social Credit Party held government since 1935) and before the election held 70 out of the 87 seats in the provincial legislature) were swept out by the social-democratic New Democratic Party. It was a really stunning reversal for the province that has been electing right-wing governments for longer than most have been alive to shift straight to our leftish party and, if the recent polling results are to be believed, it has given the federal NDP a serious boost and turned the upcoming federal election (which is expected to happen in October) into a three-way race.
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Would you prefer footnotes?
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We must develop a new deep AI which will attempt to do what is best for our country and people.
So then we pass control of the country to some corruptible, bribable idiots we have a hope of voting out to some small group of corruptible, bribable AI developers who we may not even know who they are. Sounds like a great idea. Pretty sure SHODAN wouldn't do very well running the country, either.
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Skynet is incapable of deep thoughts.
What Bothers me Most (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that Copyright protection was extended. That's bad enough, buit is in good company of poorly thought out laws that burocracies and governments have to live with.
What really bothers me is the Canadian government following the Amerian example of sneaking new laws in completely unrelated bills. A change to the copyright act should have been made in a bill ammeding the copyright act. How can a legal system possibly be sutainable when you have to start looking at annual budget bills of some obscure decade to figure out the copyright statues currently in place?? This practice serves no purprose, other than as a trick for governments to sneak in legal statues they would otherwise not legally be able to do due to opposition, either legislative or public.
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The practice of "riders" would quickly stop on its own if Senate voters asked themselves "do I want this?" for every item in the bill, and applied a logical AND to determine their vote. There's no shame in saying "I really like your bill and would vote for it, but you let some crap in, so remove it and try again". Right now voters apply either an OR ("I really want this item into law now, rest be damned"), or MAJORITY ("this bill is mostly good").
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I wholeheartedly agree with you. The way it seems to work in the US is that you have a bunch of politicians who want X bill to pass, but some others that either don't want it, or don't care. However these others want unrelated provision Y to become law. The two sides make a handshake deal and combine the different topics in one bill. Or one side of the aisle doesn't want a bill to pass but they don't want to be seen voting against it, so they add some rider to the bill that is completely unpalatable to
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It's different in Canada. A majority government can force through any bill they want with only the courts to keep them in check (thank god for the Constitution act of 1982).
What this government has been doing is creating huge omnibus budget bills, like 800 pages with all kinds of horrible unpopular shit hiding in there, then they limit debate and invoke closure to pass it before the opposition can even finish reading it, little well bring up the negative parts in question period.
Re: What Bothers me Most (Score:2)
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Some laws have budgetary impact so are somewhat logically linked to a budget. Example: if the government decides to make university free it is an expense they must budget for. I can see that getting added in to the budget (after the idea has been kicked around for a while as an independent bill). Go through committees get a pretty polished version ready, tack it on to the budget and get the funds allocated for it at the same time. The copyright issue though: kind of silly. Shouldn't affect the budget much e
Seems like Politiculitus has spread everywhere (Score:1)
It changes your DNA and makes you believe you are helping everyone while your hand is sticking out waiting for your reward of wealth/power/fame...
Am I the only one who used to have faith that our elected leaders had our best interest at heart so we did not have to worry about what they were doing?
You think that is why we are here today?
And our future leaders are being groomed by todays leaders, how scary.
I want to vote for the guy who does not want to run for office. What is his name, Noneof Theabove?
Didn't he say "open for business"? (Score:4, Informative)
Once again (Score:3)
Harper proves that he thinks of himself as either a king or a dictator. No democratic process whatsoever.
Does it actually matter (Score:2)
Re:Does it actually matter (Score:4, Insightful)
It's far fetched, but possible to imagine a future as extreme as one where a combination of listening to a song in public, facial and other recognition. persistent public tracking and law enforcement linking to corporate databases might get you sanctioned for listening to a song you aren't paying a fee for.
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It's quite the wonderful dystopia we're barreling towards, isn't it?
I can already see the day someone says, "Dude what are you doing!? I can't afford to listen to that!"; and it won't be a joke.
There is no such thing as copyright (Score:1)
Until public domain is reinstated, there is no such thing as copyright.
Copyright was a social contract, when they suspended public domain, they reneged on their side of the contract. The contract is now null and void.
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Unfortunately, things like copyright affect more than just "big content industry". They affect free software and creative commons as well.
By declaring copyright null and void, you've also declared free software null and void as well because copyleft requires copyright.
Copyright by default makes
We need to quit being defeatists to solve this (Score:1)
It'll take a concerned group of activists a lot of energy to fix this problem. We don't just need to fix this one issue- but a slew of issues and we're up against financially powerful adversaries. It only seems like the government has overwhelming power because most people go along with it and the army is well-funded. However all it takes to change a society's position (including those in the military) is to poke at it. Agitate the government into doing something the people won't stand for and frame it in s
Fiat (Score:2)
70 years doesn't sound over-the-top (Score:2)
If this is 70 years, period, and not lifetime plus 70 years, then it may be tolerable, I think. If 50 years was the previous term of copyright, it would conceivably be possible for an artist to create a work when very young and outlive its copyright. This is even true for 70 years, but that seems like a better balance between public and private good.
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Who cares if an artist outlives their copyright? You can easily outlive your patents why is someone making a jingle more important than someone making an new gadget?
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it would conceivably be possible for an artist to create a work when very young and outlive its copyright.
And this would be bad because?
I don't get paid again for the work i did last week, but you need to keep getting paid for something you did at 15 when you are 85 years old? Seriously? WTF?
The purpose of copyright is to provide a limited monopoly to provide incentive to create. Are you SERIOUSLY arguing there are 15 year old artists and authors that are sitting there thinking... I was going to create a new work of art today, but then i realized i wouldn't still be getting royalties in my 80s and realized I co
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So make a big hit work that people will be listening or reading 60 years from now.
Well I would, but copyright ter,s aren't long enough to motivate me yet. I just don't have enough incentive. Maybe if they were just bit longer, more people like me would switch to working on art. /sarcasm ;)
Simply (Score:1)
Never buy music or video ever again, watch these termites disappear.
Ahh but you can't can you.
Welcome to Communism in the West (Score:3)
We've all seen and heard this kind of government behaviour before: In the communist countries.
In Eastern Germany there was a failed popular uprising in 1953. One of the most famous authors of that time, Bertold Brecht, coined a phrase following it that became immortal: If the government is not happy with the people anymore, wouldn't it be easier to dissolve the people and elect a new one?
He is spot on for today as well. It used to be the parliament would represent the people, and if we felt dissatisfied, we could dissolve it and elect a new one that represents us better.
But in almost all western countries, politicians have taken control of the political process that was intended to control them, and basically you don't have a chance to actually get a new government. You can choose different names, but they don't really mean different things. And more and more you hear politicians talk about their subjects (oh wait, isn't that the wrong way around? Yes, actually it is, but we're moving back to medieval mindsets!) in a way the reminds you of Brecht.
The extended period of time was missing (Score:1)
American Pressure did it. (Score:3)
I think the reason this was done was because of american diplomatic pressure. The US state dept has classified Canada as a 'pirate country' right up there with China, and other countries that make billions from counterfeit knock-offs just because we have different copyright laws. Further, the US has pushed hard, and successfully to have the the 70 yr term included in the new (quasi secret) Trans Pacific trade treaty. None of the other countries wanted that term but the US got it in there anyway. Canada finds it very difficult to do things the US is strongly opposed to; and once the Treaty was approved we would be stuck with 70 years anyhow. This is very much a case of 'Resistance is Futile' and the Borg is the US state department.
softcoder.