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The Canadian government is planning on changing copyright law to take away many of our rights (luckily, the current minority government probably won't manage to do this).

This petition "is a way of letting Parliament know that you want to be considered and that you don't want your rights to be abraded every time the music industry's profits slip a little." Please sign it if you're Canadian and agree with it.

The USA can suck my balls if they want us to adopt the DMCA. ... The only way to keep things the way they are is to voice to those in charge that this is the way you like it!

Yup, I'm pretty sure this is the way the majority of Canadians feel on this issue. And RIGHT NOW would be really good time to express those feelings!

Because, the Copyright Act is up for ammendment.

And the government is about to fall.

Because of the scandal involving kickbacks to the Liberal party several years back, the facts of which are just coming out, the Conservative party and the Bloc Quebecois (the separatist party) are at this moment planning to team up to defeat the current Liberal government and force another election, even though there was one just about a year ago.

There are two images that come to mind when I think about these parties:

one, prime minister Brian Mulroney (Conservative), singing songs with his good friend Ronald Reagan, and signing away many of Canada's rights as a sovereign nation under the first controversial Free Trade agreement.

two, prime minister Jean Chretien (Liberal) politely but firmly declining to help George Bush invade Iraq, despite immense pressure. I know this might be a sore spot with some Americans, but, it represented the will of the people, most of whom were not convinced about the existence of WMD and so on.

So which of these parties do I trust to have a more fair approach to the new copyright act, without caving in to U.S. pressure? The Liberals have already announced their plans, and although it's not perfect, it's far far better than the DMCA.

But now I'm afraid this version will be thrown away, and the Conservatives will come up with their own DMCA-friendly act instead.

So, Canadians, write your MPs, and sign the petition:

http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/

Here is an article describing the proposed changes to Canadian copyright law, as well as the background -- industry lobby from the USA. This article is pulled from the Digital Copyright Canada web site which is trying to organize citizens feedback to politicians, with respect to the DMCA in Canada.

Uploading music that you don't have permission to upload is NOT legal in Canada. For instance, see Russell McOrmond's post to pcmag. Russell is super active trying to make Canadian copyright law sane, for instance, he runs Digital Copyright Canada, who recently had their Petition for Users' Rights submitted to parliament.

Uploading music that you don't have permission to upload is NOT legal in Canada. For instance, see Russell McOrmond's post to pcmag. Russell is super active trying to make Canadian copyright law sane, for instance, he runs Digital Copyright Canada, who recently had their Petition for Users' Rights submitted to parliament.

Since it's on-topic, I'll repost a link from a recent Slashdot story about the petition for User's Rights:

http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/

Actually, nearly 300 names on the NEXT batch of petitions that are about to be presented in the House WERE collected by, not quite a child, but a 15 year old, namely, my daughter. As part of her high school civics course, she got involved with Digital Copyright Canada and circulated the petition, singly collecting the most signatures of anyone in the campaign.

At a recent conference on copyright at University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, she buttonholed the former chair of the standing committee, Sarmite Bulte, and put the hard questions to her about ISP notice and takedown (now notice and notice), the extra levy to educational institutions, and the threat to innovation.

So the issue is not "please think of the children," but rather, "Please, the children are thinking!"

Now I feel even better that I voted for this guy last election day. I also signed the petition and if you live in Canada I urge you to do the same.

I would prefer the Music Download Service Providers of America that are going to by definition be far less intrusive on our lives than the Digital Rights Management Providers of America. At least with the music industry I can just opt-out and not have it affect any of my life.

There is a lot of misguided support for DRM in the music industry based on their entire lack of knowledge of how DRM works. DRM is a far greater threat to musicians AND their labels (major or otherwise) than any amount of copyright infringement.

I, Copyright Cop! - Who controls the digital security guards?

Canada? Not for long.

Is this the Canadian government deliberately being contrary?

INSTEAD, what I think will happen is that the US will force Canada to sign the WIPO

INSTEAD, what I think will happen is that the US will force Canada to sign the WIPO

It is within your power to make the sharing of files - any file - completely legal

Anyone wanting to learn what is happening in Canada in this area of law should go to the Digital Copyright Canada forum. There are a number of misconceptions in the comments to this SlashDot article, including not recognizing just how close we are to getting US-DMCA-style legislation in Canada.

Please sign our *PAPER* petition, and coordinate with us to contact your MP and other policy makers.

Digital Copyright Canada has a Petition for Users' Rights as well as BLOGS, mailing lists, and other materials related to this area of law in Canada.

Signing a web petition will not change the views of parliamentarians, but the paper petition we are organizing will be noticed. Please print it out, sign it, and mail it in to us. You may want to bring this to parliamentarians and offer to discuss it with them.

Different method of contact influence politicians differently. Email is the lest, because it is the easiest. Moving upward is a FAX, a SNAIL mail letter, a phone call, and then a fact-to-face meeting. The DCC site has per-riding discussion areas you can use to organize groups in your riding to meet with an MP.

Digital Copyright Canada has a Petition for Users' Rights as well as BLOGS, mailing lists, and other materials related to this area of law in Canada.

Signing a web petition will not change the views of parliamentarians, but the paper petition we are organizing will be noticed. Please print it out, sign it, and mail it in to us. You may want to bring this to parliamentarians and offer to discuss it with them.

Different method of contact influence politicians differently. Email is the lest, because it is the easiest. Moving upward is a FAX, a SNAIL mail letter, a phone call, and then a fact-to-face meeting. The DCC site has per-riding discussion areas you can use to organize groups in your riding to meet with an MP.

Digital Copyright Canada has a Petition for Users' Rights as well as BLOGS, mailing lists, and other materials related to this area of law in Canada.

Signing a web petition will not change the views of parliamentarians, but the paper petition we are organizing will be noticed. Please print it out, sign it, and mail it in to us. You may want to bring this to parliamentarians and offer to discuss it with them.

Different method of contact influence politicians differently. Email is the lest, because it is the easiest. Moving upward is a FAX, a SNAIL mail letter, a phone call, and then a fact-to-face meeting. The DCC site has per-riding discussion areas you can use to organize groups in your riding to meet with an MP.

Glad I live in Canada and not some oppressed nation

it's a good thing I am Canadian, we don't have to deal with the various **AAs

The only way that Canada will not get a DMCA, something pushed for by the all-party Heritage Committee (the committee reviewing the copyright act), is if Canadians speak clearly and loudly against it. The group to work with to do that currently is the Digital Copyright Canada forum.

The only way that Canada will not get a DMCA, something pushed for by the all-party Heritage Committee (the committee reviewing the copyright act), is if Canadians speak clearly and loudly against it. The group to work with to do that currently is the Digital Copyright Canada forum.

There has been much hype about a recent court case involving Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), with the recording industry invalidly claiming there is a hole in the copyright act. If you read the decision by the Honourable Mr. Justice von Finkenstein you will note that there is no hole in the copyright act, but if there is one it is the private copying regime which CRIA asked for in the first place.

If CRIA had offered any evidence of unauthorized music uploading, a basic requirement in a music copyright case in Canada, then they would likely have won the case. The recording industry made "downloading" legal, they don't need a "making available" right (which the industry would likely abuse to stop musicians from distributing their own work, creating additional layers of authorization requirements), and they didn't provide evidence of "uploading". The failure of CRIA in this case is entirely the fault of CRIA, and not a hole in the copyright act.

There has been much hype about a recent court case involving Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), with the recording industry invalidly claiming there is a hole in the copyright act. If you read the decision by the Honourable Mr. Justice von Finkenstein you will note that there is no hole in the copyright act, but if there is one it is the private copying regime which CRIA asked for in the first place.

If CRIA had offered any evidence of unauthorized music uploading, a basic requirement in a music copyright case in Canada, then they would likely have won the case. The recording industry made "downloading" legal, they don't need a "making available" right (which the industry would likely abuse to stop musicians from distributing their own work, creating additional layers of authorization requirements), and they didn't provide evidence of "uploading". The failure of CRIA in this case is entirely the fault of CRIA, and not a hole in the copyright act.

Rather than paying a mandatory levy on blank media, those customers that wish simplified access to and the ability to "share" music outside of their home with their friends should (along with their friends) subscribe to appropriate collectives and pay a yearly fee to do so. This would, for instance, authorize non-commercial P2P distribution of the most standards compliant version of a file (standard file formats like MPEG/MP3, OGG, etc, rather than non-standard DRM files). This proposal was also promoted by EFF in the USA, and Canada has a head-start in that many of the required collectives are already formed if only they modernized their thinking.

The collectives have not yet offered this obvious option. They have gone to great lengths to avoid taking the obvious easy route, including trying to create a mandatory levy on ISPs which the Supreme Court recently rejected.

While the recording industry continues to claim that Internet users are infringing their rights it should be remembered that the ball has always been in their court to remedy the problem. No legislative changes are required for them to move forward with modern business models, and end the "cold war" they started with music fans.

I believe that any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen and not a third party. I believe that being in control of these tools for lawful purposes is part of the ownership rights associated with these tools, and consider the revoking of this control to be a form of theft.

I did a report for Industry Canada on A Review of Software Patent Issues.

There are also discussions of patents on the Digital Copyright Canada forum.

If CRIA had offered any evidence of unauthorized music uploading, a basic requirement in a music copyright case in Canada, then they would likely have won the case. The recording industry made "downloading" legal, they don't need a "making available" right (which the industry would likely abuse to stop musicians from distributing their own work, creating additional layers of authorization requirements), and they didn't provide evidence of "uploading". The failure of CRIA in this case is entirely the fault of CRIA, and not a hole in the copyright act.

If CRIA had offered any evidence of unauthorized music uploading, a basic requirement in a music copyright case in Canada, then they would likely have won the case. The recording industry made "downloading" legal, they don't need a "making available" right (which the industry would likely abuse to stop musicians from distributing their own work, creating additional layers of authorization requirements), and they didn't provide evidence of "uploading". The failure of CRIA in this case is entirely the fault of CRIA, and not a hole in the copyright act.

If you are writing letters to MPs about digital copyright reform, please join the Digital Copyright Canada forum so that we can pool resources. If we all work together, we can ensure that Canadian policy on this is sane.

It is you that needs to read the NDP reply to the questions. The platform did not speak about this issue at all, but their reply did directly.

The NDP and the Bloc gave strong support for WIPO ratification and importing the USA DMCA. The Liberals did not offer that support, the Greens opposed it, and the Conservatives offered no reply at all.

If you are an NDP supporter than read their reply, and start to talk to fellow party members to ensure they get educated on this. Currently the NDP look anti-technology, anti-Internet.

This ruling is good news (and in line with the Supreme Court's earlier rulings protecting individual privacy). But the fight is not over, trust me. The Heritage Committee, in their report just last month, outlined their plans for ratifying WIPO and wants to change the laws governing ISP responsibility.

Now parliament is out, an election was just held, and the same Liberal party is back in power (minority) with a loose coalition with the NDP party -- who quite strongly supports ratifying WIPO. So I fear that we're going to see Canadian government ratify WIPO, bringing in DMCA-like legislation into Canada. Check out the Digital Copyright Canada forums and get involved if these privacy rights concern you. There is also a national petition for user's rights that you can sign if you are concerned about all these 'special laws' for digital media. Remember that we live in a digital world, but the general public does not realize this. Placing strange restrictions on digital information is just hurting ourselves, and our own industries.

This ruling is good news (and in line with the Supreme Court's earlier rulings protecting individual privacy). But the fight is not over, trust me. The Heritage Committee, in their report just last month, outlined their plans for ratifying WIPO and wants to change the laws governing ISP responsibility.

Now parliament is out, an election was just held, and the same Liberal party is back in power (minority) with a loose coalition with the NDP party -- who quite strongly supports ratifying WIPO. So I fear that we're going to see Canadian government ratify WIPO, bringing in DMCA-like legislation into Canada. Check out the Digital Copyright Canada forums and get involved if these privacy rights concern you. There is also a national petition for user's rights that you can sign if you are concerned about all these 'special laws' for digital media. Remember that we live in a digital world, but the general public does not realize this. Placing strange restrictions on digital information is just hurting ourselves, and our own industries.

I do not share this interpretation of Sarmite Bulte's words.

I was subjected to a speech from her at the Rethinking Copyright 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 to one-to-many broadcast media of the past.

Since you seem to have been able to reach her, try again with a few additional questions:

• Why did she not respond to the questions from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC)? If she wanted to prove her knowledge on technology law matters, it would seem extremely important for her to respond to the questions from a technology law clinic made up of law professors and law students specialized on technology
• Is she aware of commons-based peer production and peer distributions such as those discussed around Creative Commons and Free/Libre and Open Source Software?
• Has she read any of US law professor Lawrence Lessig's books on this topic, including and especially the most recent "Free Culture". Where does she agree and disagree with his understanding of technology law issues, given her recommendations reflect a very different belief system around technology law.
• Whether elected or not, will she be willing to talk to representatives of CIPPIC and participants in the Digital Copyright Canada forum to find out why we are so concerned? Why has she thus far seemed uninterested in our input?

Be careful in what you are interpreting Sarmite to have said. She is not a technology law or technology aware person. She is not someone who would recognize that legal protection for DRM (TPM/RMI combination) is in fact a considerable regulation of technology.

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 on the new to protect the old".

Ask her why after those 700 submissions, 650 which were generated by the Canada-DMCA-Opponents community (now http://digital-copyright.ca ), why none of us were invited to speak before the committee? I was invited by Industry committee to speak on a different bill, I believe partly because Heritage committee was ignoring our community after many submissions and many offers to speak with individual members.

I live and work in Ottawa, and have offered to do one-on-one or committee-wide sessions. The offers still stand, and hopefully the new Heritage committee will take me up on that offer.

BTW: If this is an area of policy you are interested in, please join the Digital Copyright Canada forum and help us move this policy/education forward.

Be careful in what you are interpreting Sarmite to have said. She is not a technology law or technology aware person. She is not someone who would recognize that legal protection for DRM (TPM/RMI combination) is in fact a considerable regulation of technology.

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 on the new to protect the old".

Ask her why after those 700 submissions, 650 which were generated by the Canada-DMCA-Opponents community (now http://digital-copyright.ca ), why none of us were invited to speak before the committee? I was invited by Industry committee to speak on a different bill, I believe partly because Heritage committee was ignoring our community after many submissions and many offers to speak with individual members.

I live and work in Ottawa, and have offered to do one-on-one or committee-wide sessions. The offers still stand, and hopefully the new Heritage committee will take me up on that offer.

BTW: If this is an area of policy you are interested in, please join the Digital Copyright Canada forum and help us move this policy/education forward.

You shouldn't be. The Liberals were making noises about changing the copyright law to cater to the record industry. Go here for more info, as well as stuff like petitions. As far as I know none of the parties has stated their position on changes to the copyright law, but now even though I don't want the "Conservatives" running the country, I'm not sure I want the Liberals either.

Unfortunately that doesn't mean that my vote goes to the NDP either, since their stance on the issue is uncomfortably vague. Back to the point: Don't be so carefree. It might not be so legal for us forever.

You may also want to use the NDP topic area on the Digital Copyright Canada forum to work together with other people from that party.

There are those who say that this election is about health care, taxes, education and other such priorities. The policy areas we wish to discuss on http://digital-copyright.ca such as Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks (PCTs) touch very deeply on these areas important to Canadians. You can't talk about health care without talking about pharmaceutical patents and research grants, and our alternative collaborative methods of innovation. You can't talk about taxes without talking about levies being applied to various media (such as blank CDs, and possibly the Internet itself in the future) being used to tax new creativity to fund the legacy content industries. You can't talk about education without talking about the worldwide collaborative creation of educational materials, and the importance of the royalty-free Internet to students able to research topics to a depth previously not possible.

We look forward to commentary on the NDP and the Bloc Québécois (Google Translation).

Missing at this point from the major parties is the reply from the Conservative party.

We look forward to commentary on the NDP and the Bloc Québécois (Google Translation).

Missing at this point from the major parties is the reply from the Conservative party.

We look forward to commentary on the NDP and the Bloc Québécois (Google Translation).

Missing at this point from the major parties is the reply from the Conservative party.

I think we should be proud that we are causing them to notice us during the election. We need to push harder, but we have a good start.

In the 2001 consultations we easily generated 650 of the 700 responses received. I'm hoping to get an even larger number of people involved during the election asking questions during all candidates debates and so-on.

We also have a petition for users rights that we will be presenting to the new parliament. Currently we have between 100 and 200 signatures, and I really want that to be over a 1000! If 650 people will write a letter to government bureaucrats to signify they don't want a DMCA in Canada, we should be able to get over 1000 people telling parliament directly!

Note: The recording industry claims that they asked for the levy as a stop-gap before they got Legal protection for DRM. They also more recently claimed that they lost a court case (BMG CANADA INC. vs. John and Jane doe) claiming that there is a "hole in the copyright act". There is no hole in the copyright act, unless you count the blank media levy and their entire lack of evidence of copyright infringement.

See: The Canadian File-sharing Legal Information Network (CanFLI) for more information on that case.

I don't see the point of the statistic. So what if people are downloading MP3's.

First, because of the Private Copying regime it is legal in Canada -- regardless of the source of the music -- bought and paid for by the levy all us Canadians pay on blank media.

Second, many musicians actually AUTHORIZE the distribution of their music by P2P and other systems. I went to a CD launch in Toronto last month for a CD that is released under a Creative Commons license.

The presumption that these 60% of Canadian secondary students are doing something illegal is completely false.

Note: IANAL, but I hang around with many and go to conferences like Rethinking Copyright to debate these issues with lawyers and fellow copyright reformers in Canada.

I am the webmaster of Digital Copyright Canada and have been working closely with the CIPPIC and PIAC before and during this campaign.

Helping to run this information campaign has been an eye opener for me. I had thought that each of the parties were similar as far as having local candidates in each constituency able to run their own local campaigns.

The centralization is quite high: A number of NDP and Liberals have responded saying that party headquarters will be answering, with some NDP candidates indicating that it was against NDP policy for candidates to answer questionnaires.

As I wrote in the article " Candidates blindly endorsing party position", this is not an area of policy where there is consensus in any of the parties. For this reason the responses of candidates are more important than party responses, and yet some of the centralizing parties like the NDP and the Liberals discourage candidate responses.

Do you want a candidate who will be able to be informed and represent your views, or only one that will tow the party line?

I am the webmaster of Digital Copyright Canada and have been working closely with the CIPPIC and PIAC before and during this campaign.

Helping to run this information campaign has been an eye opener for me. I had thought that each of the parties were similar as far as having local candidates in each constituency able to run their own local campaigns.

The centralization is quite high: A number of NDP and Liberals have responded saying that party headquarters will be answering, with some NDP candidates indicating that it was against NDP policy for candidates to answer questionnaires.

As I wrote in the article " Candidates blindly endorsing party position", this is not an area of policy where there is consensus in any of the parties. For this reason the responses of candidates are more important than party responses, and yet some of the centralizing parties like the NDP and the Liberals discourage candidate responses.

Do you want a candidate who will be able to be informed and represent your views, or only one that will tow the party line?

It might be useful for you to let other people in the riding know about what the Heritage Minister and Heritage committee was working on. We have per-riding discussion forums on the Digital Copyright Canada site specifically to help people organize in their area.

First they pat themselves on the back for the tax on CDs which mean that all the FLOSS CDs we have had a tax that went to the major record labels. Next they want to tax educational institutions for their use of the royalty-free Internet (Yes, students reading SlashDot will have money going to the book publishers). Don't think for a moment that before too long they will put a tax on computers and the Internet itself in order to give handouts to CAAST (Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft) members like Microsoft.

Conservative Party

Liberal Party

Green Party

So far the Bloc and the NDP have not had the party or any candidates reply, but given there is at least one reply for each of the other 3 major parties.

With the Green Party they are running a full slate of 308 candidates and is a very decentralized party. Given this it should be expected that they would have sent in the most replies. I was surprised to see the Conservative candidate reply before the Conservative party headquarters had sent out its reply.

The Liberals are acting predictably with a number of candidates just sending in copies of the reply the executive director of the party sent in.

The Bloc tends to not answer questions from outside of Quebec (they only run candidates in Quebec). Of the major parties it is the NDP that has surprised me by not sending in any replies yet.

Conservative Party

Liberal Party

Green Party

So far the Bloc and the NDP have not had the party or any candidates reply, but given there is at least one reply for each of the other 3 major parties.

With the Green Party they are running a full slate of 308 candidates and is a very decentralized party. Given this it should be expected that they would have sent in the most replies. I was surprised to see the Conservative candidate reply before the Conservative party headquarters had sent out its reply.

The Liberals are acting predictably with a number of candidates just sending in copies of the reply the executive director of the party sent in.

The Bloc tends to not answer questions from outside of Quebec (they only run candidates in Quebec). Of the major parties it is the NDP that has surprised me by not sending in any replies yet.

Conservative Party

Liberal Party

Green Party

So far the Bloc and the NDP have not had the party or any candidates reply, but given there is at least one reply for each of the other 3 major parties.

With the Green Party they are running a full slate of 308 candidates and is a very decentralized party. Given this it should be expected that they would have sent in the most replies. I was surprised to see the Conservative candidate reply before the Conservative party headquarters had sent out its reply.

The Liberals are acting predictably with a number of candidates just sending in copies of the reply the executive director of the party sent in.

The Bloc tends to not answer questions from outside of Quebec (they only run candidates in Quebec). Of the major parties it is the NDP that has surprised me by not sending in any replies yet.