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we define "hate" pretty specifically.

It's too long to write out in full but basically you need to publicly call for or advocate violence against a minority group with intent of people listening to you and going through with it.

What I find funny is that the hordes of Obama-worshipers are now coming out trying to defend Flickr and everyone else involved in this blatant censorship, simply because the "speech" involved is critical of their messiah.

Of course, this is nothing new. Obama won his first two Illinois election campaigns through dirty tricks and baseless lawsuits that kept him from having opponents on the ballot. Left-wing groups have been screaming for years about how people should "not be allowed to say" things that they disagree with - and the usual canards (calling racism, sexism, godwinning the debate) pop up all the time.

If you never took a class on understanding what bias in reporting really means and how it is achieved, you don't understand it. I suggest reading up, starting with this excellent article which shows you many of the techniques used in the mass media today.

Educate yourselves and be informed. Just beware, if you actually do educate yourself, you may realize precisely how propagandized and brainwashed you have become over the years.

The biggest corporation in the world at worst can offer you take it or leave it.

Not true. They can shape public culture, like educating children into becoming better naggers.

Lets take AGW, since it's the topic of the day. Exxon is spreading disinformation, successfully stopping public action. There should really be a law against what they're doing, but it's kinda a 1st amendment thing. So exxon is pillaging the public good, and my children will suffer.

No, the CRTC defines the Canadian content broadcasting rules.

Which has *NOTHING* to do with the topic at hand.

If you'd do even the smallest amount of investigation, you'd see that the statements about "The Great White North" are provably false.

Here's a quote for you:

Evaluation of Canadian content in a television program is based on the following criteria: whether its producer and key creative personnel are Canadian; the amounts paid to Canadians for services provided to make the program; and amounts spent in Canada on lab processing.

On other words, the CRTC decides what is "Canadian" not by the script content, but by the nationality of the production (crew, writers, etc) and where it's filmed.

But of course, it's easier for you to maintain your "oh, the CRTC is so stupid" mentality if you don't actually know anything about what the rules actually are, right?

You read too much in this. Canadian law does not care about European copyrights.

Oh, really? Thanks for clearing that up for us.

Advertising for Tobacco is banned or regulated in many jurisdictions, including canada: http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/le gislation/canadian_law/federal/tobacco_act/tobacco _act.cfm Google has not banned searching for these terms, they've only decided that they will not support these services advertising on their site, as is completely their right to choose to do! For all of you whining about Google making moral choices, the question of providing documents allowing people to cheat isn't one of morals; its a question of ethics. The question is: "is it immoral for Google to actively support services attempting to help students cheat in exchange for money?". Its beyond my capacity to think up an ethical framework that wouldn't answer that question as firmly YES. This isn't a matter of free speech, this is a matter of companies who are facilitating and providing unethical services. Google has, and should, ensure it is not actively supporting these companies in their facilitation.

The console companies don't hate you; they don't care about you at all. The people they care about spend much more money on games than you do, or so this Google answer would suggest and link.

From one of the articles linked:

Heavy players reported owning more games (23 on average) and spending more on them ($500) than light players (17 games on average; $410). Extensive collections of +50 games were owned by a large number of heavy players (17 per cent) and a small proportion of light players (9 per cent).

23 on average?! holy fuck! The last system I owned that many games for was my NES, but it was my only game box for like 12 years! I only bought 3 games for my Xbox before modding it and putting all those same NES games on my hdd with an emulator, but we are most definately not the gamer majorty, nor the consumers Sony has it's greedy eye on.

Censorship by citizens, censorship by the government is bad enough, but this could lead to a disaster.

Frankly, the ISP shouldn't have to do anything unless ordered to. And, if in doubt, they should have contacted the authorities

Read this biased page for some commentary.

Ah yes, Canada, land of the free, where thought crimes are severely punished.

...a nice, tidy, cut-and-dry violation of the Canadian telecommunications regulations act.

They do regulate telecommunications companies and there was a recent kerfuffle over the fact that telcos offering VoIP were regulated while cable companies and pure internet companies are not. http://digitalhomecanada.com/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=531&Itemid=51

Cira regulates the ".ca" DNS registration. http://www.cira.ca/ but I don't think they regulate any other part of the internet in Canada.

SFAIK there isn't any internet regulations in Canada. Various laws like copyright and libel still apply but there's nothing specific covering the internet. Please correct my ignorance if I am mistaken.

"I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism?"

this (PDF) and this.

I believe using the N word is pretty stupid and bigoted, but it must be free... It MUST be. Plain and simple.

I agree, and, though I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that it is (and actually I shouldn't have used it in the example; it confuses the issue). I think the law is pretty straightforward. Don't tell people to kill everyone of an identifiable group ("Kill the Jews"), don't preach hate in public and cause a breach of the peace (a la Falwell*), and don't write hate propaganda and distribute it publically--unless it's relevant to public discussion and you believe it's true, or a good faith argument on a religious subject. Falwell can write "God Hates Fags" in brochures and distribute them all he wants, as he is simply an asshole arguing a religious subject and believes it to be true. I'm pretty sure one can even write "The white menace is destroying our society" or "Blacks cause all crime" if one thinks it's true.

*sexual preferences are not even included in the current law, so in theory he could--but would probably be charged with inciting a riot if one broke out.

I understand the "all speech must be free, no matter what" view however, and I respect it and am glad to have it. It's definitely a grey issue. But it's quite annoying to have people screaming "Canada hates freedom of speech!!11eleven" who can't even discuss it (and I mean the first guy, not you).

This I found on the 'net is actually a good short read on the subject and it seems to touch on and explain many of the concerns people have that are for or against the hate propaganda law. The quote at the bottom best represents my view. Though I wouldn't say it in such grandiose terms as "[hate propaganda] is an attack on democracy," I do believe that it has the purpose of actively denying identifiable groups their freedom.

And here is a much longer discussion on the law itself by a lawyer who talks about the law with respect to Internet forums and such (and with good discussion on its interpretation in general).

Not true. In fact it's not even statements of hatred that get on the wrong side of the law.

Section 13 of the Human Rights Act makes it illegal to make any statement "that are likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt..." (Emphasis Added)

So if you make a statement that is likely to expose someone to contempt you are guilty of a crime. The act does not require any sort of communication that says something to the effect of "You should hate this person because of X" in order for a crime to have been committed.

Can anyone explain to me why it's my right to violate copyright law while on the internet?

Obviously it's not your right to break laws, but it is your right, in certain countries, to make personal copies of copyrighted material, including music, without the consent of the copyright holder.

In Canada, for example, it is the right of every Canadian, under an explicit section of the Canadian Copyright Act, to make copies of other people's music for private use. It should also be noted that Canadians pay for that right, in part, with taxes on recordable media. This right applies only to audio recordings, mind you, not video.

Anyways, my point is to not assume that rights are the same around the world. Some places have it loose and some places are locked down tightly.

We don't have, nor should we expect, the right to pirate movies.

That's your perspective, and it makes sense for an American (I assume). But from where I sit (Canada), we do have the right (confirmed by courts and paid for by media levies) to make copies of other peoples music for private use. Canadian Copyright Act as it applies to music No right to do so with movies or other copyrighted materials. But still, this is close enough for me to keep watching how other people's rights online are changing or being enforced.

Now, while the broadcasters must fill 60% of the airtime with Canadian produced shows, that still leaves the remaining 40%. This is typically filled with US shows because they tend to be cheap, and get good ratings. This creates some interesting situations. For example, CTV (who produce Degrassi) license The Sopranos from HBO. When an application to the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) to allow cable and satellite providers to provide HBO to Canadians, it was rejected because it would put it in direct competition with CTV because of The Sopranos licensing. The refusal to carry CTV by US cable and satellite providers is likely the same, except for the reversed situation. Or maybe they're afraid of pissing off people who believe Ann Coulter's claims that Canadians hate Americans because we don't agree with every US policy (just to clarify, most of us don't like Bush, and we've NEVER agreed with ALL US policies).

To most Americans, the cancon laws seem quaint, and pretty silly. But, in a country that still measures the relative success of a musical band by if they managed to hit it off in the United States, these laws have probably helped more than they've hurt. Besides, we still consume lots of US movies, music and television programming (among other things).

I referred to it incorrectly in my original post... the CRIA is the Canadian Recording Industry Association, the Canadian RIAA equivalent.

We also have something colloquially called CANCON, short for Canadian Content. Our equivalent of the FCC mandates that media formats distribute a certain volume of Canadian created/produced content to compensate from the inevitable avalanche of American culture spilling over our boarders. It is somewhat effective, and has led to the rise of a domestic music and television industry. Unfortunately it has also contributed to the existence of some artifically supported recording companies and mediocre airwave content. I'm indifferent on the matter, as are many Canadians.

they had a couple of extra minutes to fill, and it had to be Canadian.

This is pure bullshit, and your insistence on the emphasized point is proof.

There is NO requirement for anything in a TV show to be "Canadian."

Whoever was producing SCTV (maybe Global? I don't remember) either needed the Canadian content

Look here for what constitutes Canadian Content.

Evaluation of Canadian content in a television program is based on the following criteria: whether its producer and key creative personnel are Canadian; the amounts paid to Canadians for services provided to make the program; and amounts spent in Canada on lab processing.

Notice anything absent from that list?

Oh yeah - that the nationalities of the characters , and whether they say "aboot", or end their sentences with "eh."

Besides the fact that it's only two minutes of the program (and therefore wouldn't be enough to change the decision anyway), the fact that it's shot in the same studio, using the same people as the rest of the show, means that the show would have been classified as "Canadian" even without the sketch.

Which shows that you are either lying, or the source you claim to be quoting was misinformed.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

In order to preserve and stimulate Canadian cultural achievement--art, music, performance--in the face of the American entertainment behemoth, the Canadian federal government in their infinite wisdom chose to enact a series of provisions back in the 1960s to regulate the amount of Canadian content on Canadian broadcast radio and television. So far, this sounds like Saudi Arabia--you must have Canadian content, not that dirty American stuff.

The difference lies in degree and application. On Canadian radio, 35% of content must be Canadian. On Canadian television stations, something like 60% (50% from 6pm to midnight) of content must be Canadian. Detailed rules are here; there's a pretty good summary here, too. The rest of the content can be American, European, Asian, Australian...whatever you wish. I can watch The Simpsons and The Wonderful World of Disney on our national broadcaster (the CBC).

There are also no moral or religious restrictions on the content--Canadian or otherwise--beyond basic obscenity statutes that often seem noticeably less restrictive than those in the United States.

And you know what? The system works. There are more and better-known Canadian recording artists and actors than ever before, likely in large part due to CanCon requirements. Sure, some of them would have been recognized without it, but as a program to encourage Canadian artists, this one (incredibly) has worked.

The notion that 'foreign stations are banned' is patently ridiculous. If my cable provider supplies HBO, or CNN, or TNN, or A&E, or the History Channel--they don't have to delete 60% of the material and replace it with CanCon. NBC, CBS, ABC--all appear on Canadian cable and satellite unaltered (unfortunately or otherwise) from the channels seen in American markets.

Censorship? I don't think so.

And "Cheers!" to John Ashcroft. How's your quaint little shut-down-the-adult-film-industry crusade going?

How long can Canada do this before they get pressured to follow in their oppressive neighbors' lead?

I'm sorry ... who's oppressive now?

Canadian broadcasting law includes Canadian content restrictions. Fully 35% of all music broadcast on Canadian radio must be CanCon, meaning at least two of the composer, performer, recording venue, and lyric writer must be Canadian. For television the fraction is 50%.

Sounds pretty benign, until you realize that it is therefore illegal for US stations to broacast in Canada, which includes satellite broadcasts. It is illegal to receive US-based satellite signals in Canada, and doing so could result in a visit from the RCMP and confiscation of your satellite equipment. All this for simply watching HBO, MTV, or even the Superbowl commercials (local stations rebroadcasting the Superbowl in Canada substitute their own ads).

In spite of this, Canadian television has yet to produce a domestic hit television series, and virtually all our recording artists flee to the states.

"Anyone know why the service hasn't been rolled out up here?"

Here is a good article: CanCon_rules

Apparently there is a set of quotas (~20%) for the amount of "Canadian made" channels that must be carried compared to "non-Canadian" channels.

Until this law is changed, Directv will never offer service to Canada.

That being said... the number of Canadians reported to be using black market equipment to receive Directv is around 400,000.

>Do you own a national broadcasting station? Wow..

Nope, however I do run a radio show; and the radio station generally could care less about CANCON, except when they're being inspected by the radio gestappo, at which point the rules are pasted all over the station to "remind" us.

Oh, and here's another winner: It's a college radio station (of course) -- guess who got a letter from SOCAN stating they haven't paid fees to play the station? Yes, the local student association. They have a live feed from the booth (not even going through the airwaves), are about 50 ft. away from the radio booth, and SOCAN wants to extract money from them. Totally insane.

>Not enforced. Now if you try to sell equipment to watch foreign sattelite that's a different matter.

Haven't checked in a while, have you? ;-) There's been a whole pile of major busts over the past couple of months.

How's this for help. After Bell bought out the supreme court they've been getting the RCMP to prosecute people left and right. There's probably a good 100 cases in wait right now. And besides, what makes one such a horrible person when they sell people the ability to watch foreign signals? I mean, Bell themselves did it all the time. You didn't think they incinerated all those grey-market receivers they got as trade-ins, did you? :)

>Hmmm... I missed that one. Care to provide a link?

I wish I could. Next time I'm in the radio booth I will write down the exact paragraph and name of the law for it, though. I just don't have it memorized, and it's hard to find online.

For reference, it was this law that got howard stern warned and (probably -- I don't listen to the station) removed from Q107.

>Ever visited a site that popped up a porn banner? If the subject is under 18, you can be charged with child-porn possession (even though you can legally have sex with them, the age of concent is 14).

I know, wacky, isn't it? How about this? I would have mentioned that but the maturity level of the trolls here usually makes it a bad idea.

>The first one only affects broadcasting and the second one is not enforced.

The second one is enforced, though. Only it is enforced selectively, which is probably worse than doing it 'round the clock, because it is uesd as a tool to limit people's speech rather than a tool to keep the airwaves "cleansed" of swearing.

As far as the first one only affecting broadcasting, I think older copies of my scanner frequency handbook (from Haruteq) explained that anyone using anything that emits radio waves is a broadcaster (like your cellphone) and has to follow most all of the CRTC's laws. At least listening in to FTA transmissions hasn't been outlawed yet (just wait for that to happen, though).

If ads were sent directly to my mail server, not through an open relay or some crap like that, I would consider it. I'd rather have an email instead of a flyer tucked into my newspaper. All advertizing wastes some of your time, and I don't think a total ban on all advertizing is justified, for ethical or economic reasons. Why is email special? For some reason, email advertizing tends toward harassment, unlike flyers from the supermarket and future shop. Dan has observed some spammers continue to send mail weeks after the site they promote was shut down. That's the sort of thing the wastes everyone's time and should be gotten rid of. If I got an ad via email from a normal company, and it was directly from them, not a hotmail account and a website on geocities or something, I wouldn't be angry with them, even if I had no desire at all to buy their stuff.

I said earlier that I don't think all advertizing should be banned. I don't spend a lot of time going around looking for new products that I might be interested in. If I could think of things to look for, I could invent stuff myself (and be in a position to advertize it!). I don't watch a lot of infomercials on TV (except for the phone-sex ads that feature hot babes in skimpy outfits :), so how else would I find out about new inventions that might actually be useful. The problem that needs to be solved is getting rid of the spam trash, not eliminating advertizing by spam entirely. Of course, things like spamassasin are tuned to detect the bad spam. Maybe all advertizing via email should be banned until we figure out how to get advertizers to show some restraint. That may seem oxymoronic, but apparently in Europe, there are restrictions on TV advertizing directed at children. Not everyone in the ad industry is evil, so we need to figure out how to keep the evil people from making a mess.

>It's 20% of your gasoline budget, it's 20% less smog on the road. And remember that hybrid cars won't necessarily be replacing just economy cars, they'll be replacing older gas guzzlers as well. Frankly, i think a 20% savings *IS* relavent in the big picture.

Yes, but the cars are relatively unproven, and having experienced a long-lasting Toyota Corolla before, I didn't want to take the risk for such a small margin.

>The best solution is to lobby for legislative action, and eventually, lawsuits.

Yeah, but the problem is for every action, there's an unequal and opposite reaction (witness Alberta, a province heavy on natural resource use, acting like a chicken with it's head cut off over the Kyoto protocol).

>Potato cannons and giant 40ft. tv towers, two of the things you mentioned, don't strike me as hallmarks of an "intelligent lifestyle". *I* live in a city and I have DSS (don't need threee dishes I have a quad lnb) and I used to have an 8ft C band dish on the roof. I'm assuming you need the 40ft mast for reception, which wouldn't even be an issue if you weren't out in the sticks.

Okay, okay. Here's the problem which you (fortunately) don't experience in the US. In Canada, broadcast media is censured for non-Canadian content. I'm a bit less xenophobic than your average Canadian, so a 40 ft. TV tower, C-band dish, and those 3 DSS dishes ('till they outlawed those) get me non-Canadian TV.

Not to mention you have no hope of playing in the fun-but-pointless DXing game without a TV tower of some sort.

Without the 40 ft. tower, I can get pretty much all the locals on rabbit ears. But I just don't enjoy that type of xenophobic education. I know it's hard to believe Canada censures like that, so here's a few ways it's done. Oh, and swearing is so illegal the CRTC can, will, and has kicked people off the air for it, and fined stations for it. I won't even go into how the CRTC is accused of stealing C-Band dishes from Canadians that want a choice, or (shudder) how they told a local Nazi (yes, I do hate him... but saying that should have put me in jail, no? Fun how the laws are just one way) his website will be dismantled and destroyed should he choose to operate it in Canada. (I will make a journal entry about this one day... the world really needs to know broadcasting in Canada is goverened by a gestappo).

As a techno radio DJ I can assure you it's true, it seriously pisses me off that I can't play good music since I have to spend my time looking for (in general, really poor and unavailable, but there are gems) "canadian" techno. My 2 hour show basically shrunk to a 1 hour show + 1 hour weekly Canadian repeat once the station told me to follow the rules "or else".

Besides, while you seem to think it isn't "intelligence", this extra learning has provided me with a handsome second income (until mid-way through this year) installing satellites for people. I guess it's on to modchips now... At least I can use my soldering skills again!

>Eventually, ALL metro area will look like LA. Is that what you want?

YES! Again, what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. Mennonites designed this town, causing main streets to meet up to three times. I'd go for straight roads _any_ day.

>What is so bad about urban living (we're not talking coffins or archologies here, we're talking about an apartment) that you'd rather DIE than live there?

Simple. Like I've said, I won't be force fed Canadian content. Not to mention I simply enjoy being able to do my hobbies.

What would you think if someone decided to take away everything you enjoy to save some trees and told you to live in a box? Would you feel that being forced in that manner is no different that being put in jail? There's a lot of people who'd rather die than be put in prison for the rest of their life.

>You live in Canada where urban crime is practically non-existent.

No, it's very much here. The difference is the "fear factor" is lower because you can trust no one will be pulling a gun on you (please, I don't need to talk about guns again......) so people walk about ignoring it. Which, to a certain degree is unfortunate, since it makes them easy targets. But, then again, minus the guns they usually don't die. Which, again, means the crime doesn't make the front page, yada yada yada.

Anyways, time for me to stop my "gassing" on this. ;-)

>It's 20% of your gasoline budget, it's 20% less smog on the road. And remember that hybrid cars won't necessarily be replacing just economy cars, they'll be replacing older gas guzzlers as well. Frankly, i think a 20% savings *IS* relavent in the big picture.

Yes, but the cars are relatively unproven, and having experienced a long-lasting Toyota Corolla before, I didn't want to take the risk for such a small margin.

>The best solution is to lobby for legislative action, and eventually, lawsuits.

Yeah, but the problem is for every action, there's an unequal and opposite reaction (witness Alberta, a province heavy on natural resource use, acting like a chicken with it's head cut off over the Kyoto protocol).

>Potato cannons and giant 40ft. tv towers, two of the things you mentioned, don't strike me as hallmarks of an "intelligent lifestyle". *I* live in a city and I have DSS (don't need threee dishes I have a quad lnb) and I used to have an 8ft C band dish on the roof. I'm assuming you need the 40ft mast for reception, which wouldn't even be an issue if you weren't out in the sticks.

Okay, okay. Here's the problem which you (fortunately) don't experience in the US. In Canada, broadcast media is censured for non-Canadian content. I'm a bit less xenophobic than your average Canadian, so a 40 ft. TV tower, C-band dish, and those 3 DSS dishes ('till they outlawed those) get me non-Canadian TV.

Not to mention you have no hope of playing in the fun-but-pointless DXing game without a TV tower of some sort.

Without the 40 ft. tower, I can get pretty much all the locals on rabbit ears. But I just don't enjoy that type of xenophobic education. I know it's hard to believe Canada censures like that, so here's a few ways it's done. Oh, and swearing is so illegal the CRTC can, will, and has kicked people off the air for it, and fined stations for it. I won't even go into how the CRTC is accused of stealing C-Band dishes from Canadians that want a choice, or (shudder) how they told a local Nazi (yes, I do hate him... but saying that should have put me in jail, no? Fun how the laws are just one way) his website will be dismantled and destroyed should he choose to operate it in Canada. (I will make a journal entry about this one day... the world really needs to know broadcasting in Canada is goverened by a gestappo).

As a techno radio DJ I can assure you it's true, it seriously pisses me off that I can't play good music since I have to spend my time looking for (in general, really poor and unavailable, but there are gems) "canadian" techno. My 2 hour show basically shrunk to a 1 hour show + 1 hour weekly Canadian repeat once the station told me to follow the rules "or else".

Besides, while you seem to think it isn't "intelligence", this extra learning has provided me with a handsome second income (until mid-way through this year) installing satellites for people. I guess it's on to modchips now... At least I can use my soldering skills again!

>Eventually, ALL metro area will look like LA. Is that what you want?

YES! Again, what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. Mennonites designed this town, causing main streets to meet up to three times. I'd go for straight roads _any_ day.

>What is so bad about urban living (we're not talking coffins or archologies here, we're talking about an apartment) that you'd rather DIE than live there?

Simple. Like I've said, I won't be force fed Canadian content. Not to mention I simply enjoy being able to do my hobbies.

What would you think if someone decided to take away everything you enjoy to save some trees and told you to live in a box? Would you feel that being forced in that manner is no different that being put in jail? There's a lot of people who'd rather die than be put in prison for the rest of their life.

>You live in Canada where urban crime is practically non-existent.

No, it's very much here. The difference is the "fear factor" is lower because you can trust no one will be pulling a gun on you (please, I don't need to talk about guns again......) so people walk about ignoring it. Which, to a certain degree is unfortunate, since it makes them easy targets. But, then again, minus the guns they usually don't die. Which, again, means the crime doesn't make the front page, yada yada yada.

Anyways, time for me to stop my "gassing" on this. ;-)

And nobody seems to be remembering the whole issue that set this off in the first place: hatespeech against the Blessed Mother.

They also see fewer than half the commercials they used to, compressing hourlong shows into 40 minutes

That's right. One-third of network television's airtime is dedicated to advertising. And they're wondering why people are getting fed-up with commercials. It seems to be a rising trend as well.

I used to tape the Tick on Fox back when it was first run. The earlier seasons had approximately one more minute of programming than later seasons.

Stop bombarding us already!

It seems that Shaw, my provider, Cogeco and even Rogers are sufficiently prepared for this event. Of course old Ted Roger is going to lose a bit of his shirt on this thing and they have been slow to react because of their interests in @home and partnerships with AT&T, and there are still lots of people questioning if Rogers can support all of their customers. Atleast 10% may be without service tonight.

Shaw made the conversion months ago, mostly due to poor service from Excite, especially with email.

But thank god for out socialist interfering government, because by 2004 they are promising us broadband in every pot. Now if everyone had a computer too. Even the CRTC is not going to interfere with the net at this point anyway. Beside it is because of there regulations that I pay less for my cable service, only $40 Cnd, that is like 5 US, and I get more bandwidth and better service.

We may not be able to support a useful military, but we all can get streaming video of the latest war to our home from cnn.

Excuse me while I download the latest Suse version.

It is 40 below and I don't give a ...

• • Concert attendance has been plumetting over the last 10 years...
  if you had tried to get concert tickets to any show Backstreet Boys, NSync, Britney, etc. played in the past 2 years, you would realize how sadly untrue this statement is

OK, ten seconds of seaching found this article that reckons that concert spending dropped in Canada between 1986 and 1996. Let me take a wild guess that we're going to fewer but bigger concerts rather than more but smaller ones.

Perhaps you could spend ten seconds coming up with more recent figures to back up your counter argument?

Yes, but the draconian laws of the CRTC DO hold sway in Canada, and according to the Radiocommunications act, it is illegal to decode any signal in Canada not authorized by the CRTC

(see this link for more info)

From the Radiocommunications Act here section 9(c),
"(c) No person shall decode an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed otherwise than under and in accordance with an authorization from the lawful distributor of the signal or feed"

Incorrect.

It is illegal in Canada to use equipment to decode programming distributed by anyone other than dealers authorised by the CRTC.

DirecTV broadcasts are not authorized for distribution within Canada, and as such cannot be legally decoded. (see this link for more info)

From the Radiocommunications Act found here:
Section 9
"(c) No person shall decode an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted network feed otherwise than under and in accordance with an authorization from the lawful distributor of the signal or feed"

I know a number of fellow Canadians who are misinformed on this point and gloat about how they can receive cheap DirecTV broadcasts without breaking the law. Unfortunately, you really can't. Due to the archaic and Orwellian nature of the CRTC, there is NO way to legally receive DirectTV in Canada.

Since the purpose of the laws appears to be to protect the interests of Canadians...

Protect which Canadians?

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission protects the Canadian cable companies and satellite TV companies from competition by U.S. satellite TV companies. CRTC regulations prevent the Canadian public from seeing many U.S. channels like HBO that are only available from DirecTV.

The debate is over who will deliver U.S. television shows to Canadian homes. Right now the law favors Canadian corporations. Perversely, this approach creates a market for pirate decoders of DirecTV, which the law was designed to exclude.

"The notion that words and images and ideas can cause harm to young minds has become such an article of faith that it's hard not to feel a sense of futility when you point out that there is not a shred, not an iota, not an atom of proof that exposure to images or descriptions of sex and violence does children any harm..."

"The notion that words and images and ideas can cause harm to young minds has become such an article of faith that it's hard not to feel a sense of futility when you point out that there is not a shred, not an iota, not an atom of proof that exposure to images or descriptions of sex and violence does children any harm..."

China's command economy has produced a stange mix of old and new and this does not bode well for increasing computer usage. They seem to have recovered from Mao's great step forward that killed 40 million people. Now peasants seem free to farm as they have for centuries, with oxen and hand, but still have to import some food. China Agriculture Profile . It is bizare that a nation as good at exporting all maner of manufactured goods has not been able to modernize it's agricultural sector, and the country as a whole is still very poor. Subsistance agriculturist don't make good computer users, they have other things to worry about.

I would not trust a Chineese Binary. If they are getting rid of W2K, it is so they keep control to themselves. As others have pointed out here before, disk copies of WinDoze does not make this a cost issue. >I'm affraid that Red Flag will be full of trojan horses and other control enhancements. Communist societies are deathly afraid of technology that can be used to tell the truth. Printing presses were supressed in the Soviet Union, while copy machines and faxes became indespensible tools in the west. China is presently fighting a desperate battle against a religious cult that had the audacity to stage a few sit down protests. Can we really expect free software in a place like that?

Still, who knows what effect those 7.1 million users might have given better tools? Good luck to you!

If you don't like my spelling, please post a corrected version. Thanks, I'm too lazy.