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CDN Supreme Court Upholds 'Net Free Speech
Gryphon writes: "The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a citizen has the right to express dissatifaction with the products or services of a company; in this case, an insurance company. This raises some interesting questions: does this extend to posting benchmarks of computer applications? Dissatisfaction with application security holes? Strike one for the little guy in Canada -- and maybe move here if you want to avoid the DMCA? ;)"
I expressed my displeasure with Bellsouth on a message board (from home) that they were selling email addresses (first day I had like 4 or 5 spam messags on an almost-random username) and since I worked for them, they fired me. No trade-secrets or anything given away. I just explained my situation, and bam.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
The DCMA does not directly prevent criticism, but it makes the shrink-wrapped licenses that gag you enforceable. So it's a difference of no significance.
As for your First Amendment argument - your Constitutional protections apply <b>only</b> when dealing with the government. Pre-civil war, only when dealing with the Federal government, although it's now interpreted as applying to state and local governments and even organizations that either operate as a government (e.g., your HOA) or a business acting on behalf of a government (e.g., a private jail holding state prisonsers).
It's completely legal for a company to require you to submit anything that refers to their product's functionality prior to publication. It even has a legitimate purpose - to make sure you don't slam the product because of an easily fixed misconfiguration, etc., - although most of us still hate these clauses because of the potential for abuse.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I hope america has freedom of speech like this one day!
Two years ago, I would never have even imagined that businesses would be able to silence critics like they are today......remember the stories on television depicting the guy with the "lemon" car and the sign on it out in front of the dealership where he bought it? How about a good old fashoned picket line? And don't forget the ever popular "face-to-face" method of spreading complaints against a company! The way things are going now, Procter and Gamble will be able to read everyone's e-mail and sue those who disstribute the myth about the moon and stars in their logo.....Ford will be allowed to moderate/censor discussion groups online that discuss "weak points" in any Ford's design. Cisco will simply make routers that also scan for their name and destroy those packets. All in the protection of the glorious "Intellectual Property."
All businesses now seem to think that the DMCA, copyright and other "PRO-BUSINESS" laws give them the legal sanction to silence all dissent, squash any consumer that even uses the name "Ford" in their complaint. Are they implying that I may only use the word "Ford" in public, out loud, if I'm saying something positive about the company. Are they also implying that I would somehow be breaking copyright law by using the word "Ford" and attaching a complaint to the end of the sentence? I'm totally fed up with their "Intellectual Property" and the whatnot.....and it's only getting worse. I just read where Disney is back in Washington with their old buddy Sen. Hollings, moving forward on built-in copyright protection again. I'm absolutely discusted!
I will respect their "IP" when they respect mine! That means no trading of my "consumer profile" without my expressed written consent (click through agreements don't count!). That means NO SPAM OR TELEMARKETERS....and no trading of my telephone number (since that's a semi-encrypted means of identifying and potentially locating me). That also means no tracking my habits without clearly publishing that fact BEFORE installation of the offending program....Microsoft, are you listening? WMA tracking?....tell people FIRST! Get it?
It seems like business has made a major assault in the last month too, I've just seen so many instances of the DMCA being used recently. For instance Nintendo yesterday, Microsoft with the X-box and Sony with the Aibo. Not a day goes by that somebody isn't getting sued by the entertainment industry, perhaps that's why the Supreme Court as expressed interest in the Sonny Bono copyright extension act.
I'm starting a 3 month entertainment "fast"....nothing but Slashdot, free TV and NPR......no purchases of music or movies or video games of any kind.....I encourage all readers to also boycott the entertainment industry as well, burn as much as you want, but don't by a single thing.....perhaps a 3 month dip in sales will get their attention.
Don't just stand there and take it....fight back!
Oh,yeah. To avoid the DCMA I'm going to move to a country with rules like those about "Canadian Content," which govern what I can see and hear.
The health system is bankrupt
You've been listening to the money-backed propaganda of HMOs who have a ton to lose if their way of doing business changes. I've lived in the US for 3 years, and I lived in Canada before that. The quality of my health care has not changed, other than it's a much bigger PAIN IN THE ASS to get the care down here, and I'm paying more out-of-pocket health expenses. And don't get me started on the assholes at my wife's HMO...
One of those was mine:
Subject: CPCDI concern
Hello,
I am a Canadian citizen residing in Montreal, QC. I recently learned of your request for comments regarding the implementation of a Canadian version of the controversial American DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), through provisions of the Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues (CPCDI). I would like to voice my concern.
To anyone who has studied the history of the United States - from the inception of an independent democracy to the frequent creation and repeal of unjust law - the DMCA appears to be a gross perversion of both copyright law (practically, and in spirit) and the American constitution.
It seeks to impose the criminal status on individuals who would otherwise be practicing constitutionally protected freedoms, while having a questionable effect, if any, on those who are already criminals - those who wilfully violate copyright law. It allows for the criminalization of the act of making fair use (media excerpts, backup copies, transfers of ownership, research for the purpose of publishing, use under unsupported or unapproved digital devices, and others) of copyrighted material, because these fair uses can be controlled through the use of encryption.
Where formerly these would have been civil issues (contract violation), they now become criminal issues.
This, as we have seen recently in the United States, has already begun to have a chilling effect on scientific research (see the cases regarding Dmitry Sklyrov, Dr. Felten, and Jon Johansen - all of whom were enguaged in previously protected activities for the good of the public). Of course, the frightening commonality in each of these cases is that the requests for prosecution were perpetrated by large media centric, for-profit corporations.
At the end of the day, many criminal acts can be prevented through proactive prosection, criminalization of related activity, and errosion of fundamental privacy.
But as a citizen of Canada, I oppose these excessive measures. To me, living in a free country means being given the opportunity to use tools for good or bad purposes. It is the trust instilled by the Canadian government and the Canadian people which makes this country great.
I urge the Canadian government to maintain the fair, delicate balance between copyright holders and individuals, and to remove the overbroad, anti-consumer provisions of CPDCI.
Sincerely,
I'm crossing my fingers. :)
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I was in Canada at the time the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was (finally) passed. The Notwithstanding Clause was a terrible disappointment to every non-politician I knew.
It was a compromise in the truest definition of the word. In other words, it compromised the rest of the document, rendering it mutable at the whim of any governmental body that wanted to pass a law that violated the provisions therein.
For those that don't know, the Canadian Federal Government, the Provincial, Territorial and the Municipal Governments can all make laws in contravention to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. All they need to do is start the law with the wording, "Notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms..." and they can trample any provision within. The only requirement is that the law in question be reviewed and approved once every five years by the legislature that passed it.
Right after it was passed, the provision was used by the Quebec Provincial Government. I believe it was bill 106 that prohibited businesses in Quebec from using English on their signs on the outside of their buildings, or that faced outward such as a sign in the window.
That's right... Quebec outlawed one of the two official languages of Canada, notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, of course. And there wasn't a damned thing anyone could do in the judicial challenge and review process, because the Notwithstanding Clause was built right into the Charter itself and had constitutional authority.
I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that whole debacle, even years later.
This isn't exactly about Canada and the DMCA, but is slightly related, having to do with corporate repression and Canada. When exactly is the government of Québec going to sue most of Hollywood for making it illegal for them to play French movies (region 2) in Québec (region 1)? This has got to really piss off the Canadians who speak French; I know it would me (Hmm, it might still, I might take up French again and start buying DVD movies..)
If the WTO allows corporations to sue governements (I think I remember some reference to an environmental suit brought against the Mexican gov't), then shouldn't the reverse be true? (Of course, that's assuming the world is just and fair, which it most decidedly is not)
Come to think of it, could the EU (which is already investigating US media companies for price-fixing, anti-trust, and maybe other things), and the Australians (who seem to be concerned with DVD pricing and other things) AND Québec all band together to lauch a multinational assault on the media companies? (That would be fun to watch: real nation-states duking it out against corporate nation-states.)