Slashdot Mirror
Bad News From Canada On NetTV And Media Levies
twilight30 writes "Canadian regulators ruled Friday that it is illegal to put broadcast TV signals onto the Internet without permission, dashing the hopes of entrepreneurs hoping to create new Net TV businesses.
An alternate link to the original at CNet is here."
And Dr Caleb writes "In response to this Slashdot story I emailed my Member of Parlament. He responded to me today to say that "Despite strong opposition by the Canadian Alliance to these and other aspects of the bill, the Minister of Canadian Heritage won the day and Bill C-32 Copyright Legislation is now law." And further to say "The law assumes guilt that everyone who buys a blank tape or CD is pirating music - but anyone who uses CDs for data storage, for instance, knows that's not true!"
Distressing that the bill has passed, but refreshing that my MP 'gets it'!"
The Canadian Alliance is a political party that is not in power right now. The Minister of Heritage is a member of the party in power now (the Liberals). Since it's a majority government, the party in power can do whatever they want, and the other parties can just slow things down a bit.
There is no viable alternative to the Liberals, so they can and do whatever they want.
For example, a vet got his benefits cut off due to a government error. His representitive (who happened to be Liberal)said "you didn't vote for me, why should I help you?" The prime minister backed up the representitive and basically said they shouldn't have to do anything since they're in charge.
There's hundreds of examples, but Canada is basically being run as a tyranny now, and this new law being muscled through is just another example.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Each riding (electoral area) elects 1 representative to the federal government, each elected person is a Member of Parliment (MP).
The political party with the most seats is the governing party, the second most is the opposition.
The other parties don't have official titles.
From the ruling party (generally) all the departments/minitries are run by an MP, the opposition gets their critic for each.
Then they get in a big room, and argue with each other.
That is the house of commons.
I'm Canadian, and I know there are lot of Canadians who also share the same ignorance/lack of information on how our Canadian government works but I hope this helps:
The Canadian Alliance is the "Opposition party" or the group of elected individuals in our House of Commons (sorta like the House of Representatives in the states). The difference in our elected officials is that we have more than just two large parties. There's the Liberal Party of Canada, NDP, PC Party of Canada and other parties like the Green Party, The Communist party, etc. (I don't have their URLs, but I'm sure google would help)
To better understand Canadian government, check this out: Structure of the Government of Canada
The Minister of Canadian Heritage is this person named Sheila Copps who is in charge of keeping Canadian Culture 'Canadian'. A lot of people don't like what she does as a lot of times it removes freedoms from the people of Canada and makes things more expensive (our taxes pay for her position and her policies/ideas).
To answer your actual question: Is this one individual overruling a lobbying type group or a governmental group?
The bill became law despite the Canadian Alliance fighting against it.
FYI, it is legal in Canada to rebroadcast television channels so long as it is not modified. (I don't recall any stipulations to that) There are special exceptions to the non-modification clause in that Canadian channels are permitted to play localized advertising over foreign content, as long as the same program is played. For example, we never see U.S. Superbowl commercials. We get the same game. But Canadian commercials.
So rebroadcasting over the internet is perfectly legal, perhaps immoral, but certainly legal in Canada, up until this latest decree. As someone noted elsewhere, Cable companies in Canada get money from customers for the method of distribution, not the content.
I find in the records from last session:
And I gave up crack hours ago."History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
You don't have to pay to mail your Member of Parliament. Just mark the letter "On Her Majesty's Service" and mail it to their office. No $0.48 needed, even for a real letter.