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End of Online Anonymity in Canada?
boochy writes "Are we close to losing our anonymity online in Canada? As Angela Pacienza writes in a National Post article; "The record industry's attempts to sue people who share music online threaten to change the widely held expectation that everyone's anonymous when surfing the Internet, lawyers representing the public interest argued Monday."
This is a very interesting article that shows how much the lawyers representing the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic are trying their best to protect our privacy online."
Do ordinary Joe Public people really believe they are anonymous when browsing the web? I would have thought that most people would have the sense to realise that when they are browsing the web from home, they will be tracable through their contract with thier ISP.
Clicky Clicky!!
Agreed. So long as 2 computers are exchanging files their IP addresses must be known to each other. ISPs know exactly which IP address belongs to who. They just have no reason to sue you for copyright infringement, they'd just been driving away their customers.
Hiding one's IP address is a fundamental barrier of anonymous TCP/IP file transfer. However progress is being made here.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
No, it effects all private corporations too.
But I'm not sure if it applies here because its not personal information the evil forces of evil would like to capture, just which IP address did what "bunny killing" act.
They can then go to the ISP to trace it back to you.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This is the exact defense one individual I know used when he was accused of breaking into a rural school's computer system about ten years ago. Though this was a criminal charge (and the burden of proof substantially higher), he was easily acquitted because the prosecutor couldn't show that it was him specifically who was breaking into the computer systems.
In like manner, however, I suspect that the house of cards of the recording industry will just as easily fall apart with these civil suits in Canada. If I stupidly misconfigured my wireless or wired router to allow people to essentially walk in, they could easily breach computer security and use my computer to download all manner of goodies. Given what the AVERAGE computer user is (and you all know what the average user is like...), this is more than a plausible defense.
I run an ISP in Canada and PIPEDA, the Cdn govt privacy act, applies to private concerns as of January 1, 2004. Our legal advice, from a major law firm partner specializing in PIPEDA law, was that user IP addresses are considered to be personal information and logs containing them should be deleted every month. All companies needed to appoint a Privacy Officer to deal with PIPEDA complaints. Any user can come to us, request everything we have on them and their usage and they can correct any wrong information or ask us to delete it. According to PIPEDA, an individual's personal information is their property.
In Canada, this is the law.
"But I'm not sure if it applies here because its not personal information the evil forces of evil would like to capture, just which IP address did what "bunny killing" act."
Naw you got it wrong. They have the IP addresses of the acussed "bunny killers" but now want the ISP's to link the IP addresses to the perpetrators personal information. Many of the ISP's claim they do not have the infrastructure in place to do so. For instance there have been numerous cases of others cloning other users IP's and then using them to spam run warez servers, packet flood etc. In addition all the IP's in question are supposed to be allocated by DHCP and the ISP's have not been tracking who gets what IP when.
A majority of the youth there drink heavily by the age of 16, in fact it seems socially ingrained.
I'd like to hear where you got that particular gem. It's just wrong.
They don't have any notable icons of social pride other than a sport, hockey.
Keep going. We'll see if you can put your foot even farther into your mouth.
An indifferent feeling, and in most cases hate, exists between the varying states (or whatever they are called in Canada), particularly toward the mostly French ones.
Oh yeah. I wander around all day hating those darned french people. Oh wait... no I don't. Neither do most other Canadians. The separatist movement never recovered after the loss of the referendum what... a decade ago? And now for most Canadians it's business as usual.
I speak with Canadians concerning business matters at least twice a month, and even in casual discussions it is alarming how racist they are towards African Americans.
You're clearly lying. If you spoke to Canadians twice a month on business, you would at least know the word "Province". You'd also know that racism towards African Americans is pretty damn limited. I can't claim Canada to be free of prejudice - collectively we aren't - but most is directed at other groups. Not that that's any better - I'm just saying you haven't a clue.
It is very easy easy to run a national healthcare system when you have a small economy, almost no military spending, and a tiny population.
Is it now? Try running a economy dispersed over the second largest country in the world, geographically speaking, on the tax base made available by that "tiny population".
I'll wager you have no idea how large our economy is.
well, let's look at the blank cd levy in canada shall we? the tax is distributed to artists and labels by socan (society of canadian artists, musicians and producers... how they got "socan" out of that i don't know). it's distributed based on sales. ie big selling artists get a bigger chunk of the taxes.
now, i'm in a band. we're producing a record that will be released by a local label. it's almost certain that we're going to lose money on this whole venture but, hey, it's a labour of love. the cd's that we're using are subject to the levy.
what does this mean? it means my band will lose money making our cd but avril levigne will make a profit from it through the levy.
whew.
2 1337 4 u!
I think this is an attempt to split hairs to get as much as they can. As I understand it, it's legal for me (I live in Canada) to lend my friend a CD and for them to copy it, but it's not legal for me to make a copy of a CD I own and give it to a friend (replace 'not legal' with 'copyright infringement' as appropriate). The interpretation with P2P is that if you are downloading then you are 'borrowing' the song from the uploader and so you can legally make the copy, but if you are the uploader you are copying it for a friend, or something to that effect. I think that the law was written with only the physical world in mind, so the extension to the P2p world is a bit fuzzy. I think the Canadian Copyright Board ruled in December that downloadind was OK, so that's why they're going after uploaders.
This post cannot be rebroadcast without the express written constent of Major League Baseball.
You're incredibly wrong on just about all points. I have mod points right now and couldn't decide whether to mod you down, or reply. Since by the time I decided, you'd already been modded into oblivion, I guess I'll just add insult to injury and reply to your wildly inaccurate and ignorant ramblings.
Re: Health Care
Canada does have a problem with its health-care: the wait times. I'll grant you that in Canada, it generally takes longer to get non-life-threatening operations than it does in the US. But with a catch: in order to get this "expidited" service in the US, you have to be able to afford it. And not everyone can. So in the US, you have nice, fast service for the rich, and no service at all for everyone else. In Canada, EVERYONE gets the health care they need.
An interesting phenomena in Canada is that rich Canadians will come to the US for treatment, because even though they have to pay full price, they get it much more expidently, and higher quality.
The assumption that US healthcare is of higher quality is actually a myth. While it does cost more, and you can get it faster, it is not necessarily better. Canada has all the same drugs, treatments, and state-of-the-art equipment that the US does, with a few notable, exotic exceptions.
Secondary education also seems to be the same.
Oh no, it's definitely not. Canada's government directs much, much more funding (proportionally) towards post-secondary education than the US. The most expensive undergraduate university in Canada is still far, far cheaper than even the average tuition at private institutions in the US. When I graduated 5 years ago, my tuition was $3800 CDN/year, and that was the most expensive anywhere in the country (Acadia University). At the time, Harvard tuition was around $23,000 USD, IIRC.
In addition, the student loan system is more accessible in Canada.
I've spent time in the US, and strongly prefer Canada. While I concede that the US is very large, and attitudes obviously vary by region (just as they do in Canada), my experience with USAmericans was that they are very confrontational, conservative, closed-minded, and traditional about certain issues (gun control, gay marriage, war), and apathetic about other important issues (intellectual property laws, corporate lobbying of government to "buy" laws, DMCA, privacy issues in general).
Canada is far more progressive, socially. Our drinking age is lower (19 versus the US's 21), gay rights are far more advanced in Canada than in the US. Marijuana is de facto legal here (posession, at least - not trafficking or growing [yet]). Publication and media laws are more lax and liberal. Our freedoms and privacy have not been "bought" by powerful corporations nearly to the degree that they have in the US, although that's probably because we simply have far fewer corporations large enough to exert such pressure, by virtue of our smaller population.
Pollution is less in Canada. The violent crime rate is an order of magnitude lower, even when you consider the population difference. Our taxation rate is actually comparable to the US's, when you factor in things like health insurance, which you might not see come off your income tax bill, but you're paying anyway, giving you the illusion that you actually get to "take home" more of your salary than a Canadian. Sure, we may pay an extra $3000 more in income tax than a USAmerican making the same salary, but we're not paying $350/month for health insurance, either. Yes, I know the numbers don't add up. You're actually paying more for your health care than we are, because your government has been paid off by the pharmaceudical companies, and is allowed to gouge people for expensive medication. Canada has tougher regulations to keep medicine affordable, and thus decreasing our overall cost of health care.
OK, I'm done ranting for now.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
The idea is that the blank media "tax" legalizes making multiple copies of recordings you have legally licensed. Before the tax, you got what you bought with very limited right to copy (basically nothing outside of fair use) so mixed tapes for example, where technically illegal, as was making MP3 rips for a portable player, now they aren't.
Not that the law was in any way enforcable but that's the idea. In fact that's the point, because the law was unenforcable and yet the recording industry was claiming losses due to rampant illegal copying this was therefore a way to make the common practise legal and recover the damages (not that I believe that the recording industry was actually suffering the losses they claim, but if you buy their claims then it does make logical sense).
The levy is not intended to pay for anyone to download/copy stuff for which they have not obtained a legal license. You've been paying for the right to make mixed CD's and use a portable MP3 player, not to download and more particularily upload with impunity.
Ditto for health care... also determined provincially. One by one, provinces are moving to privatization of health care. Many Canadians have already said goodbye to their so-called "wonderful" social healthcare system.
The social aspects of the education system here are also declining. The government is stopping the allocation of student grants and being more restrictive about the amount that a person will be allowed to owe.
But then if you actually spent some time actually living here, instead of just visiting, you'd know all this.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Some info on the Canadian laws:
http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml
Point 2. Canada is already collecting a tarrif on CD's sold in Canada to go towards musicians from sales lost from online music sharing(even though most have never seen a red cent). If I'm already paying tarrifs on CD's to protect the music industry, do I not have a legal right to copy and download music I want?
The tariff collected in canada is to compensate artists for the LEGAL music distribution in canada. Ive said it before and ill say it again. Copying your friend's CD's and downloading songs from P2P networks is 100% LEGAL in canada.
So yes, you do have the legal right to copy and download any music you want.
You can borrow a friend's cd, copy it, and keep that copy. You can NOT make a copy of this for someone else. You can NOT ask him to copy you a cd since him doing this would be illegal. You must be the one making the copy. You also can NOT upload songs on a p2p network. This is also illegal.
Refer to an older post of mine for links to some references. Google will give you more.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.