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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."
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.
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.
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!
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.
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