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Canadian Minister Promises to Fix Copyright Law
Mashiki writes "In Canada, we can download Mp3's and their assorted goodness without too much of a hassle, recently the CRIA and their friends lost the court case. Well, it would appear that the new Federal Heritage Minister Helene Scherre, has spoken and those words were: 'As minister of Canadian Heritage, I will, as quickly as possible, make changes to our copyright law.'"
Or, if you want to let her know what you think personally, you can e-mail her here.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Canadian ministers are legislators. Ministers must be members of the House of Commons (or Senators, but that's rare nowadays.) The executive branch of government limited to the Governor General, who gives royal assent to bills that have been passed by both chambers (and little else.)
As a member, the minister can certainly introduce a bill for consideration (indeed, in practice only bills introduced by ministers get passed, as there are few free votes in Canada.)
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
_nfotxn
I've already emailed my MP to say just that. You can go here and enter your postal code to get your MP's email address.
New news forum for Canadians - CanadaSpeaks
The record companies will lose money as a result of slashing prices to compete. This will lead to them representing fewer acts and those will be only the ones that are safe bets (the heavily produced Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Enrique Iglesias, etc) and less of the risky (read: interesting) ones. Diversity in record stores will suffer as p2p flourishes. If you want an actual packaged CD of a band that is more intertesting than the aforementioned acts, you're eventually going to have to actually go out to their show and buy it from them yourself. I personally think that's a great thing. Supporting live music, giving more money to musicians and less to distributors is all good in my books. If you're a proponent of p2p filesharing as I am, don't later whine that there's nothing good in the stores.
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I'm afraid I have to disagree. Firstly, since cd sales do not appear to have suffered ANY ill effects in the 5 or so years that mp3s have been available to the public at large through file swapping services, I think its highly unlikely that the music industry will feel compelled to slash prices.
But more to the point, I think that the very bands you mentioned are the ones more likely to suffer as a result of fileswapping. Independant bands and lesser known names get exposure and sell more cds, while the big names who put out overmarketted crap are the ones who are downloaded.
The marketting may have convinced you that you have to have the new Britney spears album, but why ask mommy for the 15 dollars when you can just as easily download it. Meanwhile nearly all the cd's I've bought in the past few years have been of groups I've NEVER heard played on the radio and never would have heard of at all had I not downloaded a song beforehand.
If anything, I think the reason the music industry fights file sharing so hard is not because it hurts cd sales (we already know otherwise) but because it works against their efforts to create those "safe bets" you mentioned. Suddenly using media monopolies to ensure that the latest piece of crap the backstreet boys put out is played constantly on the radio doesn't have the effect it used to . .
...the copy is made on-demand. Is it made by the sharer, or the downloader?
Sharing a file in itself makes no copies. So, there's no copyright violation until an actual copy is made. And when a copy is made, one of the two parties is making the illegal copy, the question is which one.
Yes, it is made on the sharer's machine. But you may again argue that this is like making it on the library's photocopier. What the court seems to have found is that it is the downloader that is initiating the copy, and thus the downloader that is guilty of copyright infringement.
That, combined with the legality of making a copy for private use, means it looks like Canadians are home free. At the moment, neither sharer nor downloader can be prosecuted for copyright infringement. Something tells me that'll change. Quickly.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'd like to ammend your proposal. - Remove the position of Heritage Minister - Take away the CRTC's power to regulate content
I work in a Canadian government office, and an e-mail is treated exactly like a paper letter. In fact, the Heritage Minister's web site says that explicitly.
. cf m
http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/min/contacts/index_e
Sending an e-mail ensures that the minister will get feedback quickly after her comments, letting her know that there's a fire to put out.
Frankly, I don't see any new law happening before the next election, so the easiest solution is to vote the Liberals out. But be sure to let them know your intent anyway. I sent my e-mail off last night.
Yogurt in British Columbia
There is no way any government will willingly give up any revenue stream. We Canadians now pay a surcharge on the hard drives of devices like the iPod, which, like the CD-R tax, assumes that the average consumer is a copyright criminal and must be fined in advance.
Except that the "CD-R Tax" isn't technically a tax. If it were, it might actually be easier to swallow (though not much easier). It's a levy. It's collected by our government "on behalf of the music industry" and while government likely gets a percentage for collecting it, the majority of the money actually goes to the music industry. It's a revenue source, alright, but it's going towards padding the music labels' bottom line, not funding social programs.