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Technology Issues Ignored in Canadian Elections
Jem Berkes writes "Today's Toronto Star has a good article on Canadian political parties' positions on important technology issues such as Copyright reform/WIPO, spam, and privacy. With the elections only a week away, it's surprising that these important issues have attracted little or no debate. The current Heritage Committee, for instance, has recommended that Canada ratify WIPO, and few citizens (let alone politicians) are even aware of this issue."
The Green Party has some F/OSS-favoring policies, and a do-not-spam policy: http://www.greenparty.ca/index.php?module=article& view=12&page_num=27
I was a bit surprised by what I read about the positions of the Liberals, Conservatives and especially the NDP. I would have hoped for a more civil-libertarian position from them.
Issues mentioned in the article that affect Cdns include copyright reform, a national ID card, anti-spam legislation, use of open source software by government, etc.
Canadians pay a levy on recordable media (incl blank CD's) which supposedly is collected to compensate artists for copying (as mentioned often on /. it's legal here! with some conditions) of their work. I know no-one who believes the artists will get the money.
re: the Canadian Heritage committee copyright report... MP Sarmite "Sam" Bulte is the 2-term Liberal candidate in MY riding & is campaigning hard for re-election. I had somehow forgotten that she chaired the Canadian Heritage committee; the report (referred to in article) has much in it that affects people in the tech / web sector. In particular, if I see her shaking hands outside the High Park TTC station again, I'll bring up some issues with her!
Many groups are unhappy with the report's recommendations, including educators.
The report is available as PDF.
USians and other non-Cdns may find similarities & differences with your own countries' policies illuminating.
je ne suis pas un fou
The NDP is for WIPO/DMCA style laws, and the Conservatives are against it? What in the hell?! Not that its a bad thing mind you, but it seems like those two parties are on the other side of their usual fences.
Huh, maybe a Conservative government wouldn't be so bad after all. I still have to decide who i'm voting for (either Conservative or Green), but maybe now I won't cringe so badly when our new dictator is announced.
Oh, who am I kidding? This is Canada - I might as well start practicing my "horrified suprise" face now.
No it's not, and you go on to explain why:
Unfortunately for our children, Joe Average sees that his friends and family are getting in trouble for what used to be expected of him to do, but doesn't ever make the connection. It's up to us to explain to our less paranoid friends and family exactly *why* things are headed in the wrong direction. Of course, it's somewhat difficult to do without sounding paranoid schizophrenic yourself, but do it anyway. At this point, it's our civic duty.
Even when the levies were imposed some time ago on recordable media they went through without much more than a whisper, despite a good number of people protesting by writing their letters.
I doubt very much if there's going to be any serious discussion between the Liberals and Conservatives with respect to any kind of technology issues unless at least 80% of their prospective voters will understand it clearly or care enough to make a voting decision based on their position. Sure there are other parties that may have policies surrounding the issue -- but the grits seem to be neck and neck with the tories, and the other parties are barely given credit in the news as they are presumably expected to win no more than 7-10 seats between them.
Because the conservatives aren't a big business party in Canada.
The Liberals have all the business friends, they make billions of dollars of 'loans' to large companies to keep them around. Guess who makes donations to the Liberal party.
The Conservatives want to lower corporate taxes, but their plan is to only lower the taxes by the amount the handouts are reduced by.
So yes the companies will get $1 billion in tax cuts, but that will be made possible by not giving $1 billion in handouts to other companies.
With the minority government shaping up, there won't be a dictator at all.
Clearly us geeks care, but most of the populace do not. The situation is the exact same in the US, where most people on the street will have no fscking clue what the DMCA even is.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
I forgot to mention Chapter 1 of the Auditor General's report on Government on-line which represents far more government waste than Chapter 3 (sponsorship program) that people are upset about. We also hear people ranting about the gun registry, which was also a failed ICT project.
The issue isn't the importance of what we are trying to bring forward, but the lack of adequate media attention to educate people as to the connections between technology issues and all those things which they directly care about.
Digital Copyright Canada forum
You may also want to use the NDP topic area on the Digital Copyright Canada forum to work together with other people from that party.
Digital Copyright Canada forum
Anyway, I'm sure there are equally strong opinions on the matter from the Conservative supporters.
Probably not. I bet most people voting conservative simply don't understand political issues at all. They probably think that the Conservatives are the old Progressive Conservatives, and are simply voting for them out of habit or due to the Liberal screw ups.
Take a look at the the user feed back during the Copyright Reform Process. Over 700 submissions all sorted by date and submitter.
Among the contributions who asked for specific legislation to ban circumvention technology were, the Canadian Independent Record Producers Association (CIPRA), which on page page 4 requested
Since there will be no such regulation I believe Bulte and others have the right idea.AOL-TW Inc also called for DMCA type regulation of technology,
Such DMCA type demands were completely dismissed by the Committee.FWIW: The September 4th 2001 submission from "The Edifying Fellowship of Ook" is hilarious. I couldn't get past the first page with that funky old English font.
I'm usually 100% cynical, but the system seems responsive.. even to the eccentric.Be careful in what you are interpreting Sarmite to have said. She is not a technology law or technology aware person. She is not someone who would recognize that legal protection for DRM (TPM/RMI combination) is in fact a considerable regulation of technology.
She also seems unaware of the fact that proposals to tax educational use of the Internet are an exemption of copyright where the intentions of the copyright holders are ignored and instead a royalty-collective society receives what amounts to "a tax on the new to protect the old".
Ask her why after those 700 submissions, 650 which were generated by the Canada-DMCA-Opponents community (now http://digital-copyright.ca ), why none of us were invited to speak before the committee? I was invited by Industry committee to speak on a different bill, I believe partly because Heritage committee was ignoring our community after many submissions and many offers to speak with individual members.
I live and work in Ottawa, and have offered to do one-on-one or committee-wide sessions. The offers still stand, and hopefully the new Heritage committee will take me up on that offer.
BTW: If this is an area of policy you are interested in, please join the Digital Copyright Canada forum and help us move this policy/education forward.
Digital Copyright Canada forum