Anti-DMCA Petition in Canadian Parliament

Matthew Skala writes "Last month we heard that the Canadian government is rejecting some of the worst features of the DMCA (more analysis here), but with Heritage Minister Liza Frulla parroting the media-cartel lobby with a promise to "give the tools to companies and authors to sue" and persuade children that downloading music for free is morally wrong even though it's presently legal in Canada, the battle is far from won. Yesterday, Member of Parliament Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster, NDP) introduced the first batch of signatures on Digital Copyright Canada's Petition for Users' Rights. This isn't just a Web click-through petition that politicians can freely ignore; more than a thousand real hardcopy signatures have already been collected from Canadian residents opposed to further expansion of copyright privileges, and the campaign is hoping for many more. Additional coverage on p2pnet.net."

Comments

Legal vs. moral

[October_30th]

Uh, what kind of an argument is that?

If something's legal, it doesn't mean it's also moral and conversely, doing the morally right thing might not be legal at the time.

Re:Legal vs. moral

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, what you're ignoring or unaware of is that every piece of writable media sold in canada includes a tax that is specifically to pay for the music you will place on it.

So now that you've bought your shiny CD and paid for the music, what's immoral about putting music on it?

Perhaps you can say its immoral to put music on CDs, but then would it not also be immoral for the music cartels to get your tax money that you paid for putting music on CDs?

It seems whatever moral high ground you're standing on is made of sand. Better fix your position before you've got nothing left under your feet ;)

Re:Legal vs. moral

[Embedded2004]

Why is it immoral to download music? I pay for it when ever I purchase blank CDs, if they don't like it then stop taking my money when I buy blanks.

The only thing immoral is stealing my money when I buy blanks.

Re:Legal vs. moral

[maxpublic]

technically legal to steal the music up there

It isn't stealing in Canada, by definition. Your opinion does not make law.

Max

Re:Legal vs. moral

[satherto]

Actually it is moral to burn music for free in Canada, as we pay a surcharge on every blank CD, Cassette tape, and VCR tape to give to the artists. The reason it is legal and moral, is that the work has been paid for MANY times over due to the levy.

As has been stated many times, the levy goes to the copywrite holders (in Canada) not to the government.

It is (IMHO) that it is immoral to take our money and then try to convince us that we can't use what we have purchased.

Re:Legal vs. moral

[Anonymous Coward]

If it really was thievery, that is.

To me, it's the equivalent of someone photocopying Dilbert from the news paper, and passing it out during business meetings, etc.

or someone taking the newspaper from the breakroom, photocopying Dilbert, and adding it to his Dilbert collection, perhaps even scanning it and leaving it on an obscure page in his website, for people he wants to have. Why is not important in this case.

I mention this because the issue of photocopied comic strips getting distributed in offices has come before the courts in the past, as has the RIAA/ASCAP/BMI suing companies where an employee has had a radio playing at a loud enough level for employees to hear, perhaps because the Muzak salesman was rebuffed...

If I take your CD collection, *THAT* is thievery.
If I reattribute my CD music collection as being of my own creation (music, lyrics, recording, etc.), *THAT* is thievery.

While the artists tend to have "copyright" for the music and lyrics of their works, the fact is that the recording distributor has been assigned copyright for the recordings. The artists do not have copyright possession on their recordings.

It's like people essentially advocating felony-level punishment for a mere +5MPH speeding violation. Yes, it's a "crime", but it's not a Crime. Too many people have lost sight of that.

Next time you're in a restaraunt for a birthday celebration, especially if it's a national chain, get the waitstaff to also sing "Happy Birthday" with you, in addition to whatever they have for a birthday act. Blammo, commercial performance of someone's copyrighted song.

I'm downloading the petition now.

[ahsile]

And plan to sign it, and have everyone I know sign it. I won't have my rights stepped on without a fight. Who knows, maybe parliment will even reject the WIPO changes.

Re:I'm downloading the petition now.

[Kwil]

By that argument, it was also the British who fought for independance.

Re:I'm downloading the petition now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whitehouse burning aside (we only do that when nasty people try to invade from the south, 'mere matter of marching' bedamned), but Canadians have a very healthy skepticism of their politicians. It isn't hard to find Canadians (bitching) about their politicians, and while some of it falls on party lines, Canadians are suspicious of *all* of their politicians (of every stripe). It doesn't matter, if it's political, it's probably 'grubby' in some way. Given the current mess in Canada right now, it appears that politicians will soon have to wade through bleach in order to appear 'clean' to most Canadians. It also appears the former government will face crimminal charges, the current one will fall (after being in power for about 8 months). People here already look at politicians as a cross between a greasy used car dealer, and a drug-pushing pimp who also dabbles in kiddie porn. I know I don't want anything like the DMCA here, we are already paying a surcharge on blank media, reguardless of content, and if your song/movie doesn't suck, people will buy it. If it sucks, people won't buy it (and from what I've seen, they won't even download a poor quality copy of it either). As for the heritage minister, she should watch out for her job. Her subordinate had to resign becuase of the current political mess, and she could lose her job right quick if she tries to pull this stunt. She doesn't need to lose a lot of votes to get kicked out, and as it stands, any bill she presents will likely die in the queue before the current government falls (any day now). You have to remember that in the U.S. a government is voted in for 4 years. In Canada, the maximum is 5 years, but there is no minimum. So far, it looks like the current government will be 'in' less than a year (snap-election here we come).

Re:I'm downloading the petition now.

[the arbiter]

Damn, I'm in exactly the same musician boat as you are. Former pro, no rights to anything I worked on in the past. The terms of the contract weren't merely onerous: We received 5% of NET revenue, with all production expenses to be repaid.

You do the math, dear reader. For every one million dollars of revenue received by the record company, we got $50,000, to be split four ways. And we had to repay the recording, production and artwork expenses (also note we couldn't shop around to get the best rates on these things, either...we had to use the facilities that the company mandated).

In my book, that's nothing but slavery.

I love the responses I get when I bring this up: "You shouldn't have signed a contract like that". You're right, I should have worked at McDonalds instead. FOR THE MUSICIAN, THE OPTION IS SIGN OR DON'T WORK. People don't understand. "Monopoly" is not a strong enough word for it, and neither is "stranglehold".

The artists are not getting ripped off from file sharing. We got ripped off a long time ago, and it wasn't by our listeners.

All copyright does is insure that I'll NEVER make any money off my work. That privilege belongs to the record company, which will own and profit from MY work for the rest of my life plus some number of years afterwards.

You tell me...is this fair? Is this how copyright is supposed to work? Because to me it looks like someone stole from me and it's perfectly legal.

1000 Signatures...

[BJZQ8]

1000 signatures! Wow! We're at .003 percent of the population! Unfortunately, I believe the various pro-DMCA lobbies have a lot more weight in the form of dollars...a few million Canadian dollars still is a lot of money.

Re:Laws based on Morals.

[xander2032]

But who can say what's moral? There's so many different versions of "morality" that it's impossibe to pick just one.

Anyways... I find that morality seems to always infringe on a person's rights and freedoms. Some may say flag burning is immoral or that saying something insulting about our government is immoral.

So you see, you can't simply force a set of moral upon an entire population.

Morality is a personal choice. If someone chooses not to be moral, well there's no way you're going to force them to have a sense of morality.

Part of freedom is being free to choose, and in this case being free to choose what you think is moral and immoral.

Re:Teaching right from wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

That "public service announcement" tries to compare apples with oranges. It's completely misleading and a complete lie.

Car = physical property
purse = physical propery
music = intellectual propery

A more accurate "public service announcement" would be "You wouldn't steal a purse, you would (sic) steal a car - why would you steal a CD?"

Re:Canada Rocks

[tim256]

It does sound like Canada has a much better government than the US. Here are some things I think make the Canadian govt. better.

1. Great fair-use laws and smarter politicians who don't work for the corporate machine.
2. Universal health care sounds nice, and if you want super good health care you can go south and pay extra.
3. Small military doesn't waste tons of money and people fighting wars in far away lands.
4. Resonable drinking age of 19, as the highway dept. funding is not controlled by M.A.D.
5. The Canadian govt. is not controlled by religious conservatives.

Here are some bad things about Canada.

1. It's full of Canadians.
2. It's gets really cold.
3. Lots of French people in Canada.

Re:Laws based on Morals.

[Derekloffin]

I think we'd like to think laws should be based on morals, but really they aren't and nor can they be.

The reason for this is much of morality is the simply belief that X is right and Y is wrong intrisically. However, much of that can't be proven, and doesn't really hold up in a multicultural society where much of our beliefs of right and wrong can shift.

So, instead, laws are based usually on a lowest common point of morals which a large majority can agree on, plus some ethical considerations that say you can at least attempt some kind of proof that Y is wrong based on a larger principle.

Off-topic but needs to be said

[PChemGuy]

I am a Canadian living in the US. I'm really tired of seeing comments like this from people on both sides of the border. For Americans, Canada is not the simple nation that some of you view it to be. It is also not the crime-free utopia that I hear about all the time. For most Canadians, you don't know half as much about the US as you think you do. The US is a much better country than prevailing attitudes would have you believe.

We could all learn a lot more about each other if we got rid of these attitudes and spent a little time getting to know one another's countries.

Good to see this

[iminplaya]

This isn't just a Web click-through petition that politicians can freely ignore; more than a thousand real hardcopy signatures have already been collected from Canadian residents opposed to further expansion of copyright privileges... Emphasis mine

I'm very happy to see that somebody actually sees copyright for what it really is...A privilege...granted to you by the public, subject to revocation at every election. Let's not forget that, eh?

The world is becoming like the one in Aliens

[doc modulo]

"I'm Burke, I work for the company"

The quote might not be accurate but the power of corporations keep growing lately. Especially in the US where the laws keeping corporations in check are too weak.

A lot of conflicts where people died were partly because of corporations. Corporations get too powerful, violence has to happen to get the situation back to normal/livable. Happened in history lots of times. Mussolini said something like: "Fascism can be more accurately called corporatism"

It's happening right now as well, there was this piece in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" where the population in a South-American country/province rebelled against a corporation and it's corrupt helpers. They were forbidden to collect and use rainwater from their own roofs because the water company wanted to sell more water at starvation prices.

I hope we can fight off software patents in Europe, I hope Canada can fight off this law. Better to do it now peacefully than having to do it violently later. Might already be too late for the US. Incredible how the doofuses there vote their enemies into government.

The most important thing is to keep thinking logically and optimistically. Keep an image of what you want in your head and things will work out. For example, think: "it's not too late for the US, things WILL work out better if we can just convince people of the truth, the brainwashed can not be convinced should be labeled not sane" etc.

FREE WILL

[shufler]

>> Part of freedom is being free to choose
>All of freedom is being free to choose. That's it.

In the words of Geddy Lee (a Canadian, so this post is certainly ON TOPIC):

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.

Re:Not about copyright at all

[neiras]

We don't hate Americans. Far from it. We hate bigoted, ultra-nationalist, Fox-News-Is-Fair-And-Balanced, With-Us-Or-Against-Us, Social-Programs-Are-For-Commies, Canada-Doesn't-Matter-Because-They-Don't-Do-What-W e-Say embarrassments to humanity like yourself.

Real, upstanding, proud citizens of the USA who carry themselves with humility, share their many gifts with their neighbours, and accept our many differences with grace are much loved here. I mean, we're family, right? I wouldn't discard my brother because he doesn't agree with me. In most places I've visited in the States, the people are great.

Yes, you're powerful. Yes, you could roll up here one night and take us out. But you aren't our judge, just as we aren't yours. When you speak about your neighbours in the future, do so with the respect most of us would still give you.

==

How America looks from up here