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U.S. Rejects Canadian Rejection of DMCA
P Starrson writes "
Slashdot readers may recall that last
month Canadian policy makers rejected the DMCA for Canada.
Not so fast apparently -- the U.S. Trade Representative has released
the annual Section
301 report which each year tells the rest of the world that they
need stronger intellectual property protection. This year Canada is a
particular target -- the U.S. plans to conduct a special review of
Canadian policies and explicitly rejects Canada's rejection of the
DMCA. A good summary on what this means from Canadian law professor Michael Geist."
The USA can suck my balls if they want us to adopt the DMCA. We dont even want the concessions they have made as it is, never mind the full DMCA.
While im sure it will eventually happen, I've certainly been calling local politicians and telling them about my feelings towards the DMCA and copyright legislation change.
The only way to keep things the way they are is to voice to those in charge that this is the way you like it! Come on canadians dont get lazy on this one.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
The actual citizenry of either country has yet to be asked whether they actually want the DMCA, since most of the people don't even know it exists and probably most of congress doesn't even know it exists, since it was passed by voice vote without anyone in congress actually reading it.
The u.s. is in the transition to a wholely IP based economy, the DMCA is their lifeblood to a prosperous future. Log onto cspan sometime and watch the Greenspan-meets-congress videos, he keeps telling them "We need stronger IP laws.." Without any doubt his opinion holds more weight than yours ever will. I don't have much to say to young idealists or anybody with a inkling of hope left except, submit to your masters, it'll be easier.
It just meant that Canadian lawmakers are more in tune with the values of the typical United States citizen than are the members of the U.S. Congress and Senate.
;-)
:-(
Well, at least in this particular area...
I don't think anyone is surprised anymore that our lawmakers write laws that reflect the values of lobbyists.
Mark
Perhaps if the USA opens the border to Canadian Beef , softwood lumber, and settles all the other open trade disputes Canada could CONSIDER, reconsidering such a bill. But I doubt it.
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...that I am sick and tired of America's attempts to tell other countries what to do. When commenting in this thread, please keep in mind that not all Americans feel that we should be so meddling, and only 51% of Americans were willing to re-elect the current administration.
If the US can tell us what to do the we should have a say in their election, and it would probably sound like this:
Canada rejects Bush.
That's exactly what I entered this thread to say.
They can continue ruining their own country, and we'll run ours the way we want to. We're a sovereign nation that decides it's own affairs, no matter how much they may have difficulty with the concept.
I guess they should be shaking in their boots now, eh?
Why do US policy makers assume that every country needs to have the exact policy as we have? One of the founding priciples of US conservatism is the preservation of sovereignty. That principle has meant that the US has ignored the call for a Canadian-style medical system, or the foreign policy goals of the EU. For good or ill, US conservatism demands that countries decide what is in their own best interests and guide their foreign and domestic agendas accordingly.
Now these conservatives are demanding that Canada abandon sovereignty and model all of their intellectual property laws after the US?
US 'conservatives' have the intellectual consistency of baby shit.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
This is really just an exercise in power, the US will back up these strong suggestions with threats of trade sanctions etc.
The thing that gets me as someone who lives in Britain and recognises the behaviors of the British Empire in the past is that Americans don't recognise that they live in an empire in all but name.
There seems to be a sort of xeno blindness, nothing outwith the US borders exists and therefore cannot be important. The result being these kinds of strong arm tactics used against sovereign nations. Guess why large portions of the world are antithetical.
Deleted
Don't make China out to be the hero anywhere in this. China respects NO ONES IP law. Not American, not Canadian, not European. They will copy anything and everything and sell it back to us for less.
What will really bite foreign businesses working in China in the ass is when the government marches in and takes all of their IP and tells them to just deal with it.
China is the far side of the issue. If American bussinesses thing that their CUSTOMERS pose big IP problems for them, the Chinese will really teach them a lesson eventually.
Don't bother, they will just reject our rejection of their rejection of our rejection of the DMCA. Perhaps a simple 'fuck you' is in order.
This could drive an even bigger wedge between our two countries, but the shit the US has been pulling under Bush makes me wonder why I would care what they think?
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
Americans don't recognise that they live in an empire in all but name
Leaving aside the pitfalls of generalizing about "Americans" (something that's becoming increasingly meaningless as that nation polarizes) and confining discussion to the red-staters, I'm not sure the problem is that they "don't recognise" that the US is an empire. It's more that they don't recognise that it's a bad empire. The British Empire wasn't exactly shy about announcing itself, but jingoistic pride, cultural arrogance and a nationalistic media all combined to ensure that its citizens were generally happy about that empire.
I think the same holds here. Read a topic like this at -1 and you'll find a fair number of posters who like being in the American Empire. They like the "we're number one!" thing, they like the knee-jerk machismo that flows from military adventurism, they really do think they're God's chosen country, and they're perfectly willing to let their leaders trample over a world they see as filled with terrorists, godless communists and spineless Eurotrash.
Here's the difference between the US and Canada in Copyright reforms: The American comittee on Copyright Reforms is Sen. Orrin Hatch. He was payed $179,000 in 2004 by the RIAA/MPAA. The members of the Canadian comittee on Copyright reforms, on the other hand, were not given any noticeable contributions by the entertainment industries. For one, corporations are limited into how much they can donate, for another such conflict of interest wouldn't be allowed. So who'se reforms are you likely to believe to be lest biast? The opinion of the side who was payed nearly 200 grand by a party that voices one specific view, or the opinion of the side that wasn't bribed.
They care about Canadian IP laws for the same reason many americans cite as why canada should just shut up.
The US and Canada have incredibly tightly integrated economies. BOTH countries export and import 80% of their goods with each other. Mutual dependance.
The US wants the same laws as often as possible. It makes commerce easier. What if canada suddenly made oranges illegal. We dont grow any oranges up here, so only the importers would be affected. But believe me, some orange producer down in the states would be hopping mad.
If our IP laws are more lax, it makes canada a better place to do buisness in certain cases. Lost american jobs, lost american revenue. Of course they're pissed.
Maybe they should fix their IP laws instead of trying to fuck up ours just as badly as theirs are.
.
This just might have stemmed from the Softwood Lumber dispute. And the live cattle ban that the US has in place as well. A 'tit for tat' if you will.
As for softwood, an International Court has ruled that the US is illegaly charging tariffs on Canadian Softwood lumber crossing the border.
As for the live cattle ban, what a farce, the border is not closed, Americans are buying the cattle here in Canada, having them processed, and then shipping the products over the border, to their huge profit gains. And dont get me started on the lax USDA' BSE testing. Sad to say, but you Americans are eating some very tainted beef products. Some of you are crazy enough as it is, now you get to sue your beef provider chain. Have fun. Lawsuits work for you, not for the rest of the world. Especially not us Canadians.
So, how does this lead to Canadian law not recognising the DMCA, well, our asshats think your asshats made a pretty stoopid law. So we wont put into place the same thing. We have laws protecting copyrighted works. nuff said. Copyright theft, is copyright theft. We have laws for that. We don't need the rest of the totalitarian threats behind the Act. Besides, in Canada, its not illegal to download copyrighted works, partly because, that act is not against the law here. It is against the law to upload copyrighted works. And that works for us.
Much akin to your Patriot Act. What a crock. Its called "Freedom of Speech". Besides, the terrorists we do have here, are probably tax paying citizens anyway, they drive our cabs, our busses, and they clean our offices. We don't have many Mexicans or Puerto Ricans here. Something about the cold...
It's bad enough that SOX got rammed down our throats. This is just another way for Canadians to say "Not in our Land"
he US wants the same laws as often as possible. It makes commerce easier. What if canada suddenly made oranges illegal.
Or what if the US made Canadian beef illegal? Or Canadian lumber? Or Canadian wheat? Well, the last two aren't banned, they're just heavily tarriffed despite a "free trade" agreement between the two countries. But that's not the point.
America doesn't care about the effect it has on other economies. It just wants its way. And because Canada needs the US more than the US needs Canada, they can use that leverage to force us to change our policies to benefit their industries.
And in this particular case, American jobs and American revenue aren't lost, because the industries affected are reimbursed by the taxes the Canadian government collects on the blank media people use to copy the stuff that the DMCA is supposed to protect. The RIAA just doesn't like it that way and wants to have laws that force us to buy new copies of the same stuff every time the technology to play it back changes.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
If you can't make money off of your ideas anymore, you'd stop trying to think of new ideas because you'd have to get a paying job.
did the dot-com bubble not teach you americans anything?
you CAN'T make money off ideas!!!!!! you need to produce something.
americans are so high on hollywood hype, do they not know anything about what really puts food on the table, what really counts in the global market? putting up real product, not just "ideas", oh so precious, is the new rule for global trade.
China is good at that. America is shit at it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Sadly, the people haven't been in charge for decades.
Give us your pity, not your hate.
As both a Canadian and an American, my suggestion to the Prime Minister is that he inform the United States that Canada will consider the United States' concerns about intellectual property when the United States conforms in both policy and practice to the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's one thing to disagree about details of trade policy and the like, but for the United States to make it sound like Canada is a rogue nation that fails to abide by widely accepted standards of decent conduct is outrageous. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!