Canada Introduces DMCA-Style Copyright Law

P Starrson writes "The Canadian government this afternoon kept one promise many could live without. It introduced new copyright legislation that will bring DMCA-style legislation to Canada (backgrounder and FAQ here but bill still not online). Professor Michael Geist has apparently seen a copy and points out on his blog that while the bill does not go as far as the United States, the proposal is full of new rights for the music industry with precious little for users."

Comments

is the toothpaste out of the tube yet?

[yagu]

It seems like there's a new story on this a couple of times a week. I remember the very first time I heard anything at all (some Senator was pushing some nefarious bill that alledgedly was going to give some "rights" to the music manufactures to help them "control" music as it became more and more digital...). I laughed out loud to myself (is that possible?). Anyway, fast forward to today, and I'm amazed at the progress the music industry has made.

I watched in amazement as unexpected shills stepped forward to support the music industry in their quest to strip consumers' rights, most notably (or at least the one I can remember) Motley Crue. Further thought brought the logical conculusion these shills were entrenched in the music machine and stood to defend their obscene incomes... The bands that are popular are mostly (not all) there by serendipity. There are tons of excellent musicians out there waiting for their turn. So, Crue, et. al., dig in!

And now? Canada? Blame United States!

Regardless, I wish I wish a cohesive movement could arise and say, "no more", though I don't have a clue how to start that. Any good organizers in slashdot land? I don't know how a movement would manifest, but it seems groups have been able to pressure networks to not show shows, why can't the consuming music public apply similar pressure? I for one would be willing to commit to ZERO purchases of any media (dvd, sacd, cd, etc.) for one calendar year. Others? Other ideas?

Re:is the toothpaste out of the tube yet?

[xMilkmanDanx]

I would suggest a modification of your idea: a boycott of those artists that have SUPPORTED this kind of legislation. To that end, a website listing musicians that support the DMCA and maybe also those that oppose it.

Personally, I won't purchase anything from Metallica ever since the whole napster event (well, their stuff since then has sucked but that's besides the point). And no, I won't download it either.

It's the users, stupid!

[Nom du Keyboard]

of new rights for the music industry with precious little for users.

When will "the users" realize that they elect the politicians?

Money can buy influence, but in the end it is each "user" in that voting booth that should be throwing out those elected officials that don't respect them!

Re:It's the users, stupid!

[Stevyn]

Because young people who are affected by these laws tend not to vote. At least in the US, that is. I heard a lot more rhetoric for Kerry than actual votes for Kerry in the past presidential election.

I'm really really not trying to to start a flame war, an anti-Bush/Kerry flame war, or anything else about the past presidential election.

My point is politicians cater to those voting for them. And if the people voting for them don't care about the restrictions and the companies donating to their campaigns are encouraging these laws, then a politicians is going to pass these laws.

Re:It's the users, stupid!

[wishus]

Money can buy influence, but in the end it is each "user" in that voting booth that should be throwing out those elected officials that don't respect them!

I don't think any of my elected officials even have copyright/IP issues on their platform. Even if I do vote against them because of their stand on that issue, they don't know it was because of that issue. They probably assume it was their stance on Iraq, or some other headline issue.

There are so few candidates that it's impossible to find one that I agree with on all issues. As for the states that elected the congressmen who introduce DMCA-like bills, I doubt it was because they wanted new copyright law.

Re:It's the users, stupid!

[temojen]

I'm really really not trying to to start a flame war, an anti-Bush/Kerry flame war, or anything else about the past presidential election.

That's good, because it would be REALLY off-topic in a thread about Canadian copyright law.

Re:It's the users, stupid!

[baryon351]

Last election I heard dozens of my friends announce they thought bush got in illegally, as they knew nobody personally who voted bush.

Now, apart from that just not being a representative sample, I also asked them who they voted for.

All kinds of excuses came up. they were busy on the day, they don't vote out of protest, it was too far to travel, they just forgot.

So much for not knowing anyone who voted bush - most of them didn't know anybody who voted kerry either.

Acceptance of facts

[ProfaneBaby]

I went to a talk last year given by legal counsel for the EFF about the DMCA, efforts to remove it, and very limited success, and I realized that even the lawyer made one fundamental mistake: they refused to acknowledge that people really do steal significant quantities of music/movies simply because they don't want to pay.

Until the anti-DMCA crowd accepts and acknowledges that, even though they produce crappy music, people are actively stealing significant quantities of music/movies, they will NEVER gain traction against the well organized lobbying groups.

The DMCA contains WAY TOO MANY horrible provisions, but the fact that it's defended so harshly by the RIAA/MPAA is indicative of the fact that they are quite desperate. Yes, the recent music sucks, but no, that's still no excuse to steal it. Until the anti-DMCA side is willing to accept a law that reinforces the standard copyright laws in a REASONABLE manner, there's very little chance that the DMCA is going away.

Re:Acceptance of facts

[Baricom]

Until the anti-DMCA crowd accepts and acknowledges that, even though they produce crappy music, people are actively stealing significant quantities of music/movies, they will NEVER gain traction against the well organized lobbying groups.

It seems that if the anti-DMCA crowd (disclaimer: I'm one of them) were to admit that, then the recording industry would simply say, "See? Those criminals even admit that they're stealing our work! We can't stop at just the DMCA. We have to add DRM, harsher civil and criminal penalties for stealing, and everything else we can possibly do. If we don't, we'll go bankrupt because the pirates are cutting into our revenue stream."

Obviously, locking us in isn't working. I propose an alternative business method: quality service. It works something like this:

1. Stop suing your customers. I postulate that the vast majority of people being sued for trading have purchased at least a few CDs. Suing them is just going to irritate them and cause them not to make any other purchasers. It also irritates people who are totally legit, like me.
2. Stop forcing DRM on customers. It adds to the cost of the product, is easily bypassed by whomever wants to, and makes paying customers feel like they're criminals that can't be trusted.
3. Sell cheaper, and make up the difference on volume. More people would buy an album for $7.99 than they would at $21.99.

Those are the facts. It's a shame the RIAA (and the Canuck equivilent) won't accept them.

Re:Acceptance of facts

[suitepotato]

Until the anti-DMCA side is willing to accept a law that reinforces the standard copyright laws in a REASONABLE manner, there's very little chance that the DMCA is going away.

Not to Godwin this, or to put too fine a point on it, but this is like the Nazis saying they'll be reasonable if only their targets will wear little stars.

YOU CANNOT BE REASONABLE WITH UNREASONABLE PEOPLE

The RIAA and MPAA are exactly that: intractably unreasonable. We have DECADES of evidence right from their leaders' mouths documenting this clearly. These are people who believe the advent of the 8-track and then casette recorders were very very bad and dangerous ideas that played into mankind's original sin and gave him tools that he might be a thief. The VCR was a tool of bad nasty people who would steal money from the mouth of Steven Spielberg.

You cannot begin to overestimate or overstate their lunatic idiocy. There is NO such thing as fair use for these people, they have NO concept of technology as it applies to demographics of adoption and usage and methods of applying technology to making proft, despite Apple's runaway success at putting iTunes to the public, and they have NO interest in listening to reason.

Compromise? When they agree publicly that copyright was not ever intended and should not ever be used as a tool of permanent monopoly over ideas and expression of same by any organization, when they publicly apologize for suing CHILDREN for piracy, when they admit publicly that THERE IS such a thing as FAIR USE. I put this at the same chance of happening as flying pig racing becoming the newest prime time sport show.

Personally, I say anyone who shills for them should have their entire catalog of publicly availible IP pirated and spread around to as many places as possible in a show of defiance. They need to learn that they WILL lose this war with the public and that we WILL defy them until they wave the white flag, smell the coffee, grow up, and get with the present day.

Notice I didn't say that their IP needed to be exprienced, just copied. I wouldn't listen to Motley Crue or Metallica if you paid me and I've never had the slightest interest in downloading one of their songs. But I would do it just to send a message.

Until then, they give no quarter, we give them none. They aren't desperate. They're greedy and stupid. If I was a pop musician relying on these people to keep me in the money, I'd get my head checked, fire these fools, and adopt a strategy that was in sync with the year 2005 and not 1955.

What should be reqired...

[Nom du Keyboard]

What should be required is that all technological protection features must disable themselves completely when the copyright period ends.

And please try to restrain yourself from the obvious follow-up that they'll never have to do this because eternal copyright is just around the corner.

No more levy?

[Sebby]

So, this means no more levy on recordable media, right? .... RIGHT?!?

DMCA isn't a problem, lack of 'loser pays all' is

[Qbertino]

The DMCA isn't a problem. It's a nutcase law, I give you that. But it isn't a problem, since the law counts for everybody.

Applied with a good sense of creative nonsense it can protect anybody from anything.
Apply the DMCA to ways to access your personal data and sue anybody who sends you comercial mail into next wednesday.

The DMCA only becomes so oppresive in the US because they don't have the 'loser pays all' paradigm. Which is the only way any civil legal system makes sense. Not having 'loser pays all' is the next best thing to corporate fascism (sic).

Here in germany I have a friend that has trouble with big players in his field bringing up heavy legal caliber against him (he's into booksales on the web and it's about the german pricefixing law for books, even Pearson is involved). He goes to state court this month and if the corporate assholes lose he can carry on doing his business. In the US he'd be broke allready.

Bottom line: Add 'loser pays all legal expenses of trial' to the system and have every hotdog stand apply the DMCA to each and everyt aspect of their small business - and the insanity of this law becomes aparent to anybody with basic brain functions. And it will eventually disapear.

Re:Acceptance of facts - but is it stealing?

[Mr2001]

To me, stealing is taking a tangible object. Stealing a CD from a music store has taken something of value that cost money to produce. A download by a person who would have never bought the song, or can't buy the song -- and many versions of older songs aren't yet even for sale as singles -- hasn't cost the industry a cent, yet they claim losses of billions.

Exactly. The reason theft is wrong isn't that you get something for nothing; it's that you deprive the owner of the use of what you stole. If I take your car, you can't drive; if I take your CD, you can't listen to it. But if I make a copy of a song on your CD, we can both listen to it; I gain something, but you lose nothing. It makes no sense to speak of stealing something that isn't scarce.

Furthermore, even in cases where downloading a song causes someone not to buy it, it still isn't stealing. No one owns their expected revenue, and no one has the right to demand money from everyone who enjoys something they worked on. Negative reviews are responsible for more loss of expected revenue than any illegal copying - should we lock up Roger Ebert for preventing movie studios from getting the profit that's rightfully theirs?

Re:My plan...

[KillerBob]

Did you read the blog at all?

His analysis says pretty clearly that downloading through p2p is still considered legal. It always will be as long as there's still a levy on every blank media purchase.

According to TFA, the real concern is that this *bill* (still hasn't been passed into law) would make it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy mechanisms on CDs and such. In other words, if there's garbling to prevent playing a CD on a computer (and likely old CD players too), it'd be illegal to hook up your CD player's line out to your computer's line in and record the songs directly. Likewise, it'd become illegal to circumvent some proprietary copy protection that collects your name and vitals when you rip a recording for personal use.

The only conclusion I can make is that they really don't want people buying their crap, which is an objective I'm more than happy to help with. If it happens, then I guess my solution would be to switch back to cassettes... for all of one album every couple of years.

Re:Acceptance of facts - but is it stealing?

[Mr2001]

I write software for a living. The time it takes to put out a software product is scarce. The money I am payed or which I must invest for creating that intangible and "0-cost reproducible" stream of bits is scarce. Reproduction costs are irrelevant; there must be something to be reproduced to begin with, and that something is scarce.

You're making a classic mistake here. You're entirely correct, of course, that the time it takes to make a program, a song, or a movie is a limited resource, but once that time has already been put into making it, the program/song/movie itself is not scarce.

I also write software for a living, so I know as well as you do that programming time and talent is scarce. But there's a difference between programming and programs. Just like a mechanic or a barber, I don't worry about what someone else wants to do with the fruits of my labor, since I've already been paid for it. The only way someone could "steal" my labor as a programmer would be to sit me in front of a computer and force me to write code.

When you distribute works (books, music, movies, software, whatever) without the copyright owner's permission you are stealing something: the compensation to which the author is entitled for creating it.

If you don't own something, no one can steal it from you - and you don't own potential revenue.

Moreover, the author isn't entitled to get paid just because he made something. If Universal Studios spends $200 million and two years making a terrible movie, and it gets such bad reviews that no one ever buys a ticket, have the reviewers "stolen" something from them? Of course not.

And more importantly, even if everyone who reads those bad reviews decides to download the movie instead of buying a ticket, the studio still isn't entitled to anything. They're in exactly the same situation whether those people download the movie or just sit at home doing nothing; the only difference is that in one scenario, those people get to watch the movie anyway, which harms no one (except themselves, if it really is that bad).

But you must know this already. Otherwise, I must presume you have nothing against taking GPL code and selling it as closed binaries.

Actually, in a world where everyone was free to reverse engineer, decompile, change, and redistribute software, I wouldn't have much of a problem with that. Thing is, we don't live in that world, we live in one where misusing GPL'd code creates an unfair advantage.

But the UNfair use that so many are trying to justify with the above "argument", and which is practiced on a massive scale, makes elected representatives easier to convince that these laws are necessary.

One man's "fair" is apparently another man's "UNfair". Take the trading of TV shows, for instance: last night, due to a TiVo scheduling mishap, I missed the new episode of a popular show. Luckily, I was able to download it via BT a couple hours later. Nothing wrong with that, right? Whether I watch it on TiVo or on my PC, the result's the same: I have a recording and I watch it hours after the show airs.

Now what if I didn't have TiVo, and I just downloaded the show every week? Still fair? After all, whether I pay $13 to TiVo every month shouldn't affect my ability to watch this show; TiVo has nothing to do with the show. Same argument applies if I don't own a TV.

And yet the studios are still up in arms about TV shows being traded, and every pro-copyright argument applies just as well to free-to-air TV shows as it does to songs and movies. Copyright isn't about getting paid, it's about dictating the terms under which someone can reproduce a chunk of information.