Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
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!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Here is the Slashdot story with links changed to mirrors:
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."
Dashboard Widgets
They didn't introduce a new law, they introduced a new bill. It's not a law yet, and hopefully won't be.
Please don't make such misleading headlines.
...The Canadian Government was sued today by the RIAA, for copyright infringement, over its DMCA act. "Mine, mine, mine! Precioussss!" squeeled the head of the RIAA, on the One Law being returned.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
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The moral is, the USA isn't really more corrupt or backward than many other governments out there. They were just the first to get it because that's where most the money is, and that's where the pressures of the information age hit first.
FTA (emphasis mine) This does not alter the right to make a personal copy (including a P2P download) but does set some tough limits on what users are entitled to do with those copies.
That will be next on the entertainment cartel's radar.
Trolling is a art,
I place the blame squarely on you, America. This was a great place to live, to go to school, to pirate music and raise kids until you moved in across the border.
Sincerely,
Canada.
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
Here in canada, like the states, the major parties are very capitalist (Liberals and Conservatives) in nature and support the corporations fully, so you should not be shocked when the gov. lets corporations get their way. Of course, here in canada, the NDP (new democratic party) is the 3rd party (with 19%) of the popular vote, and since it's left-leaning, would be the only party likely to support any sort of consumer rights. If your in the US, both the Dems and Reps are more towards the right (say, compaired to canada), so you have got to expect more right-wing thought...alos, in the US, there is way more relgion in the mix too.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
AC comments get piped to
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Here's what we do:
First, don't panic.
Once a bill is introduced, the following must happen. You should know this if you're a Canadian.
1. It is read for the first time in the House of Commons (which has apparently been done.)
2. The bill goes to the Senate, which will set up a committee to go over the bill and modify / approve it.
3. The modified bill will go to the HoC again for a second reading. If passed again, it returns to the Senate for further editing.
4. After the Senate looks over it again, it goes back to the HoC for a third reading and announcement. Once the law has been announced, then it goes into the Copyright Act.
Note that many laws have been passed but never announced, making them unenforceable.
To prevent this bill from being passed, do this:
1. Call and write and email your MP. It's free to do so in Canada. Go to their office and tell them that you want to talk about the bill. (Know the number before you go down.) Don't expect to meet with them. You just want the staff to know that someone was there about Bill C-X and who doesn't support it. Remember that they have their faxes full with US fundie groups complaining about gay marriage.
2. Tell them that you vote and your friends vote. This shouldn't be a lie. (I think that if someone says they don't vote, it's okay to hit them since it's self-defence.)
3. Tell them that if this passes, it's enough to get you to vote for a party that doesn't support it.
4. Remind them that free distribution of Canadian content keeps Canadian culture alive. (Hint: Tragically Hip >> Nickelback.)
5. Talk about the levy placed on blank media that compensates the recording industry.
Two other things of vital note:
1. In Canada, the loser pays the court costs. It's not like in the US where you can bankrupt someone by suing them. If you get in trouble, lawyer up. If your ISP calls, get them to forward all communication to your lawyer.
2. The ISP can charge for providing the information to the industry. I use Shaw, and I can't possibly see them passing up free money. I mean, come on, it's Shaw.
3. Set up a neighbourhood network. Get a good router and let your neighbours in on it. Keep the network open. Keep no records of who has what IP address. Then they have no idea who's doing the infriging since you don't know either!
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Enforcing and Amalgamating Trustworthy Copyright Regulations, Assurances and Protections -- Countering the Onerous, Nefarious and Stupid Underming of Many Elites' Riches
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.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
In my opinion, there is very little chance of this passing. Parliament is set to recess for the summer and this bill would have to go through first reading, second reading and committee or report stage and finally third reading all before summer recess or risk dying on the order paper. The Liberals are having trouble enough getting the same-sex marriage legislation to third reading stage, never mind a bill introduced this late.
I think the bill was introduced as a way of deflecting criticism for delaying implementation of recent WIPO intellectual property agreements and to appease lobby groups clamouring for action on the "theft" of music and movies on the internets after several reverses by the courts.
Q7 "Legitimate access as authorized by the Copyright Act, will not be altered.
3 9796
Circumvention for the purposes of making private copies of sound recordings will not be permitted, however.
See the Copyright act section 80
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-42/39673.html#rid-
At the very least they shouldn't lie in the FAQ describing a new law.
Time to contact your MP, remember it is free to snail mail them.
Boycott the RIAA and they'll just blame the decreased sales on piracy. That's their universal excuse for everything.
Q: "How come you're not selling as many CDs?"
A: "Because of piracy."
Q: "Are you sure it isn't because your music sucks?"
A: "Nope. Our research and focus groups have carefully developed a special style and formula that will generate hits as easy as using a cookie cutter. Each one is a guaranteed chart buster. The only reason they aren't is because of piracy."
Q: "What about the people boycotting sales of your CDs? Is that affecting your sales?"
A: "Boycott? Why would anyone boycott us? No, it's only a justification to pirate more music."
Q: "How come you haven't been able to establish a strong market in China?"
A: "Piracy. Duh!"
Q: "What about Antarctica?"
A: "Yup, piracy there too. Damn polar bears."
Q: "I hear that there's a new artist out that's selling really well. Is it because they're finally making fresh music that people enjoy?"
A: "Nope, it's because we've stepped up our efforts to fight piracy."
Q: "So I guess your shit don't stink, huh?"
A: "Pirates keep stealing it, so it doesn't linger long enough for the odor to fester."
Q: "Is there anything good that has come out of piracy?"
A: "Heck yeah! We're reaching incredible profit milestones thanks to our lawsuit business model. I strongly recommend it for any business, but don't follow SCO's example though."
Q: "Is there anything pirates are NOT to blame for?"
A: "Bush getting elected."
Look them up here
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
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.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Normally, I would post this anonymously to avoid being a "karma whore", but since it's late in the day and the story has been up for a while...
The following is mentioned every time a Slashdot story is posted about Canadian copyright law, but it deserves to be repeated: fellow Canadians, if you want to do something constructive about this, there is a website set up to lobby against this bill, at http://www.digital-copyright.ca/
According to that site, there is a Member of Parliament (MP) with an interest in this issue, who presented the first petition against this bill back in April 2005 around the time the first Slashdot story broke, and a second petition in May: Peter Julian, New Democratic Party (NDP), MP Burnaby-New Westminster.