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Canadian Record Industry's Secret Lobby Campaign
CRIAWatch writes "Michael Geist has an editorial published in the Hill Times, a Canadian
political newsweekly, about a secret lobbying campaign by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. The report details how days after the last Canadian election CRIA lobbyists worked with officials to plan an event featuring speakers on the CRIA payroll who are promoting a DMCA for Canada, dozens of government officials from seven departments, an expensive lunch with senior government executives paid for by taxpayers, as well as a private meeting with the Canadian Heritage Minister who is responsible for copyright law."
I for one welcome our wealthy overlords. In all seriousness many democratic countries are effectively ruled by the rich already. (For example consider the amount of money needed to win an election, ensuring all candidates are either independently wealthy or in the pockets of their campaign contributors) Why should it surprise anyone that the people in power are making laws that benefit themselves? See Plutocracy and tell me with a straight face that isn't almost every modern "democratic" government.
Philosophy.
As signatories of the 1996 WIPO Copyright treaty, Canada is legally obliged to create a DMCA type law. They signed up to this already - it is just a matter of implementation.
lobbying is just another word for legalised bribery
democracy has nothing to do with it
Nor does "freedom of speech" - on which grounds lobbying + campaign contributions are usually defended. Bribery of a public official is a crime which should trump any claims to freedom of speech, but somehow in our twisted world, does not.
I'm from Ottawa and have been to Le Panache. It is expensive for the area. There are probably a few more expensive restaurants, but not many. I don't know what they had for lunch, but there are plenty of cheaper (and still quite private) restaurants in the area. Personally, I find it offensive that a lobby group asked for a meeting and the government took them out to such a fancy place (or any place at all, really -- they don't have meeting rooms in the parliament buildings???). There are plenty of pro-user lobbiests who can't even get the Heritage department to read an email let alone take them out to lunch.
> "How do you know it's a DMCA?" > "It's got shit all over it." > "Well I didn't vote for it." Bloody peasant. You don't vote for the DMCA. Well sure you don't vote for it in the normal sence.
If you pay taxes you are voting for it though (just read the summary, everything these lobbyists are doing is on the tax payers dime not their own).
Something seems a bit fishy about the motives of CRIA and its not just this Canadia-taxpayer funded meal.
Not only have most of the Canadian labels pulled out, but they don't seem to easily identify which labels they represent.
More telling though is this site http://www.cria.ca/stats.php which has their industry statistics on CD and DVD sales. I'm not an accountant or trained in business, but doesn't it feel funny to read this sentence? "Sales information is supplied by members of CRIA and tabulated by Grant Thornton without audit." I take their said statistics with a grain of salt.
Politician: So are you saying movies and music are being pirated? Do you have less sales records as proof?
CRIA: Yes.
Critic: So who tabulates the records? Is there an audit trail?
CRIA: One person. Sorry no audits available.
Politician: Enough! The proof is in the records!
Critic: But they're not even responsibily tallied! We need more information.
Politician: We're passing the law.
Ah, Democracy!! (sigh)
If you have a form of government that is highly centralized, with virtually no limits to the control it can exercise on people, then opportunists will take advantage of that power. The more centralized a government, the easier it is to control, and the more powerful a government, the more opportunity for power or profit by manipulating it.
It is unrealistic to assume that a state as centralized and powerful as the government of Canada wouldn't be ripe with corruption. People don't understand politics, because they try to understand politics and government as a "moral" issue that is somehow seperate from the laws of physics and reality. Any system gets large enough, and it is more and more difficult to fight entrophy. In creatures, large creatures are more prone to parasites and diseases, and require much more food energy just to survive with little added benift. In a software project, as you have more and more source code and more and more complexity, development of the software will require more and more resources just to manage the project and debug. Likewise, a large government like Canada will naturaly have vast amounts of corruption. In everything from Empires, to bread molds, to youtube internet memes, there seems to be a certain threshold for growth beyond which a system tends to lose cohesion and fall apart.
Many Canadians still don't get that they are no longer a "small" country. It is no longer the "northern wilderness" it was 100 years ago, and the government has grown to be a leviathan. Canadians think theirs is a "smaller, friendlier" government, because they tend to compare themselves to the United States which is the epitome of vast unchecked leviathan monster government. But the Canadian government has become a vast beurocracy that dominates nearly all of Canadian life - Making secret deals with the government is the only way a large buisness can survive in Canada.
If Canada didn't have a "Heritage Minister" to control the flow of information, there would be no central authority for big media to manipulate (real heritage is a spontanious cultural expression of the people, and not a commmodity like water or petroleum to be centrally planned by the state). If the government didn't have vast powers to regulate communication protocols, media, computer networks, and electronic devices, bribery and corruption would be irrelevant: There would be no point in trying to manipulate authority that doesn't exist.