Slashdot Mirror
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.
Kinda makes me feel like punching a bunch of corrupt officials. Dunno about you.
Life is not for the lazy.
"How do you know it's a DMCA?"
"It's got shit all over it."
"Well I didn't vote for it."
KFG
between "secret lobbying" and "bribery"
In my country bribery used to be a scandalous form of fraud.
call a spade a spade, you hand money/favors to politician in the expectation he gives you something worthwhile for your money
you really think [COMPANYNAME] would spend millions in "contributions" if it made no difference ? do you think these companies treat it as a charity donation or as a strategic investment ?
lobbying is just another word for legalised bribery
democracy has nothing to do with it
money and material desire is the problem
Watch out Canada! We'll make you into the United States yet!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When the conservatives won in January it was just a matter of time really.
> "It's got shit all over it."
> "Well I didn't vote for it."
Bloody peasant.
You don't vote for the DMCA.
"The music lobby group was planning a study on the Canadian music industry and was seeking $50,000 in funding from Canadian Heritage to help support the project. " I am going to freak, if I as a tax payer have to pay to fund corprate propoganda.
The only members of the CRIA are the American record labels. The Canadian labels have all pulled out.
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The article stated that they "enjoyed lunch and drinks at Canadian Heritage's expense in a private dining room at Le Panache restaurant."
Here's some info on Le Panache. Entrees are $24 - $29 Canadian, which is about $22 - $26 US. That's an average price in a major metro area. But, that's probably a lot of money to the sort of Slashdot readers who clicked on this item -- the same sort who think that $0.99 for a music track is way too expensive.
The federal government holding some sort of function "at taxpayers' expense" (another quote from the summary), particularly one where food and drinks are involved, is certainly not news here in the real world. But if I found that my lawmakers were opting to choose a restaurant in the sub-$30 range for their fetes, I'd be pleasantly surprised.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I'd like to see a list of exactly which government officials attended this.
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.
I had no idea what the Canadian Heritage was, so I looked it up. Apparenty, its an official goverment branch that is responsible for national policies and programs that promote Canadian content, foster cultural participation, active citizenship and participation in Canada's civic life, and strengthen connections among Canadians.
You can call secret meetings with public officials to take rights from the people to create property for corporations "democracy", but that's your problem.
--
make install -not war
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).
While it is true that Canada signed the 1996 WIPO treaty it does not mean that we have to pass a law anything like the DMCA in the U.S. Before it was killed due to the last Federal election, the copyright reform act that was proposed did contain provisions for criminalizing the circumvention of digital copy controls, but only if the intent was to pirate. Circumvention of a copy control for personal use was excepted, so ripping a copy of a DVD to your hard drive or cracking e-book encryption to interopt with text to speech software and anything else that could fall under personal was permitted. Huge, huge difference. That's not to say the bill was perfect, libraries and universities were not happy with some of the provisions. I am sure they are happy the bill died.
Also, the personal exemption for private copying of audio works was untouched, so one could continue to make copies of CDs and tapes without worry of prosecution.
Hey, it might be cold in Cananda, but were not stupid. When the previous bill went to committee it was brought up again and again how the DMCA in the U.S. had failed and was a model for how not to implement the digital copy controls outlined in the WIPO treaty. I don't think the current Conservative government wants to go through all that again, so I doubt that any copyright bill they propose would differ substantially from the previous one, although you can be sure that libraries, schools and universities are going to make themselves a little better heard.
"Well, how'd it become law, then?" ...
"The Lobbyist of the Beltway, *angels sing* his arm clad in purest Armani, held forth money from the bosom of the recording industry, thus signifying that I, the DMCA, was to be the law of the land."
"Listen, strange men hanging about in offices distributing cash is no basis for a system of government. Legislative power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical economic ceremony."
"Be quiet!"
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
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 it ends up costing Canadians their rights, isn't that a pretty expensive lunch?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
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.
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)
Actually the cost of an election has gone way down, in America that is. Only a fraction of the money that used to be spent lying to the electorate is now necessary to bribe the programmer of the Diebold election machine. Pay off the programmer and you win: 51% to 49%, each and every time.