Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Gov't Gives Big Bucks to Copyright Lobby
5degreez writes "The Toronto Star is reporting
that the Canadian government is providing
hundreds of thousands of dollars to a copyright lobby group that claims
that education groups are 'devoted to abolishing creators' rights on the
Internet.' Documents obtained under the Access to Information Act by Prof Michael Geist
reveal that government officials recognized that the funding
established a bad precedent, yet they still plan to pay big bucks until
2008."
Depends by what you mean by *AA.
The money goes to the Creators' Rights Alliance. They include groups that represent poets, songwriters and composers. I do not believe that the CRIA (the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA) is part of this alliance.
Here in the USA, there are groups that represent the media companies (the RIAA and the MPAA), and there are groups that represent artists (ASCAP and BMI). This distinction doesn't matter to many Slashdotters, but for background it's important to understand that the RIAA and ASCAP/BMI are often at odds with each other. Generally speaking, if you're a "little guy" composer or songwriter, ASCAP/BMI are your friends, and the RIAA is not.
Many people reading this will fall into a couple of camps:
If you are in the "hate the big record companies, respect the artists" camp (the "the artists are needy" group), then you might be okay with this.
If you think that anybody fighting for their rights -- whether they're a big media conglomerate, or a poet making $50 a year -- is out of line, or if you believe that any organization made up of initials and which fights for copyright protection is evil (the "the artists are greedy" camp), then this news may upset you.
I hope this answers your question.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
bzzzzttt...wrong. ASCAP and BMI are colleciton agencies. These are the guys who around to venues and make sure artists are bgine rightfully compensated for the use of their music. If a bar, restaurant, or other establishment has a stereo system larger than a boombox then they have likely been visited by ASCAP and.or BMI. The RIAA also collects royalties but this is on msuic sales. Artists can be compensated by both organizations.
"bzzzzttt...wrong. ASCAP and BMI are colleciton agencies. These are the guys who around to venues and make sure artists are bgine rightfully compensated for the use of their music. If a bar, restaurant, or other establishment has a stereo system larger than a boombox then they have likely been visited by ASCAP and.or BMI."
Correct. ASCAP and BMI collect on behalf of the artists. This is why I wrote that ASCAP and BMI represent artists (as separate and distinct from the RIAA, which represents record companies). When ASCAP or BMI comes a callin', the money goes to the artists, not the record companies.
"The RIAA also collects royalties but this is on msuic sales. Artists can be compensated by both organizations."
The RIAA is a trade group that represents record companies, but it is the record companies that are responsible for calculating and distributing royalties based on CD sales. I know that many people like to use "RIAA" and "big record companies" interchangeably, but it's important to understand that for as much as the RIAA talks about how they are helping the artist, it is the record companies that they represent. Money goes to the RIAA to cover lobbying efforts, lawsuits, and so on, but you won't see the RIAA issuing checks to musicians. That is not their job.
This is why I wrote that the RIAA represents record companies, while BMI and ASCAP represent artists.
Let me know if I'm being unclear, or if you still believe that I'm incorrect.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Well, until we get a separate International Politics section, I think this is probably the best spot for it. Also, you may want to keep in mind that any success by Canadian pro-copyright groups will be held up as an example by the RIAA in their next court battle. If the RIAA can point north and say "Hey look, the Canadian music industry profits went up by 0.00000000001% last year! I bet it's because their pro-copyright groups get government support! *hinthint*", what are the odds that they won't take advantage of the situation?
And for the record a lot of people voted for Harper because the Liberals were a horrible choice and God forbid they vote for a third party. After all, they have no chance of winning!
So yeah, I agree with you, it's gone right wing. But we (the Canadian public) didn't make this lobbyist-funding decision in any more of a way than the American public "decided" to bomb Iraq.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Here in Canada, we actually have four parties currently represented in Parliament. This is down from the five that were there before (two parties merged; nobody got destroyed at the polls).
However, since Confederation, the Prime Minister has been the leader of either the Conservative or Liberal/Whig party. There are other parties, and they do hold seats, but none of them have ever formed the federal government. However, some have won provincial elections.
Handy links:
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
since the original conception of copyright is that it's a way to balance the rights of creators and the public for the greater good. This has its roots in English common law: the Statute of Anne in 1709 established the idea of limited terms for copyrights, the idea being that previously copyrighted material should become public material after a time.
Canda's legal system is not as directly derived from english common law as is the US's. One factor in Canadian copyright law that has almost no representation in the US system is the concept of "Moral Rights" which derive from the continental (i.e. French) take on copyright.
Moral Rights ("droits moraux" in french) are mostly about the author's right to maintain the integrity of the creation - to prevent it from being used in ways which (in the author's opinion) dilute or alter the intent of his work rather than being about making unaltered copies. It is my understanding that under French, and thus probably Canadian law, an author can not reassign his moral rights the way he may assign the right to distribute.
Until a bill was passed settling it, the US had been headed for a decision regarding moral rights regarding the practice of some companies of making and selling "censorship tracks" for mainstream movies. There are a couple of different implementations, but the end result is the ability to see a movie edited by someone not approved by copyright holder. Usually all the good parts are taken out in order to pacify people like Ned Flanders living in Utah.
Hollywood hated the idea and sued, claiming that the companies selling the dvds in conjunction with censorship tracks were misrepresenting the movies as the original works when they were not the creator's intended versions.
It never got to court because congress passed a law that permitted even more draconian drm but also made such censorship tracks legal. But if it had, it would have been about an author's moral rights - although it is pretty certain Hollywood would have had to depend on somewhat creative interpretations of statutes written about things like trademarks in order to "create" moral rights.
Anyway, the point of all that background and explication is that the line you quoted from the CRA's objectives sounds more like it is referring to Moral Rights as recognized by Canadian law than to proprietary rights like the public domain.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The Conservatives weren't in power last fall when this was signed, the Liberals were. The change in power was in January. Also keep in mind that the Liberal party had been trying for awhile to implement a Canadian version of the DMCA
You must not be living in the province of Quebec. Around here, no one would concider the Hells Angels like good guys that like to ride motorcycles. From the early 1980's, when there was several members of the gang that were murdered by other members, to the mid 1990's gang war between the Hells Angels and the Banditos in Montreal (several shootings in bars, exploding cars that killed some civilians, etc), nobody around here conciders them like good guys.