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Canadian Politicians Demand DMCA
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting that a Canadian parliamentary committee has demanded that the government establish a Canadian DMCA. The demand, which comes in a study on counterfeiting and piracy (PDF) released on Wednesday night, recommends ratification of the WIPO Internet treaties, increasing damage awards for copyright infringement, creating new offenses for selling modification devices, and encouraging prosecutors to seek jail time for piracy violations."
Canadian Politicians Demand DMCA?
I demand new Canadian politicians.
- Canadian Voter
But who exactly demanded the DMCA-like policies? Politicians pretty much everywhere are ciphers for constituent and special interests, and so it is unusual in the extreme for a legislative idea to come tumbling unbidden from legislators' heads. So, I'm wondering whose doing the demanding such that the legislators are responding.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
that pirates represent such a huge threat to society we should spend tax dollars jailing them.
Give me a fucking break. Can we not come up with a better punishment than jail for non-violent "criminals?"
What do the Canadian citizens demand?
How can a politician who is by definition a servant of the public demand that a law be crafted according to their interests. In a democracy their job is to serve the interests of the public not the other way around, at least on paper. Or is Canada no longer a democracy?
First off, I'm sorry for all you Canadians whose politics are getting fucked up by stupid companies.
Second, it made some small amount of sense when the DMCA was put in place in the US because it hadn't been tried before. There were no examples of the DMCA in another large, first world country failing spectacularly. I still think that Orrin Hatch is an idiot at best, but at least they had some justification for it.
But these politicians have no such defense. The DMCA was a failure by anyones metric, online piracy is out of control and pirated materials are sold without much problem. How could anyone in their right mind think that more of the same will help anything? How could anyone think that this is in Canada's best interest? This makes no sense.
p.s. This isn't meant to say anything about canada in general or to endorse piracy.
Just as parliamentarians voted to break for the summer, the Industry Committee issued its report on counterfeiting and piracy, unambiguously titled Counterfeiting and Piracy are Theft.
Ok, two things.
First off, "Industry Committee". A group that, by it's name alone admits that it does not represent the people. It represents business interests.
Secondly, "Counterfeiting and Piracy are Theft". No, they're not. Otherwise you wouldn't need laws against counterfeiting and copyright violation, now would you? Theft was already on the books as a bad thing.
What they are trying to do is to make things that aren't theft equal to theft to support their agenda. Which represents no person - only business interests.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
As a Canadian whose been watching this since the late 90's, frankly I thought that we'd have reached this stage earlier. The media companies have been pushing the government non-stop: obviously, they are finding that Bev Oda and her Tory friends are more receptive to their message than Shiela Copps was in the Liberal days.
As the Americans have discovered, it is difficult to get rid of crappy laws. The lobbyists know this: they just have to have patience and find the right stooges in power to do their bidding, then they're set.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
While I do appreciate the comments on these forums as they are usually informative and funny, in this case the forums are not the place for your comments.
I know, all systems are flawed and MPs are corrupt, blah blah blah; BUT, we have MPs for the purpose of representing us in Parliament. Use them.
Write your MP. Tell them that you do not support this, and that your vote will be based on who represents you best, and not what colour they wear on their party logo. Maybe, just maybe, if we get enough support we can start to direct our government in a direction chosen by it's citizens instead of corporations.
I wrote mine.. wappel.t@parl.gc.ca
Why stop there? The current parliament session is over...all the MPs are going home. Go down to your local constituency office and make an appointment to speak to him or her in person, and lay out your concerns face to face. I doubt your MP will tell you straight to your face that he or she intends to fuck over you and your interests.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Check out this article while you're at it. Seems Ontario's Attorney General thinks it's ok that "cars adapted for street racing can be seized and destroyed, even if charges haven't been laid and a race has not taken place". In other words, screw the legal system, if the cops think your car may be used for street racing at somer point, they can impound it and destroy it and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
See, these events are the ultimate result of creating a nanny-state. Eventually the government will want to take away ALL your rights, while insisting it's doing it to "protect you". People insist that the US is a police state, while I as a Canadian can be arrested for unpopular speech, have severe limitations on the ownership of weapons, don't have the right to protect my property with physical force of ANY kind, including open-hand control, and now can have my private property destroyed by the government just because I'm suspected of maybe intending to commit a crime. Face it, we lost our rights a long time ago. Those of you protesting against this DMCA act are trying to close the barn doors after all the animals have run off, and the rest of the barn burned to the ground.