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Geist's Fair Copyright for Canada Principles
An anonymous reader writes "Canadian law prof Michael Geist has been leading the charge against a Canadian DMCA including the creation of a Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that now has more than 38,000 members. Having delayed the legislation, he now outlines what Canadians should be fighting for — more flexible fair dealing, a
balanced implementation of the WIPO Internet treaties, an ISP safe
harbor, and a modernized backup copy provision."
Canadian law prof Michael Geist has been leading the charge against a Canadian DMCA including the creation of a Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that now has more than 38,000 members.
With Mr. Geist leading the discussion, I'm sure it's very spirited. The RIAA doesn't have a ghost of a chance.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
There is absolutely no relevance of this story to the US government or US politics whatsoever.
It's a Canadian issue, and it doesn't belong in this section. The editors need to follow their own rules.
Canada is a state-in-denial...
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
that's like what, 32,000 Americans?
38,000 frantic Canadians standing around saying "eh? take off ya DMCA hoser". Adorably cute. I could just kiss Canadians.
I want the audiance to make note that he solves the copyright issues via society sanctioned means. Not by hiding behind a geo/content-hiding P2P client in the safety of one's basement. Talk about mass rebellion all you want, it's people like him who will do far more to make things balanced (as opposed to the lopsided solution piracy presents).
Several months ago there was an amendment to our copyright legislation (bill C-59) that made the "camcording" a criminal act....mostly due to the "rampant piracy" [insert blame canada here] reported by us corporations.
I couldn't find a date when that legislation was passed (introduced June 1, 2007 - does that mean passed as well?) but since then, only TWO people have been charged and the second was just a couple days ago.
Thank you MPAA (and canadian derivatives) for wasting my fucking tax dollars to prop up your business model. It's doing a swell job catching all the bad camcords going to the U.S.
Thank you Bev Oda and Maxime Bernier for representing foreign interests. traitors.
The previous Michael Geist /. link:
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/12/1150200
"Thank you MPAA (and canadian derivatives) for wasting my fucking tax dollars to prop up your business model."
Yeah, well it's not like camcording was going to do it.
"It's doing a swell job catching all the bad camcords going to the U.S."
Considering all the tin ears that listen to MP3s. I can certainly see people consuming bad camcordings.
The bill will be introduced sometime in the next month or so. It is now considered, thanks to the efforts of everyone who called and wrote in December, a high profile bill.
A bill goes through 3 readings in the House of Commons. After the third it is passed to the Senate. After the first and second reading the bill may be sent to committee for hearings and modification. Now here is where it gets tricky. After the second reading the committee cannot make major changes to the bill, so if the proposed copyright legislation is really broken (and by all indications it will be) it needs to go to committee after first reading where it can be completely overhauled if need be.
But it is the discretion of the House leaders (each party) whether it goes to committee after the first reading.
So you all need to write the Leader, House Leader, and Industry critic of the opposition parties to tell them this bill must go to committee after the first reading so we have an opportunity for hearings and major revisions. Send copies to Stephen Harper, Jim Prentice (Minister of Industry), Josée Verner (Heritage), Peter Van Loan (Government House Leader), James Rajotte (head of the Industry committee) and your local MP while you are at it.
This might sound like a lot of work, but because of the minority government this is probably the best time for this legislation. Remember, committees are made up proportional to seats in the House, so the Government has to bargain with the opposition there too.
Serve Gonk.
Copyright is no longer about content creators but owners and extending ownership. It's not about the artist but the label who OWNS the artist.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
By the terms of the DVD-CCA, properly-licensed DVD players **CANNOT** play DVDs from outside the region they are assigned. Of course, everyone has region-free DVD players, but it is absolutefuckingly sure that such players **WILL** be outlawed, as well as the DECSS software everyone loves and hates.
However, such a law will bit parliament big-time in the arse: Canada is a country of immigrants, much more so than the US, as there is no "Canadian melting pot" as immigrants are encouraged to retain their cultures*. Now, you are going to tell indians that they are not allowed to watch movies from India? Tell the Chinese that they are not allowed to watch movies from China? Tell the French that they are not allowed to watch movies from France? Tell english that they are not allowed to watch British movies? but they should only watch what Hollywood decides they should watch?
Like, yeah, this is going to go right well down with the plebe...
Better yet, in our Constitution is a Charter of Rights which does not gives a shit about commercial interests trampling the individual freedom of, say, watching a movie of one's choice.
* An old ploy to minorize the french by having immigrants consider them like yet another ethnic group (never mind that the french actually founded Canada as we know it almost half a millenium ago -- my ancestors were well established here when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth!).
Seriously: congrats to our Canadian cousins for facing this issue. Could it be that a parliamentary system makes it easier to address issues other than the two-party whores-race?
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Please do note that Unless you live in Canada where citizens are shielded from P2P copyright lawsuits, because the pay an extra fee on their CD, DVD purchases to do so, then downloading some P2P files may put you at risk for a civil lawsuit in any other country. These lawsuits usually take the form of class-action suits, filed against groups of users who are logged as blatantly copying and distributing copyrighted materials. Recently, the MPAA and RIAA, along with the governments of England and Australia, took several thousand users to court, demanding that they pay thousands of dollars in copyright infringement penalties. " It is also illegal for DMCA to invade the privacy of Canadians, to harass, obstruct their downloads with fakes torrents. Attention the Federal Minister of Industries, Consumer affairs, Jim Prentice Jan 7, 2007 Reference: MediaDefender MediaDefender , a notorious anti piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, who mow had launched even their very own video upload service called "miivi.com". The sole purpose also of the site was to trap people into uploading supposedly copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so. Now the overall the manner in which they did any of this clearly was illegal firstly too in Canada. It has been at least 3 months since the many news media has reported the false invasion of our home computers, invasion of our home privacy, sabatoage of our Internet bittorrent download usage by MediaDefender and so what good have you now personally done about any of in this time now too? About this big culprit who are seriously responsible for our costly related big interent band width waste usage and that you all should firstly should go after MediaDefender , or Overpeer, who now in the last year with their thousands of computers have generated phony torrents. Now did you have them MediaDefender liable for 'Disrupting Normal Services' by uploading fake torrents and rightfully prosecuted, for 'Disrupting Normal Internet Services' in Canada by their now uploading their fake torrents? Downloading torrents is not illegal in Canada for any Canadians now too but sabotaging our right to do so and their invasion of our personal privacy is. RSVPas to what good have you now personally done about any of in this time now too? http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-emails-leaked-070915/ PS In Canada Peer to peer P2P Internet usage has become very popular and is a main reasons many person have a high speed Internet.. but a high speed Internet does not necessary insure you get adequate speeds on your torrent downloads. Also insure that when you get an Internet Service Provider do first check their actual speeds delivered to you, should be at least 6 megs for a high speed system . see http://groups.msn.com/CanadaToday5/internetspeedtest.msnw or search engine - "Internet speed test", and insure that you have unlimited download capability preferably, and that they do not cap the downloads in anyway.. A simple tip to insure optimize download capabilities is to cap your bit torrent's program uploads capabilities to about 60 kbs, to avoid it from plugging up, and do restrict to about 8 torrents downloads too? Trial and error here will let you know what is best for you. How to improve your downloads using a bit torrent program http://bittorrent-list.blogspot.com/
we have about 24 million internet accounts. Sept 2005 - 5.4 million were logged into p2p systems at same time March 2006 - 9.8 Million Thats last time they wanted it public but it is said round circles it could be as many as 2/3 using p2p. The internet levy proposed would raise about 5$ per internet account. 120million/month or about 1.44Billion now think about times 8 for the USA.... Then add Europe..... Asia.... So this really isn't about money after all else they'd push this. It is about control or DRM, just a differant kind of DRM. ALSO note the minister regarding this has now publicly said he is against a DMCA style law citing the SONY case as perfect example of why we cannot have it here. However instead he went on about TPM ( Technological Protection Measures ) as though that too is good. TPM is just a new buzz word for DRM. ANYTHING ENDING IN "M" MUST BE BAD. This Gov't won't last to see it through anyways, everyones gearing for an election. There budget won't live through life and also remember the bilion htere giving forestry supposedly in this budget, we'd not have to do that if Harper had not signed the pact giving us 4 billion when the next day in court we won the last appeal to get all 5 billion in the softwood lumber deal. LOOK where the housing market is now and where its going in the USA. We could have used the billion, it makes no diff to them down there , all mucked for a long time.