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."
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
We do things differently in Canada.
Instead of trying to tilt one way or the other, we try our best to come up with compromises that suit all legitimate parties and society as a whole. Instead of saying, "w3 sld 2 d/l L R mp3s n war3z!" the rational amongst us will come up with some points that we can all agree on. What this does is force the other side to compromise as well. If the CCRA won't budge, then we can realize that they're full of back bacon and they can leave parliament hill.
We've always had an opposition party and called it Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. The idea is that you are supposed to be critical of your government - and that you never have your loyalty to the country (or the crown) questioned. This gives us a lot of options when the government messes up. If my local conservative MP doesn't want to listen, I can call Keith Martin's office and tell them all about it. They'll follow up. If the Industry Minister proposes crappy legislation, I can call the Industry Critics and send them a portfolio on the details.
And yes, I got your ghost joke.
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