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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."
Let's do it. Someone start this petition, and lets get the word out.
US companies funding US lobby groups to pressure the Canadian government into passing US-style DCMA laws? I think it's very relevant.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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).
While I wish him well, he's really just trying to maintain/regain ground. Ultimately, the upcoming generation that refuses to engage in the ridiculous game of "pretend" that the distribution agencies insist we all play (as in, pretend these bits are really hard to copy) will do more. It'll just take a while.
"Piracy" (sharing) isn't a "solution", it's just a description of reality. The sooner everyone accepts that, the better we'll all be.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
That only works in a minority government as the opposition can in theory throw the government into an election. And the senate, well when was the last time they actually really stopped a government bill?
Fortunately Canada has a minority government right now, for if not this would not even make the news and be rubber stamped. Even if the opposition opposed there would be absolutely nothing they could do about it but make idle noise. The parliamentary system is marginal democracy, one could look at majority governments in parliament as a 5 year dictatorship with no separation of legislative and administrative branches.
Now for the punch line. Just like the US, and more openly so, need a little election moneys? Do a CRIA or RIAA a favor? No problem. Even former PMs ADMIT openly to taking $300,000 in CASH envelopes and in the safety deposit box it goes. Undeclared taxation moneys or bribe, does not mater a lawyer should know better. Don't get me started on "offshore" Martin.
Canadians have a very much false impression of how their government really works.
The reasons we're not that interested in what Mulroney did are:
1. We all know that he's a corrupt asshole.
2. We got tired of his shit after Meech Lake.
3. If it's not "Hey, Chinboy's going to jail", we just don't care.
Our politicians aren't noble, not by any stretch. I wouldn't go far enough to call them 5-year dictatorships. After all, they have to get re-elected, and we'll remember.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I don't usually disagree wrt new laws sucking, but in this case, it makes sense. Unless you are given explicit permission, it should not be legal to camcord a movie in a theatre. That it ever was legal was not good, and even if nobody were ever charged, clearing up idiosyncrasies like this is what law is for.
Better they "waste" money making laws that make sense than laws that are inherently bad.
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.
Camcording a movie is certainly not hurting the public welfare; it does infringe on intellectual property, but it cannot be defined as a crime, especially that the law specifically mentions that in order to be a crime, one has to camcord the movie ***WITHOUT*** the permission of the theater manager.
Judges will take a very dim view of a law that lowers them to the level of a movie house manager...
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!).