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."

Comments

it's german

[User 956]

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.

Re:it's german

[Beardo the Bearded]

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.

Re:38,000 Canadians?

[Geof]

that's like what, 32,000 Americans?

The U.S. has roughly ten times our population, so in terms of political significance it's more like 380,000 Americans. At one point we had about two people joining every minute. Imagine if every 3 seconds an American signed up to protest the DMCA.

State sanctioned.

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

the new camcord legislation is costing ME money

[CodeMunch]

First: Thank you Mr. Geist for being a vocal representative for us.

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