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Microsoft Misleads On Canadian Copyright Reform
An anonymous reader writes "As the battle rages over a Canadian DMCA, Microsoft Canada has published an op-ed in a political newspaper that Michael Geist describes as astonishingly misleading and factually incorrect. Microsoft tries to argue that Canadian copyright law provides no legal protections, even after it received one of the largest copyright damage awards in Canadian history just one year ago."
write an op-ed piece in China about how their standards are too lax. FU Microsoft.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
What!..Microsoft lie!...noo , while Im here selling you Vista Super duper home edition for $799 would you be interested in some prime swamp property.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
The MS article is factually accurate - copyright law does not protect ideas expressed in works. Mr. Geist even updated the posting to reflect this.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Why wouldn't they mislead about copyright reform. They already abuse the broken patent system and now are trying to claim that Linux violates their patents. They are just trying to perpetuate this broken system that is in need of good reform. We'll see how many people really call them on this bs.
M$:You stole our code.
L:No we didn't. Show us.
M$:I'm sorry that is a trade secret, just take our word for it.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
If your self publishing, you're making the content available, nobody would need to 'hack into your website' to get a copy. What they're describing has nothing to do with copyright, therefore further "input" from Microsoft or their mouth-pieces on the subject can only be ignored. Tell the legislators and tell the public, these guys are a joke.
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The worst part of this (beyond Microsoft's outright self-serving lies) is that most Canadians are horribly uninformed/misinformed about copyright laws and will believe virtually anything they hear making copyright FUD north of the border very effective. It would be nice if more people, like Michael Geist, tried to get the truth out there but sadly his sort are rare...
Why does anyone expect the truth from Microsoft anymore?
Granted, it's one of those "free to read the whole article" ones, but a PITA that kept me from reading further nonetheless.
Copy paste from someone else maybe?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
actually the whole article in there in the comment section. Someone appears to have taken the authors advice and hacked the website. :-)
For awhile there, with the OOXML, and other things, I was afraid that the big bad wolf had fallen in 'friends' with the little pigs. I thought and thought about that, and just could not get my head around it. If there is no monopoly to fight, or evildoers to rail against, life is just too surreal to contemplate. What, with people working together and profitability made second class citizen to cooperation and interoperability. Just when I was beginning to think that consistency was vanishing from the face of the earth, MS has come to my rescue and reassured me that they are evil, and always will be. ohhh, how nice it is to know somethings will never change... I can sleep again.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
In years past, there was no way that Microsoft would have approved such a weak op-ed piece. Maybe some low-level manager approved this one, because it is simply an embarrassment to the company - with ridiculous examples that a high school student could rip apart regardless of the interpretation of their text.
Sadly, Microsoft is at the point where it needs to step up its game and change the way it does business if it wants to remain relevant. This piece, and the purchase of Yahoo, are all signs that Microsoft can no longer manage to design its own future - instead, it needs to look to the outside to fix its internal shortcomings.
To me, that means that Microsoft will be more apt to try to buy its way out of management failures - by buying companies such as Yahoo - which in turn will bring great new ideas and assets to Microsoft, but at the huge expense of making Microsoft substantially harder to manage.
It could work out, but it's a slippery, dangerous slope, similar to (but different than) going into massive debt. But instead of a direct financial debt, it will be a huge on-going management burden - one that could only be controlled with strong merger-centric leadership.
History is full of merger failures due to culture clashes. I doubt Ballmer is the guy that can pull it off. My prediction - Ballmer be put in the twilight in 2 years or less. You heard it from me.
Amazing, Microsoft bends the facts to suit their own need to screw the customer even harder than before..... More News At 11.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
"Misleading"? "Factually incorrect"? Why will no one reporting on lies just come out and call them lies? By pulling these punches, the writers/editors/publishers are lying.
There, I said it. And I feel better already for telling the truth.
--
make install -not war
ive been around computers a long time 20 years , ive seen so many examples of software piricey thru the years ive seen software companys put protections on there software and just as fast people find a way around it ,no matter what laws are passed , there will always a way around things like that and as technology progresses so will the crackers methods
For that matter, why does anyone expect truth from any party with a vested interest? Microsoft isn't special in that regard.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
First, the "Microsoft" article requires a subscription to read, meaning that very few people will read it and will know about it only through what an opponent said about it.
Second, what is Microsoft's involvement with the original article, which was published by a Canadian political paper called "The Hill Times"?
Like this one:
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Michal Geist started the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group a few months ago, and it now has almost 40,000 members. Check it out, if you're Canadian and use Facebook.
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
Sir, I can smell your fear in your sweat. It brings a smile to my face.
The expression/idea dichotomy is a doctrine in copyright law; the legal usage of the word "idea" does not correspond well to what most people mean by the word.
What would you call the intangible product of intellectual and creative activity? "Idea" and "ideas" seem to capture it the best. "Work" is problematic because it assumes those ideas have been captured in a medium. I realize copyright doesn't protect ideas until that has happened, but once it has happened it nevertheless protects intangibles.
The idea/expression dichotomy is actually quite problematic. One court case found that the "idea" of a drawing of Mickey Mouse was "mouse" - which rather ignores all the other ideas that go into the image of Mickey, from the big ears and white gloves to the various feelings people have about Disney, their childhoods, and so on. What is the "idea" of a song? If you can't define one, does that mean every other intangible part of a song is protected? A character can be considered an idea according to copyright law. It's all very mixed up, and makes some significant assumptions at odds with what we now know about human communication (e.g. there is not any one idea corresponding to an expression, but a wide variety of interpretations, implications, connections to different contexts, etc. - but copyright imagines a single Platonic transcendental idea to which a given expression refers). I saw a fantastic presentation on this by Natasha Gerolami of the University of Western Ontario, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find a published version of what she said.
My point is that the law is one thing, ordinary language is another, and the actual world these attempt to refer to and categorize is something else altogether.
Yeah, probably. But Canadian libel laws are so harsh it's probably not worth taking the risk. They place the burden of proof on the defendant, who must demonstrate that the statement was true. IANAL.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22microsoft+leads%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
In my dealings with people I expect people to be truthful, even when they have a vested interest. If someone does lie it lowers my estimation of them, significantly. They don't have to volunteer information, but no lying. I think most people are that way. Why, then, should a company be allowed to lie?
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
That wasn't an idealistic statement about how I want things to be. That was a pragmatic statement based on how things are. The fact of the matter is, many large organizations lie and misrepresent, and a simple exercise of "follow-the-money" is usually sufficient to explain why. Never believe anything to be true unless you can independently verify it or it is consistent with what you already know to be true - in a world full of liars and monied interests, there is no substitute for this. Allowed or not, people lie when they think they can get away with it, and it is up to you who hears the lie to decide whether or not it is believable. People and companies generally don't lie unless they think it will work, that it will be believed. I hope this clears up the non-question of whether a company should or should not lie.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
There is this little thing called "ethics".
:-)
Then there is the other little thing called "reputation".
Who would be happy to sign contracts with a company that had a public reputation for being unethical?
So most Microsoft partners must be unhappy
TORONTO-In a world preoccupied with other pressing and sometimes dramatic concerns, complicated, seemingly arcane policy discussions about copyright may not appear particularly compelling. But as is often the case, such discussions can have a real significance for individual jobs and on our economy in a broader sense. So it is with Canadas anticipated new copyright legislation, which was expected to be tabled in recent weeks, but now appears to have been delayed at the eleventh hour by its opponents.
Our current copyright legislation is woefully out of step with the international community in general and our principal trading partners in particular, despite our repeated commitments to do better. In 1996, Canada became a signatory to two World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties-the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Weve yet to implement either treaty and have now fallen behind in providing a reasonable intellectual property protection regime in this country.
For too many, the debate over copyright reform has been boiled down to a discussion around doing things like sharing music or movie files over the internet. Supporters of reform are painted as wanting to stifle the creative impulse or protect profits in "cultural" industries; industries, they argue, that should be driven by a commitment to other goals.
But the reality is something quite different. Rather than stifling creativity, copyright reform is desperately needed in Canada to protect and encourage creativity. Just look at it from the creators viewpoint. Imagine youre an aspiring author who decides to self-publish on the internet in hopes of supporting yourself and catching the eye of a publishing house. Now imagine someone hacks into your website and accesses your work and begins using the ideas expressed in your work for their own commercial benefit. You should be protected, right? In Canada, you are not.
Now think about what this reality means not just for authors but also musicians, film makers and artists. Would you be inclined to share your work digitally given this risk?
This is a simple example, but the importance of copyright reform goes much deeper, with economy-wide implications. Canadians are told over and over again that we are not as innovative as our closest competitors and that this innovation deficit is creating a drag on our ability to compete globally. Copyright reform that brings our legislation up to internationally agreed-upon standards would help create greater incentives to innovate.
If we take our self-publisher as an example-that person is looking for innovative distribution channels to share their work. If digital distribution methods are not protected, what incentive is there for that person to seek other, even more innovative ways to distribute and commercialize their creations? Its the same for Canadian companies. Without protection, there may in many cases be no incentive for companies large and small to seek out new ways of reaching untapped markets or of coming up with innovative ways of besting the competition. A lack of protection is damaging in two ways. First, it leaves Canada far behind other jurisdictions in the world by ignoring the potential of the digital age. Second, the narrower and more limited channels of distribution will actually limit the volume of work available to consumers as less will be created in Canada in the first place.
In short, it is the absence of copyright reform that hinders creativity and innovation, not the opposite.
Does this mean that the expression of every creative idea must be kept under lock and key? No. Critics of the proposed law often raise concerns about how to provide for fair dealing. The existing Copyright Act already provides exceptions for research, study, the disabled, and more. These exceptions were developed prior to the advent of the digital age following meaningful and thoughtful consideration for the benefit of Canadians. There is no question that in reforming the Copyrigh
While I'm not impressed with a lot of the things that Bill Gates et al have done its hard to call a business with tens of billions of EXCESS dollars in the bank a "failure". If you do then I assume that GW, who is responsible for putting the US trillions of dollars into debt is a success? :-)
They just have to set up contracts and conspire with the other companies to screw us over.
Libertarians act like the 19th century never happened sometimes. I don't want to be doomed to repeat them. I don't want to go back. We came up with anti-trust laws for very, very good reasons.
I'm not kidding when I point out that there was blood in the streets, corrupt private police forces and near-slave conditions for some workers instituted by some monopolies.
I had fun tearing this one apart. This lawyer type is so full of crap I bet his eyes are brown.
"Apparatus dignosco occultus, satis non supernus."
Seriously, as I've repeatedly said here and elsewhere, nobody at Microsoft authorized to talk to the public - and many who aren't - ever says or writes anything that isn't a lie.
Microsoft does not sell software. They sell lies.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Until they're unhappy enough to stop giving any money to Microsoft for any reason, this has no practical effect whatsoever. Until then, it is expedient to not be so easily fooled. This is much easier and more effective than trying to reform Microsoft or anyone else, for that matter, since lies only "work" when they are believed.
Yes, there is such a thing as ethics. You can demonstrate what ethics is all about by what you value and by the way that you live your life. However, you can't control whether someone else chooses to be ethical; therefore, the virtue of not being so naive as to believe everything you are told is not going to lose its value anytime soon.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Okay, so you're willing to take that "chance." That's all fine and good. But if you "win" and Microsoft isn't a "natural monopoly?" You won't be able to tell the difference, because they'll *still* be controlling everything and screwing you over.
"Natural monopoly" only has meaning when there *are* anti-trust laws in effect. "Unnatural" monopolies (like Microsoft may be) are only broken up when anti-trust laws say so. Otherwise, they strangle any and all competition in the cradle.
1) A business can have excess in the bank and still be "failing." MS in particular has *always* made it a priority to save for future expansions (so a lot of that excess existed before pre-Ballmer). This means nothing if they can't turn profits *now.*
2) GW isn't responsible for putting the US into debt. He is responsible for the huge *deficit* (a year-by-year total, currently in the high billions), and threatens to take existing debt to record highs, but the trillion-dollar-debt was more or less inherited from Reagan.
Microsoft Lie? Reporters Lie? Horsefeathers, I tell you. Never have there been more upstanding and Democratic institutions as these two entities.
Keep fighting the good fight, Papa Bear!
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
This is just "business as usual" for microsoft