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Copyright Expert Uninvited From Canada Policy Forum
earthforce_1 writes "The vested interests of restrictive copyright are stacking the deck in Canada. The Public Policy Forum Symposium on intellectual property reform has bowed to pressure from certain interests and dis-invited noted copyright scholar Howard Knopf. The forum's stated mandate is '...to strive for excellence in government — to serve as a neutral, independent forum for open dialogue on public policy, and to encourage reform in public sector management.' For some reason, the US Ambassador to Canada and the former head of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Association have been invited — apparently they are perceived to have a more neutral view of what Canadian copyright laws should be? More information at Howard Knopf's blog."
They know that they have more 'rights' in their copyrights than they deserve. They've spent a lot of money to make it that way. They know that if things were rendered "fair and balanced" that they'd lose a LOT of money -- not just the money they spent buying laws that favor them, but undeserved income these laws yield.
I can't hold these jackasses completely responsible for their greed. We've all got some greed in us and corruption is a problem of opportunity, not of character. I blame the legislators that make themselves available to the highest bidder and the character flaws that prevent them from correcting the circumstances that enable corruption.
I just hope that McTeague knows that this could very well cost him his job, just like his predecessors have found. I wonder why Jim Prentice isn't getting on the stump about this. Maybe he doesn't want annoying citizens to crash his parties anymore.
The copyright levy wasn't enough, and I still haven't seen any evidence that a cent from the levy has been given to an artist that would have been hurt by the potential infringement that blank media could cause. I sure appreciate paying more for blank CDs so I can give my friends Ubuntu CDs to try out (because they're too lazy to go download it themselves and they're already scared of this Linux thing), knowing happily that my money is not supporting any Canadian artists that are not being harmed anyway.
The guest list for that symposium looks to be weighted towards people who would NOT agree with the RIAA's stance. The guy in the first article linked is clearly pro-reform and he is going to be there. If you follow the links you will see that there are speakers from companies that have been sued by copyright holders in the past like Google.
If this guy was uninvited based on his views I would suspect its because the other side wanted more balance, not because they wanted the deck stacked. If balance is the goal here then it would seem fair to exclude him (although a bit rude I suspect) since his side appears to already be very well represented.
It isnt like the non-RIAA view isnt being heard here as the summary would suggest.
who do we write to?
It's pretty simple if you have a good agenda to keep, make sure you don't invite people who oppose said agenda.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Well lets look at he very questions on his blog....
Question - On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly oppose and 5 is strongly support, how much do you support laws that would enable record companies to demand and collect a "settlement" of more than $5,000 from you because a member of your household may have downloaded music and made it available for sharing on the internet?
How about: On a measure of X currency, how much should be fined for downloading 1 song that they have not paid for?
That would give a true assessment on what people think songs are really worth, as it puts the listeners in the "creator" category. Along with that, it would have strong tendencies to deflate now-exorbitant statutory damages.
Question - On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly oppose and 5 is strongly support, how much do you support laws that would enable a record company to easily obtain your name without your consent so that it can sue you for up to $20,000 for each song a member of your household may have downloaded and made available for sharing on the internet?
Same as above.
Question - On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly oppose and 5 is strongly support, how much do you support laws that would enable record and movie companies to control how, when, where, how many times and on what type of electronic device that you can enjoy music and movies that you have bought and paid for?
2 questions: What is an acceptable time for copyright so it would promote creators to profit and create more?
Should copyright be extended to companies who use technological means to prevent fair use (backing up film, taking snippets for critique, etc.)? yes/no
As we see, its all vitriol. No wonder he was ejected before it startred.
Sounds just like the Microsoft/ODF document format forum.
...and a billion other "fair and balanced" debates.
Sounds just like the UN drug law discussion forum.
You don't need copyright to make music. And you don't need copyright to write software. The face of the matter is, you don't need copyright to do any of the things copyright covers. These things aren't reliant on the existence of copyright. Copyright does however give some an advantage over others.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
You Have Hereby Been Dis-Invited (FTW?) From This Forum.
Have you stopped beating your wife: [ ] yes I have stopped [ ] no I still beat her. So how do you answer if you've never beaten her?
All I can see here is that he tried to answer a broken set of questions.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Please clarify to me which of the people of the agenda you find as "against RIAA". The french? I'd say obviously not on that one.
I think there are a few: geist, and the google guy.
However, for my sake, for my stupidities/understanding's sake, and everyone else, can you clarify whom and why you consider not being supportive of riaa other than the few mentioned above?
If these really are the questions that the PPF is asking in their survey, then their neutrality is about as credible as the "fair and balanced" claim from Fox News.
Maybe a country that is based on equality of opportunity (Canada / USA) should put less focus on crafting incentives that involve passing family fortunes down.
- John
I don't know about you but even if geist was the ONLY voice of reason there I'd be happy, the man is a modern day super hero, and I can't think of anybody else I'd rather have go to bat for me on this issue.
"Its the reason people believe that 100 years of industrial evolution on this planet can corrupt over 4.5 billion years of naturally occuring weather cycles."
No, robust science is the reason I (and I dare say most people here) accept the message that has come from the IPCC and every other national science body on the planet.
It is intellectually lazy (at best cynical) to disagree with something just because some random lobbyist uses it to push an agenda. The problem with "for hire" lobbyists is they are members of the old boys club, expert liars, and schooled in the art of manipulation, they belive what they are paid to belive. If anything lobbyists (and in many cases politicians) have tried to hide and discredit the science in exactly the same way tobbaco lobbyists did in the 80's.
In fact if you look up one Fred Singer you will find a "fossil fuel lobbyists" and a "tobacco lobbyists" all wrapped up into one person, decorated with ancient qualifications and honarary degrees. Until the last couple of years Fred and other like-minded lobbyists had been very successfully spreading mis-information that is then repeated ad-nauseum on slashdot by geeks who often have sufficient education in physics and chemistry to know better. I also belive much of that derision on slashdot was due to the messenger, ie: people heard the IPPC's message coming out of Al Gore's mouth and instinctively started taking pot shots at what they percieved to be "Al Gore's crackpot theory".
However in the interests of "fair and balanced", I will point out there are still a tiny minority of scientists who disagree with some parts of the IPCC consensus, here is a list of them. You will find that their arguments have been debunked many times over, a good place to start looking for such mythbusting and the shenanigans of anti-science lobbyists is here
If you don't want to go through the pain of educating yourself on the science and politics of climate change then I have one simple question that may clear things up for you. Since CO2 is known to trap heat and we are pumping 10Gt/yr of it into the atmosphere, how is that trapped heat disipated back into space, or alternatively what absorbs the excess CO2 so that it unable to trap heat in the first place?
BTW: Please don't take the above as a personal attack, your only human and we are all vunerable to well crafted bullshit from outside our sphere of expertise (which incidently is the reason why the scientific method is considered usefull).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm getting a bit tired of this. First ISO is bought by microsoft, now a copyright forum by the RIAA. Do the big corporations already have the entire world in their pockets?
And how doo we get out of there?
As it has been for at least 800 years, starting with the Guelphs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelphs_and_Ghibellines) if not before.
I'm very interested, and actually invested in this subject, and I'm rather shocked of two things:
1 - I learned of this from /. (no offence) I deal with people in the Canadian music industry every day that have their balls hanging in the wind (read: over-invested) and I didn't hear even a whisper about this. This has people scared silent.
That doesn't mean it's especially catastrophic, but at least a 6 out of 10.
2 - The only posted information about this fiasco is from the horse himself, and it reads like a thesaurus malfunction. Yet folks here are chiming off like they're intimately familiar with the situation.
Long story short (too late), this story hasn't broken yet, but it could be pretty huge in the Canadian music industry, if it ever reaches the light of day.
If you're curious enough to follow this, please pass it on to anyone who might also find it curious, because otherwise it might never reach the light of day. Such is the music biz.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
email your MP. This forum is a result of previous outcry over proposed legislation. The bill was supposed to slide through parliament but MP's were scared by the backlash. Now they've arranged a fair & impartial (??? with the US ambassador offering the opening remarks, and the VP of the motion picture industry 'moderating' the first panel ???) symposium to garner support for the US-based and backed bill. U.S. copyright laws are so messed up that the president didn't even know he was breaking his own laws by listening to the Beatles on his MP3 player! http://torrentfreak.com/george-bush-vs-the-riaa/ These are essentially the same laws they are trying to bring to Canada!
Like I do.
Deed your mansion to your children rather than your 90-year-old songlist.
Hell, let your grandchildren MAKE THEIR OWN FUCKING WAY IN LIFE.
Sheesh.
Surely this dis-invitation would have been conveyed in written form (email or snail mail)? It would be extremely interesting to see exactly who wrote the letter and what rationale was used to justify this.
/CF
...and during those 100 years we have dug up and burned a significant proportion of the fossil fuel deposits that originally built up over a ~ 100 million year period ~ 300 million years in the past (ballpark figures) - when the climate was considerably different to today. That's a geological-scale intervention - you have to be pretty blinkered to deny even the possibility that it could have geological-scale consequences.
And no, that's not intended to be an evidence-backed scientific argument - just a plausibility argument, responding in kind to the parent's (im)plausibility argument.
PS: the state of the climate isn't caused by either CO2 or the Sun or algae in the sea or continental drift - its caused by all those factors and many more interacting in a complex and poorly understood equlibrium - changing any of those factors can shift the equilibrium, and in some types of equilibrium changing the wrong factor by just a little bit too much can destroy that equilibrium.
The human race is now so large and has such power to change the environment that we need to stop assuming that our activities are insignificant until proven otherwise. Trees affect the climate (you think that's air your breathing? its tree fart!) and they just sit there doing nothing.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Illegal Tax minimisation schemes, global transfer pricing, evasion of royalties, non arms-length dealings are the hallmark of copyright holders, should be on the table.
Why criminalise something, when criminal acts of hard to prove taxation evasion are going on?
Look at the money going in, and the money going out, Vs taxes paid.
Whatever numbers they trot out, a taxation expert can trot out much bigger numbers of what 'revenue' is not being captured. With the Canadian dollar higher, cheaper R+D&M and 'shoots' will trend back south.
Reducing the issue to the basics of whats in it for me test, the US wants to ram one up the backside of Canadians, because they believe a lesser country can be cajoled or tricked easily.
If they want a more robust situation, then the obligation of robust transparent, auditable taxation should be made clear. The question is, why have the major players evaded detection for so long?
The article makes this sound as though the Canadian government was somehow involved in all this. The Public Policy Forum is much more akin to a lobby group. It's directors include:
-President and CEO General Electric Canada
-Chairman of the Board Western Financial Group
-Chief Brand and Communications Officer RBC Financial Group
-Senior Vice President Petro-Canada
This really isn't as big a deal as was made out. Corporate influence in an organization like this isn't exactly a revelation. What's important is how much stock the Canadian government will put in the PPF's opinions, to which the article says nothing.
sorry mate, but aren't you really just passing the buck?
truth - we are all just as evil since we all just go along
Please take a moment to email the PPF about your disappointment. It's great that this is getting attention, but we need to take action. Even sending an email to the PPF is a step. Their contact page is here: http://www.ppforum.ca/en/contactus/.
yawn
On reading TFA... I have to say this guy is NOT a troll.
He was merely pointing out the logical fallacies and biased wording of the actual PPF (I guess thats the Canadian RIAA) study that was conducted and was like well if they want to play the biased wording game this is how I would have done the survey.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Mod parent up.
He probably should have said, however, "If you're a Canadian...".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Here are a couple of reasons why...
On the subject of climate change in particular I am not a climatologist but I do have a BSc. I have been following the conversation since 1981 (I even recall reading the infamous national geographic article on the coming ice age as a teenager during the 70's). I was unconvinced that any of the theories and observations were significant until the mid to late 90's. Around 1999 I started swimming against the stream here on slashdot by posting comments supporting the work of the IPCC and the thousands of scientists who have contributed to it over the last couple of decades. I would describe myself as an informed layman in the area of climatology but I certainly don't claim to know the "gospel truth" about anything.
As for Gore's slide show faithfully representing the science in what was at the time the current IPCC report, here is a rewiew written by some climatoligists who contributed to the IPCC. Being an Aussie, Gore's political beliefs are of little interest to me and have zero relevance to determining the accuracy of his doco.
"as evidenced by the rush to invent credible explanations after criticism in the "inconvenient documentary" that followed"
I'm not sure what you are refering to when you say an "inconvienient documentary" but if you mean The Great Global Warming Swindle then I urge you to take a second look at that "evidence" now the dust has settled.
"some prevailing consensus"
By no means does any consensus represent "case closed" that is not how science works and I'm sure you understand that even if others don't. I was specifically refering to "the consensus" as defined in the third IPCC report and widely reported elsewhere. This particular consensus is not mearly opinion it is in fact an excellent example of how the "republic of science" is supposed to work.
A scientific consensus provides the credibility behind the journalistic phrase "scientists say" and is an intergral part of the scientific method. A strong scientific consensus is derived from many repeated experiments and observations over a period of time by a large number of independant investigators and data sets. A strong scientific consensus must not only survive healthy skepticisim but it must also continue to encourage attacks by genuine skeptics. Extrodinary claims, etc, etc.
IMHO a strong consensus is doomed to be overly conservative when applied to a complex problem which is still poorly understood in a miriad of ways, but that is simply my own opinion. The only anecdotal evidence I have to support that opinion is the speed at which the Artic ice cap has disintegrated. Again, that's how science works (slow and skeptical) and I'm confident the causes and implications of the rapidly vanishing ice cap will be vigoursly debated over the next few years until a new consensus emerges.
Again, thank-you for your refreshingly thoughtfull and insightfull reply.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Precisely, life on Earth is responsible for the chemical composition of our current day atmosphere.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
International corps. try and succeed in subverting a free democracy but not all of the time.Government corruption and morel weakness is a human and very traditional aspect of democratic governance that must be continually fought to protect the freedom on us all. The big guy need representation as well as the individual but should have no more weight then the individual.