Slashdot Mirror
Canadians Battling Proposed Canadian DMCA
An anonymous reader writes "CTV reports on how Canadians are fighting back against the Canadian DMCA. Led by Michael Geist, the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group is nearing 90,000 members. There are local chapters, a YouTube contest, wikis, and people writing letters and organizing rallies against the copyright bill. Geist said, 'When you get tens of thousands of Canadians speaking out like this, there's big political risk for any political party who chooses to ignore it.'"
Prentice and the Tories don't need to worry about voters. I'm sure they've been paid handsomely by American media giants for their co-operation.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Does anyone know who in the US elected government caused the US DMCA to happen?
So, if even slashdot users can't remember who caused the original DMCA to happen, what hope is there that any Canadian politicians would be worried?
Have we really entered an age where the number of people who join facebook groups are used as some kind of measure?
Half the people I know on facebook join whatever the hell their friends join, or click anything they can to get the alerts to go away.
Seriously - really?
Despite the conspiracy theories you're likely to hear about this, the reason why the DMCA sailed through Congress is the same reason it'll sail through Canada's legislative process... media companies are responsible for a nice chunk of GNP (and whatever they call it in Canada), and neither side, liberal or conservative, is willing give up that wealth. And both sides believe that things like high technology for consumers and piracy is a danger to their broadcasters and publishers.
The reason opponents are going to lose on this is that all major parties will be on board with the copyright holders. And average voters don't give a rat's ass about copyright reform crusades.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Michael Geist is a shining example of why academics are critically important in society - and why governments detest them. His running analysis of bill C-61 has been eloquent, straightforward and polite. He has earned a loyal following be clearly explaining what the flaws of the legislation are and how they will impact Canadians in everyday use (for example, how the Government is touting the clauses that grant timeshifting and device shifting rights while glossing over the fact that other parts of the legislation effectively neuter consumer rights where DRM is involved).
Dr. Geist's blog posts and editorials in several major Canadian newspapers encouraged me to write to several members of parliament after a lifetime of political apathy. More importantly, I've done my best to explain the legislation's flaws to others, too, in the hope that they will take action. Several have, also for the first time.
You don't want this to be a confidence motion. When you do that, there's suddenly a whole lot more riding on the passage of the bill than the actual legislation. MPs and parties will think twice before voting against it if it means triggering an election, and it greatly increases the degree to which the parties will get their MPs to toe the party line.
With a non-confidence vote, MPs are far more likely to vote on the actual merits of the bill, and what their constituents have expressed to them.
I think he means educated and informed about the issues they're voting for, not IQ or whether they're 'school' educated.
If Canadian politicians don't respond to the wishes of their constituents, they have the option of replacing them. The current ruling party, for example, is only about 20 years old.
It's not comparable to the US system where Democrats have a monopoly on the left and Republicans on the right.
It just struck me, reading this thread, how really fucked up the implied procedure at work here is.
We have a bill, moving forward, over which the citizenry seems to be divided between those opposed and those apathetic. And, nevertheless, the bill has a credible shot at passing, and this is treated as a fairly unremarkable occurrence. The fact that legislation can happen, in absence of popular support, unless some(large) quantity of displeasure materializes, is a seriously broken imitation of representative government.
It shouldn't take mass protest to kill legislation that has near zero popular support, it should simply die as a matter of course. How did we come to accept a situation where that isn't the case?