Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Groups Call For Massive Net Regulation
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting that Canadian cultural groups including ACTRA and SOCAN have called on Canada's telecom regulator to implement a massive new Internet regulation framework. This includes a new three-percent tax on ISPs to pay for new media creation, Canadian content requirements for commercial websites, and licensing requirements for new media broadcasters, including for user-generated content."
Blame Canada
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
What are these organizations? TFA doesn't elaborate.
Nothing good can come from this. Notice, tax and spend. New tax, and spend on a new program. Don't the "Do Gooders" ever learn?
Why can't they (the gov) just let us be! DAMN IT!!!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I wonder how Canadians would react if the other industries that get pirated off of the internet started getting a cut, too. Start snapping up 2% to movies, 3% to games, some money for tv and radio, et cetera. Then maybe pornography could get a free slice, then the books and magazine articles who are getting wholesale copied, et cetera. Suddenly people might start saying "hey, I've never pirated one of those, I don't even play games" or whatever. It's not like music is significantly more pirated than other things are.
I honestly don't understand why the music industry gets to tax Canadians as a whole for the behavior of a few. Why do media sources get different treatment than the other industries? Shouldn't canadians be paying a Photoshop tax at this point?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Honestly I don't see the point. Why use taxpayers money to create an infrastructure that is easily circumvented?
Think of the children? Please. If some creepy dude wants pictures of children he'll a proxy.
As far as schools go, it should be on their shoulders to filter what their students should or should not be able to view. This is the concept of gun control all over again - it hurts the honest man, as lawbreakers will easily find a way to circumvent it.
job creation program for lawyers. Just what we need: more babysitters for the Intertubes.
Earlier today there was a slashdot story about how Obama was critical that "it is 'unacceptable' that the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption."
I don't think he has to worry about the Canadians.
This includes a new three-percent tax on ISPs to pay for new media creation,
This is stupid. People around the world are creating content daily. Did the Bushes move north?
Canadian content requirements for commercial websites,
This is no different than their TV, I doubt it will really hurt anything... except for that tax thing. And it depends on how high the tax is.
and licensing requirements for new media broadcasters, including for user-generated content.
That's just brain-dead stupid, and meant to keep the unwashed rabble from having their say.
And to think that Bush had me thinking of retiring to Canada despite the fact that I hate winter. I guess nowhere's safe from rich, egtistical, authoritarian idiots.
Free Martian Whores!
thestupid.
He's a dick.
I just posted this in the story on Australia. Who else did I miss - Bermuda? the Virgin Islands? The Falklands?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I live in Canada and we have a simular thing with radio. They have to play X amount of hours of Canadian content, which is good because it gives the local artists some play(usually unless they blast Celine Dion *winmper*). But to do this for Candadian websites seems just weird. How is this going to benifit Canadians to have X amount of Canadian content on the sites. I don't see why it needs to be regulated any further than not allow children from seeing explicit material(excess violence and sexuality), which probably doesn't stop most children anyways(didn't when I was 16), but I can see it's usefullness.
Regulation of the internet in any way takes away apart of what the internet is. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and rarly do you have to listen to someone bluber an idiotic viewpoint. Regulating the internet goes against what it has come to represent raw informtion. Not always accurat not always sensable but I wouldn't change it for anything.
If people are afraid of the internet so much that they want to change it, I would like to ask them why? Why do they need to confine Canadian websites to having a certain amount Canadian content when it's a global community. The content shouldn't be limited because of the location the domain is in. Places like CBC.ca TSN.ca and CTV.ca are always going to have the canadian content I want. news.google.ca maps.google.ca all have local content for me if I need them. People do a good job of keeping canadian content and other out there for everyone because it's in their best interest.
This group is silly and I would like to know if there is somewhere I could send a letter telling them as much.
Seriously, if we don't get rid of them- this shit is going to keep happening. No longer are they interested in even just screwing consumers for big business, they are living in some sort of totalitarian dreamworld. This must end or Canada's high-tech economy is doomed.
It will be disguised as "net neutrality".
\u262D = \u5350
Actra is a performers union and socan is basically an artists union. Socan actually got a law passed that taxes blank media that supposedly gives money to the artists that lose money from IP theft. So don't underestimate these bozos. The key is that the internet allows us to do an end run around the stupid laws that keep forcing crap content onto Canadian TV and radio. What the hell would be Canadian content on the Internet? The whole idea of these stupid can con laws was to put Canadian artists on a "level" playing field with the US. But with the Internet a level playing field would basically be a combination of bandwidth and a lack of stupid laws. So if they create a bunch of stupid laws then Canadian web sites would be disadvantaged not helped. The only winners would be these organizations that collect these fees. I wonder how much of the present money collected from the media tax goes to artists when calculated as a simple percentage of monies collected and not a number generated by some convoluted accounting. If you are Canadian, write your MP and tell them that this will hurt Canadian IT badly.
HUGE bonus points for the fuckactra tag.
ACTRA/SOCAN are not your friend, pal.
As a Canadian, allow me to say these people need to fuck the hell off.
Please.
What? No need for me to be rude...
Isn't it 4 1/2 months until April 1?
...laura
How many copyright porn movies/images get copied over the internet.
How much of this money would be funneled directly to the porn industry compared to other copying.
Make that number public it will quickly be pushed under the table.
With our embattled prime minister basically shutting down Parliament until end of January, at which time he is likely to get turfed in a confidence motion, I don't think this proposal will see the light of day.
In fact, (crosses fingers) I don't think given how the opposition finally grew some gonads and ganged up to toss him out of his chair, he will dare re-introduce a C-61 clone either.
My rights don't need management.
As if Canadian Television and film (with RARE exception) isn't dull enough. We just made our political landscape as interesting as the US, let's not dull-down our internet by CanCon regulations (where rural angst and bad hairstyles will flourish).
Seriously, this is really stupid. If they add 3% to the cost of 'Net content in Canada, it will just go elsewhere.
Have gnu, will travel.
Canadian content requirements for commercial websites? What, so walmart.ca would have to sell at least 80% hoser merchandise? The Globe and Mail website would have to feature at least 75% Canadian news even if nothing happened in the Great White North that day?
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
Woahhh, Canada seems to be increasingly anti-telecommunication. Maybe all of this internet and connectedness means the end of nationstate governments and big business monopolies/cartels. They're fighting to protect it. I hope Canadian citizens aren't suckers.
tweet tweet
Jesse Brown (of the Search Engine Podcast) did a great job talking about this type of thing. http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/blog/2008/11/podcast_12_is_up.html And this just adds to it.
I thought Rush had split up?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
if I build my own micro-scale intranet inside a building which models how the "real-world" internet works am I still subject to an ISP tax because I'm providing myself with "internet" services which I have to maintain and costs me money? What if I post user-generated content on my miniature web model? Do I have to bill myself for that, or moderate what I put up on my own servers? Am I confusing the shit out of myself?
Canada has a proud heritage of this. One province forced the entire country to have to be effectively bilingual. Then when that province wanted to secede, the First Nations who owned the land that 2/3 of their hydroelectric power came from, regardless of actual population numbers, refused to go along, and stopped it cold. So I've no doubt this could actually go into practice in the Great White. I also have no doubt that nobody can require an artist to conduct their business from any given country without forceably restraining them. Canadian artists will simply produce elsewhere, leaving the ISPs to fork over 3% of what Serenity's staff theoretical mathematician Jayne Cobb described as "let's see, nuthin', plus nuthin', carry the nuthin'..."
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
to ban members of these groups from the internet. How's that for regulation? Motherfuckers
I, for one, welcome my Canadian Cultural Overlords!
EH?
why is it that such greedy corporate shill organizations always come out of north america and try to scuttle even the biggest inventions mankind made, just for their own shitty gain ?
Read radical news here
Canadian Groups Call For Massive Net Regulation
. . . and, from the posts from the Canadian folks here:
Canadians, on the other hand, call for massive re-regulation, of Canadian Groups.
Re-regulation, with extreme prejudice.
Michael Moore argued that Canadians are more armed to the teeth than US Americans, but are not nearly as trigger happy.
I now think that the Canadians have been wisely conserving their ammunition, for times of ideas like Internet Cultural taxes.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Over the past decade or so, I've noticed a trend. I'm not terribly bright, so I don't think I can be the only one who has noticed it but regardless, nobody is saying anything about it. No Slashdotters or bloggers ever raise this point, no journalists write explicitly about it even though it's right there in the news almost every day.
Let's say you're a huge government entity or industry coalition. You want a law (or series of laws) put into effect that, if passed by congress, would net you huge amounts of cash, power, or both. The problem is that almost everybody who hears about it is going to oppose it because they'll probably see it for what it is. Lobbyists are worth their weight in gold, but lobbyists don't outweigh enormous opposition from the press and public.
How do you get this extremely profitable but unlikely law passed? The solution turns out to be relatively easy:
1) Submit the bill for vote.
2) When the public outcry inevitably happens, reaffirm to the public that the bill must be made into law. Make a couple of unimportant token conciliatory changes and make a big deal about how you're willing to compromise.
3) Resubmit almost the exact same bill.
4) Watch it pass.
I've seen this happen in the U.S. for every almost single major unpopular bill that's been passed recently. The wall street bailout is the number one perfect example. This bill was an undisguised farce from the beginning. As dim as the American public tends to be, even they saw the evil in handing out hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street millionaires as a thank-you for screwing the world's economy while those who were *really* hurt (and without homes to boot) received not a single dime out of the deal. They presented the bill, the press and public said, "No effing way!" They presented it again with practically no changes and it passed with flying colors. Tell me, how does that happen?
I haven't been able to figure it out myself, but I wager it's to do with human psychology. You expose someone to an extreme idea once. After they get all done with being shocked and appalled, you expose them to it again (or to a slightly less shocking one) and they'll readily go along with it. Maybe when the idea is presented the second time, they think, "hey, it's not as bad as that first proposal." Or possibly people are just lazy and give up the fight after expending so much energy in the first opposition. I dunno. Another interesting point is that the more shocking the first presentation, the better the chance it has succeeding the second time around.
We're seeing it again with the Detroit bailout. The car companies made such an incredibly poor show the first time around, that Congress will probably say, "Well, they rode over in limousines this time at least, we should probably give them a few billion dollars to keep making shitty cars."
There's definitely a psychological effect and it's one that we, the public, would do well to wise up to soon because this is one tactic that's nearly 100% effective and has no effective counter-strategy because no one seems to be paying attention.
God dammit, I take the weekend off and suddenly the Internet goes mainstream!
If someone tries to tax ISPs 3% I guarantee the ISPs will levy their customers (us) 5%.
CanCon on the Internet is hilarious! Absolutely hilarious. How do they gauge the percentage? Number of HTML pages? Aggregate minutes of video? Number of times "U" or "RE" appears in words? If I put Bryan Adams entire discography up for download that won't even qualify. (har!)
Radio and TV are linear media that operate along time's arrow. This arrow must go straight through the heads of these trade union putzes because they clearly have no concept of how the Internet works.
I wish I could find the newspaper article (I thought it was the Toronto Star or National Post but can't seem to find it) which, at the end of the first year of the copying levy for blank media, gave a breakdown of how much money the levy brought in.
The most interesting part about the article was that the amount of money (in millions) that the blank media levy generated was more than double what the groups had claimed they lose on an annual basis.
Nothing changed though... hmmmm
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
Eh hoser ... say what ? Two ice-fishing shanties fulla' self-interested pr*cks. Get me a Molsen.
There should be no regulation of what content flows over the internet. particularly these are attempts by an ever paranoid government to shut down dissent and monitor its opponents. Monitoring and censorship such as this is a sure sign of an end to a democratic, free society and one where people live in shackles, are arrested for any reason, have no privacy and are afraid to say anything, living in constant fear of the government. Regulation, by ISPs or government is unacceptable, this includes any blocking or monitoring of content. Net Nuetrality is designed to basically prevent regulation or censorship of the internet by prohibiting ISPs from blocking access to certain web pages or impeding or altering content. We need to assert our free speech rights and not allow these to be taken away by big corporations or government.
La grande région de Ste-Agathe est composée de plusieurs municipalités: Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, Ste-Agathe-Nord, St-Adolphe d'Howard, Ivry-sur-le-Lac; on peut même considérer les municipalités de Lantier et de Ste-Lucie comme faisant partie de cette grande région.
Le coeur de cette région se compose de 2 municipalités bien imbriquées l'une dans l'autre: Ste-Agathe-des-Monts et Ste-Agathe-Sud. Si bien bien imbriquées ensemble qu'elles ont fusionnées. Mais pour les gens de l'extérieur, ces divisions administratives ont peu d'importance: on vient passer ses vacances à Ste-Agathe!
Cette région est bien garnie en infrastructures de tourisme et Ste-Agathe peut se vanter d'avoir accueilli des générations de villégiateurs et de touristes. Quels que soient vos besoins, Ste-Agathe peut se vanter de pouvoir les combler sur place. L'hôtellerie et la restauration y tiennent une place de choix.
Le train ne passe plus à Ste-Agathe? Qu'importe! On rénove la gare et on transforme le chemin de fer en piste cyclable, un concept unique en Amérique du Nord. Fruit d'une concertation de la région touristique des Laurentides le parc linéaire "Le p'tit Train du Nord" traverse des dizaines de villages tout au long de ses 200 kilomètres. Vous pouvez l'utiliser le plus facilement du monde à partir de Ste-Agathe, au site de l'ancienne gare, par les différents moyens adaptés aux saisons: motoneige, ski de randonnée, cyclisme et randonnée pédestre. Ce parc est probablement l'une des plus belles réalisations touristiques des Laurentides.
Dans cette grande région, les sports et les activités d'hiver n'ont rien à envier à celles de l'été. L'hiver en Nord, grande fête de l'hiver à Ste-Agathe, permet de bien apprécier les splendeurs de l'hiver. L'été apporte également son lot d'activités: plage, natation, motomarine, bateau, voile, cyclisme, randonnée pédestre, et encore plus...
Quel que soit votre séjour dans la grande région de Ste-Agathe, nous pouvons vous assurer que vous en partirez enchanté. Et que vous y reviendrez!
In Capitalism, men exploit men.
In Socialism, it's the other way around.
Artistes and Politicians. Two elite groups of narcissistic parasites, who thrive on sycophantic praise and have no morals to speak of--just an insatiable desire for money. We have the same problem in the U.S. Good Luck!
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
BUT... how can this even happen? We don't even have a Government right now... bad timing for those stupid people. We're already getting taxed (kind of) on blank media. Everytime we buy CD or DVDs we get to pay a levy (but there are some stores ie. Future Shop that have said "we don't want to pay so we wont (or so the sign says))
It will be disguised as "net neutrality".
With a bribe to the Cons, Libs, NDP and kickbacks to the Bloc. And soon, Government Motors Tax, GMT for short.
Tax me, I am Canadian!
Huh? We are supposed to subsidize an industry we arent a customer of?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe Theodore Kaczynski wasn't so far off base, after all.
While blowing people up is bad, they guy was angry over precisely this kind of shit.
He honestly felt that he was in danger because of technology, or to be more precise, the effects of technology in the hands of greedy bastards that think their dollars are more important then our freedoms.
Just a matter of time before someone else starts blowing shit up. (...and no, I do not mean me, so get your hand off the telephone)
that's right: levign makes more money off my artistic creation than i do.
You don't have an artistic creation. What you have is an ego trip.
A lefty Canadian artist supports higher taxes? Now there's a surprise.
Except the internet is GLOBAL. I have to go to a bar (or restaurant or dentist office) in my city, but I can go to a website hosted anywhere in the world. If the Canadian websites are crippled with can-con requirements and higher taxes then they will not be able to compete and surfers will go elsewhere. Canadian owned and operated websites will shut down or move elsewhere.
Wrong on both counts. The CRTC does not monitor or regulate prices, and any rate increase will be significant (Canadians already pay higher prices for internet access than most of the western world).
Nobody in Canada drinks a Molson, eh. In Canada, you ask for a Canadian. Molson's for the export market. Sorta like Foster's in Australia.
Urban Detail
It's a rediculous notion, and almost certain to become law if Australia (where I live) is anything to go by. We're filtering the content of the internet based on the stupidity of a minor party who is somehow in control of the internet, or at least in control of the minister in control of the internet. Essentially this means we're going to slow down the internet in this country to make it ever-so-slightly harder for someone to look at rude pictures in the hope that kids (and lets face it, they're usually the ones who figure out how to get around such measures anyway) wont see said rude pictures.
But what our govt is doing makes (if only barely) more sence what the Canadians are doing, or there's a massive back-story we're not exposed to. So lets try and put it in perspective in a way that makes sence. Lets say the local school gets broken into by vandals and they do alot of damage, who pays for it? the tax payers inevitably. Even if the vandals are caught, they are unlikely to have the money to fund the repairs (nor the skills to help fix the damage). In fact, the only option is incarceration or some form of penalty which ultimately leads to more public money being eaten. But theres more, because its become quite common (im talking hypothetically here), the tax payer ends up footing the bill for a 10ft high fence right around the school and a security patrol (subsitute school with trains, busses, govt buildings as you like, it still goes the same way).
So how does that little example relate to a 3% tax on isp's? It shouldn't, and it represents a huge amount of ignorance from the group itself and from anyone who supports it. SOCAN itself MAY not be evil as people have been saying (and reading this I find that very hard to believe, maybe they're becoming evil, maybe they've been watching the RIAA/MPAA/etc?), but in the very least (much like our Australian minister of fruity firewalls), they're completely ignorant. In reality, it shouldn't be ISP's that are footing the bill if your going to go down this path, it should be everyone, thats what TAX is for if you can equate fixing a school with fixing a copyright. After all, does illegal copying only occur over the internet? (sure it makes it easier, but im equally sure that like most countries there are plenty of flee markets going on where people are selling bootleg cd's, but wait, thats what the CD tax was for!!). The reality is is that there is no way to do it fairly, but more importantly "with even a hint of fairness"
Where it becomes ridiculous is that you have no way of apportioning out this "tax" to the people who are being pirated in the first place. Do you assume that the general lay of the land on pirated content follows the popular media? And why just music? More importantly though (probably the most important point) is that music, unlike the public school, is a luxury and never dies. You create it once and its around forever. You can copy it to infinity and it cost no one anything at all and its absurd notion to assume that just because people are pirating your music that they would have bought it and hence your loosing money.
On the flip side, if the govt were to tax the ISP's by 10%, then make it perfectly legal to "pirate" music, then you would have no argument from me even though I barely bother to listen to music anymore - the whole copyright thing in the US just makes it an unpleasurable thing to do these days. But, what would thoroughly p*ss me off as a tax payer in the upper bands is that I'm forced to foot the bill for what is a luxury crime, this is not a crime that makes my local school unusable, I cant howl for the vandals to be strung up by the codlies, they're not endangering lives and they're not stopping my kids (if i had any) from getting an education, stopping food from getting to my local retailer, etc. The reality is that the people who will get the money are likely to be the musicians who are already earning magnitudes of cash more then I am, so is it fair that I should have to pay a tax so they can get 1 more extra m
Screw this, I'm moving to the USA! ~
This is just an other "money grab" People are getting pissed off at the amount of "shit" there is for music etc. This seems like the only way these losers can make a buck... And if I choose not to buy what they are "selling" then I think it's wrong that they are trying to put it into law. I will fight them, and I hope other canadians will as well.
It will be interesting to watch...
I'm going to guess that whichever country manages to come the closest to network neutrality and sane copyright laws, is also going to be where all the actual artists go. It's an opportunity to pull ahead.
It's a chance for the US to actually be good at something other than monopolizing the rest of the world.
Friends, taxpayers, legislators (I hope), let us learn from Canada's mistakes.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
> The moose (meeses?)
While moose is usually used as its own plural (same way with elk), if you want to get technical, there's a case to be made that the plural of moose should have been moosek.
The Smily Faced Fascist performing artists are so lame. When are they ever going to stop pulling their own weight? I have and idea, lets tax all the successful Canadian artists to subsidize the ones who totally suck. Why are liberals, pinkos and commies always trying to tax everybody and regulate everybody, and generally boss everybody around. Please just go away, leave the rest of us hard working taxpayers alone, and get a real job.
Please FUCK OFF already. You've been bullying me ever since I've been old enough to buy my own music or more recently (2003), any blank media.
You've been bullying my friends and local businesses running restaurants/bars who have the audacity to play CD's, or turn on the radio - two things that you're already paid for. Those who operate all live music establishments, supporting local and other Canadian artists of all types (not just music) have had you send threatening letters demanding your tithe. I have been present in a restaurant when one of your hired goons strolled in unannounced and began loudly suggesting that the proprietor was engaging in illegal behaviour by not paying up, right there, on the spot. In front of a room full of customers.
To top it all off, I now have the great (mis)fortune of working in the building next to the SOCAN Toronto offices. Of course this means that the line at the coffee shop downstairs is filled with SOCAN's sometimes offensive-smelling, unkempt, unprofessional, "working here while I'm waiting for the album to hit it big" employees. Now they're taking my TIME too. Get lunch in your own damned building and stay the hell away from my wallet while you're at it.
Fuck right off,
Sincerely,
The Yuckinator
Like it or not, the internet will be regulated, so we should stop grumbling about it and instead start giving our own, constructive input to the debate. Otherwise we will end up with regulations that favour only the worst of the money-grabbers.
It seems to me that we can not only pull the rules in a more tolerable direction, but we may also be able to think up some that would make life less easy for what we see as the worst elements on the net. Any suggestions?
Or Heineken for the Netherlands
You only ask for a Canadian if you want bad beer. Drinking Molson Canadian is pretty much the equivalent of drinking Bud Light. It's cheap beer made for the masses who just want to get drunk without actually tasting anything.
The soccermommies and the Islamotards can all get together and criminalize freedom itself. For the children, for Allah...we will kill you to save you.
There are exceptions. In some part of the country Molson Export is much a much more popular brand than Canadian, in which case you usually ask for an Ex.
I'm Canadian. If I go on a trip elsewhere in the world, and put up pictures of it when I get home, will I get in trouble for insufficient Canadian content? If I am in the picture, do I count as Canadian content?
Harper does not want to be Bush, he is just acting like him and following his policies without the embarrassing gaffes. Dion does the ridiculous gaffes for him (and is retiring early because of them; too bad Bush had less shame).
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
If CA is like the US, unpopular legislation is worked out behind closed doors, and the debate period and the actual vote are just for show. This allows the legislative body to pass crappy bills quickly before the public can offer too much protest.
You saw this with the FISA bill this year. Harry Reid introduced the version from the Intelligence Committee that had telecom immunity, and ignored the version from the Judiciary Committee that didn't. Measures that Democrats wanted had to have 60 votes, while measures Republicans wanted only needed 50. Reid, who honors holds from Senator Inhofe, Troglodyte-OK, ignored a hold from fellow Democrat Chris Dodd.
You saw the same thing with the Wall Street bailout - calls to D.C. were 100 to 1 against, but it passed anyway with minimal oversight provisions.
If user generated "new media" content is going to be regulated... and there charging a levy on "new media", then I want my cut! ... Tell ya what I'll accept the 3% of my internet bill you took as payment and well call it even ;)
Doesn't anyone drink Labatt's Blue up there anymore?
Damn... you HAVE fallen into cultural disrepair. ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This is how the internet dies. Slowly, with country after country introducing draconian filtering and rules. No, you mustn't make and distribute your own media independently. No, we mustn't have new business models. No, we mustn't have access to unfettered information. We must stay within the exploitative "studio" model. Been nice knowing you all. (I say this now, because we won't get any warning before our rights to publish anything are ripped from us.)
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
From the back of my membership card:
"ACTRA is a national organization that represents the interests of professional performers in Canada's recorded media and bargains collectively on their behalf."
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
The group calling itself ACTRA is NOT a Canadian cultural organization as it is described in this story. It is a union of actors, performers and other media people. It is in no way a reflection of the community. It is also mostly composed of people who make their living off the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, itself a hotbed of left-wingers, terrorist sympathizers and politically-correctness gone mad. It is totally unrepresentative of the vast majority of people working in the media in Canada and of the population as a whole. Give it the respect it deserves. NONE. The only way its agenda might be translated into laws is by fooling or misleading the idiots we elect to our national Parliament. Given the antics of the clowns in Parliament recently [the attempted coup by liberals, left-wingers and separatists], perhaps there is something to worry about. I hope the Tory government is awake enough to realize the dangers to freedom of communication inherent in such a goofy idea.