Canadian Labour Congress Considers Reversal On IP Policy

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Labour Congress is considering a dramatic reversal of its stance on copyright and IP policy. CLC is comparable to the US AFL-CIO, but Canada is over 30% unionized. The campaign 'we must change copyright and IP law to fight evil counterfeiters and copyright pirates' is actually succeeding in Canada. Quoting the CLC's new policy resolution: '... this critical issue requires a far-reaching response involving legislative and regulatory reform, policy change, and allocation of proper resources to combat the problems. The Canadian government must be given the structure and resources to mount a sustained attack on this pervasive problem, both within Canada and internationally. The criminal and civil laws in Canada must provide adequate deterrence. And consumers must be educated that counterfeiting and piracy are not victimless, nuisance crimes, but instead strike at the heart of our long term economic security.'"

Comments

Re:Sigh

[anagama]

Content should be created to be used, not merely sold like some cheap toy.

Agreed. Human labor shouldn't ever be compensated. When are you coming over to change my oil?

Re:Sigh

[EdIII]

Copyright (and patents) was created so that artists and inventors could work for themselves, rather than a rich patron, which had been the case for centuries before. It had the goal of encouraging the creation of new works and allowing for more artistic freedom than existed.

It failed.

I'll grant that it may have worked for a time, but big corporations eventually came in and perverted it into a state-enforced version of the old patron system.

Not exactly. There are plenty of original works being created by people everyday. To say that Big Media is the rich patron and the only way to make money is a reasonable statement, but that does not mean the concept of a copyright failed. Big Media is simply the largest "purchaser" of copyrighted works and the largest "reseller". If you are an artist and your work is deemed to have value by Big Media, you are contractually giving them "access" to your own copyrights. That is a choice.

Copyright was never about trying to make labor compensated, and for good reason; it's an asinine idea. Why should someone make money simply for doing what they want? If what they do is worth money, someone out there will pay for it. It is not the state's place to try to protect *ANY* person's business. That's the basic principal of the free market, which the US and many of the other copyright-loving countries supposedly believe in.

That's an interesting argument, I'll give you that. However, I don't truly think that anyone wants a free market, or a regulated market. It's about the middle.

Even if you refuse to accept that copyright was not intended for that purpose, it's obvious it does a piss-poor job of compensating effort. The few people who happen to have been taken under the wing of their corporate patrons are richer than the vast majority of humans, and most everyone else trying to produce some kind of artistic work is as much a 'starving artist' as ever, and by most measures worse off.

When the ability to market and distribute your work was limited in the past it made it difficult for an artist to make sales by themselves. They had to partner up with a "rich patron" and benefit from distribution channels in order to increase sales. This was a good thing for the "rich patron" as they had more leverage in negotiations and a bad thing for the artist. The copyright itself did not do a poor job of compensating the artists effort in the past, it in fact preserved it. Without the protections of a copyright, "rich patrons" could just duplicate any work and then use their own advantages with distribution channels to profit. The amount of compensation may not be to your liking, but that does not mean the copyright failed to compensate effort.

Artists are even better off today than they were in the past since the distribution channels are far easier to acquire. Big Media is losing it's hold on these distribution channels from all sides. Once again, without copyrights today an artist could not protect themselves from Big Media as it is. There are plenty of examples in which Sony, HP, Microsoft, etc., have all abused smaller artists and firms by infringing upon copyrights. AFAIK, quite a few lawsuits have gone to court that have been favorable to the "small guy". How could they have defended themselves without the copyright?

By now, just shortly into copyrighting works if you look at the big picture, we're already running out of totally original ideas. Some say such a thing doesn't even exist, but it's debatable so I won't assert that. It is, however, a fact that it is almost impossible to create any kind of work in the modern world without running the risk of violating someone's copyright, patent or trademark. The effect? The bar of entry is raised to only those who can afford it... the ultra-rich, and the media conglomerates.

This is not entirely the fault of the copyright. Blame for