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CRIA, MPAA Demand Expanded DMCA For Canada
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Recording Industry Association and the MPAA's Canadian
subsidiary are demanding
that Canada adopt copyright laws that go beyond even the DMCA. The
groups demand anti-circumvention law, three strikes and you're out
legislation, and increased secondary liability for websites. The
demands come as part of the national copyright
consultation in which hundreds of Canadians have spoken out against such
reforms."
Who the fuck are they to demand that a country do their bidding? Go to hell already.
So what we have is the average Canadian, thinking their government should do one thing, and a few vested parties (with A LOT of $$$) disagreeing. I know how this plays out on this side of the border, but will Canadian govt actually listen to it's people? Eh? Greg
Fuck you.
We've been opposed to this shit since the beginning of your so-called "reforms," and now you go one further and try to make it even more draconian?
And you wonder why I have no qualms subverting your business model and giving money in a more direct manner to the artist instead.
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
hundreds of Canadians have spoken out
Who does that leave?
THL phish sticks
In a lot of ways Canada, like the US under President Obama, has done alright on Net Neutrality issues. Copyright is another matter. Canada has been staggering backwards for quite some time on that issue. Net Neutrality is threatening to everyone but the ISPs that stand to profit from it, Copyright is a much uglier matter. It's been a long time since I heard anyone say "but we pay tax on blank cds, it's okay to copy here! We already had this fight over tapes decades ago!" The way things are going I guess we just pay that tax for the hell of it.
NCFPM (National Coalition of Five-hundred Pound Men) demands that Taco Bell increases sour cream levels in the Nachos Belle Grande!
Cell Phone companies demand the right to increase text messaging rates using a logarithmic scale, and to charge a monthly rent for those you don't immediately delete!
ICBE (International Coalition for Bathwater Equality) demands that whenever bathwater is thrown out, a baby is included!
A friend of mine said once that the global corporations, by nature of the vast resources they control, actually formulate government policy and the elected politicians are the ones tasked with selling those policies to the public. There are minor exceptions such as privatizing Social Security in Bush II's second term in which public opposition is too strong to put through the policy, but these are few and far between.
In the case of the DMCA, this couldn't be closer to the truth. The problem is that the politicians have had difficulty selling the idea to Canadians at large, and prioritizing it in a minority government.
With the comment submission process, the elites can make the already formulated policies more palatable to Canadians. Perhaps there will be a few minor compromises. But in the end, they'll get what they want once they find the right "marketing" formula.
Personally, I find the idea that my internet access could be cut off after three false accusations of piracy to be frightening. I don't pirate anything, but the methodology for associating individuals with IP addresses is rife with errors and false positives.
This space left intentionally blank.
Stephen Harper is like Bush, but without the charisma.
the next time you produce a movie why don't you just keep it locked in your vaults and don't let anyone touch it or see it, then nobody will be able to copy/download/upload or pirate it. if someone can see it you can bet they will find a way to make a copy to either share freely or to sell on the black market. and even those that technically don't know how to do it will just get one of those copies so in the long run you are wasting your time and money...
those that just want to go to the theater will go anyway even if it is available free because they can go with friends & family or on a romantic date and enjoy the show (popcorn and sodapop too) and you still get your billions in return for your investment, so please quit acting like a paranoid selfish kid afraid that somebody is going to take a piece of your candy...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Because, don't forget, according to surveys, Canada has more piracy than the US.
These surveys which I refer to are the ones which they admitted they extrapolated from the American data, without actually considering Canada at all...
So it makes total sense to demand stricter laws.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I seem to recall quite a few incidents where the RIAA, MPAA and their members and brethren have been caught using unlicensed code on their websites.
Now, if this code is part of the navigation, chances are it'll be included on every single page served. Now, even if say http://www.riaa.com only got 100 visitors per day, and each visitor only visited two pages, that'd be 200 counts of breach of copyright.
At an average $22,500 per copyright violation, that comes up at $4,500,000 ... per day.
Step 1) Write code
Step 2) Find RIAA using that code unlicensed
Step 3) Profit
Even if they somehow get the damages reduced in court, they'll be arguing that their own claims for damages are completely out of proportion.
Plus, as a group who is supposedly on the side of the creators, it'd look really bad if they tried to claim ignorance, unfair damages, that code isn't worth as much as songs etc.
Basically it's a win-win situation.
So, to all you bright people out there, I urge you to get hacking!
But don't go putting code onto their webservers without them knowing it - that defence doesn't fly well in RIAA cases, and it'd be unfair to use it against them ;)
I demand that my members of parliament, regardless of party affiliation, stand up to these greed-interested lobby groups and champion the best interests of the people they serve - the people who elected them to their positions.
As a voting Canadian, I assure the people in power that I do have influence over their job security should my demands not be met. Given that I am confident that my demands are not dissimilar to the demands of other Canadians, I would strongly suggest that the decision-makers of Canada pay close attention to my demands lest they find themselves out of work and replaced with someone who _is_ willing to represent the best interests of the people of my great nation.
Further, I, as a proud Canadian, demand that lobby groups that do not serve the best interests of the people of my great nation fuck the hell off.
The MPAA/RIAA/etc gets their draconian copyright laws but with two modifications:
1) When the copyright on a work expires, they are required to publish a high quality public domain version of the work in a well-documented format. (e.g. a high bitrate MP3 or lossless FLAC for audio. MPEG-2 for video.)
2) Copyright terms will be shortened to 5 years.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Sounds like you might have a problem with a large portion of Canadians, then, A?
Sorry, couldn't resist...
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Do you remember the private copying levy that the Liberals introduced back in 1997? Where we have to pay extra money on all blank media we buy here to compensate the poor media companies and the losses they incur?
Actually, this was a godsend in disguise, because it essentially created a giant loophole for Bittorrent operators in Canada. The CRIA hasn't been nearly as successful as their American counterpart because infringing citizens can happily point to the levy and say, "You're already getting your cut, so STFU."
I did attempt to submit this as a story a year ago. Didn't make the cut:
rbrander writes "Canadian copyright watchdog Michael Geist has written the story of How the U.S. got its Canadian copyright bill". The arm-twisting was pretty up-front: "Canadian officials arrived ready to talk about a series of economic concerns but were quickly rebuffed by their U.S. counterparts, who indicated that progress on other issues would depend upon action on the copyright file." ... "the USTR...made veiled threats about 'thickening the border' between Canada and the U.S. if Canada refused to put copyright reform on the legislative agenda."
The link for that submission was: http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/443867
So, bottom line: It isn't the industry telling a nation of 30M people what to do, it's an industry saying "We pull strings and US trade negotiators dance the mamba for us. Do as you're told or they'll dance that mamba all over your timber, cattle, grain, and steel sales to a trading partner 10X your size."
Not many people know that Canada is the US' largest trading partner: much larger than China, larger than China and Britain combined. But the converse is staggering: the US is 80% of our TOTAL world trade. When the US negotiators hit the table saying "No discussion of of all our trade issues about the big-ticket items until you cave on the little wee Intellectual Property issue", the Canadian government has very little choice but to comply. That goes across party lines.