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Musician Lobby Terms Balanced Copyright "Disgusting"
An anonymous reader writes "While most of the attention at Thursday's Canadian copyright town hall was on the recording industry's strategy to pack the room and exclude alternate voices, the most controversial activity took place outside the hall. It has now been revealed that security guards threatened students and a Member of Parliament for distributing leaflets, and the American Federation of Musicians termed the MP's leaflet, which called for balanced copyright, 'disgusting' and demanded a retraction and apology. At this point, such an admission seems unlikely."
By describing "balanced copyright" as "disgusting, the musician's lobby has admitted publicly that current copyright law is unbalanced in their favor.
The artists, the songwriters need to be the ONLY people represented there.
They are, after all, the people who create the music. RIAA and their ilk
need not be present at all. They are merely thugs who take the lion's share
of the money that should go to the artists directly.
it doesn't matter what laws they pay to get passed
copyright has been treated as damage to the network and has been appropriately routed around
thousands of
industry lawyer goons
versus
millions of
1. technically superior,
2. media hungry and
3. POOR teenagers
the game is already over
it doesn't matter in the least what the law says, in any country
copyright has been rendered functionally defunct and unenforceable
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So if you support a policy in line with a large segment of the people you represent, that's "shamelessly buy"ing votes?
Well, if so, than I wholeheartedly condemn the American Federation of Musician's shameless perversion of Democracy.
School bands, the orchestral and marching bands, all did the same thing until Xerography became commonplace. Now I suspect they buy ONE copy and burn as many copies as they need.
That would be a copyright violation, easily.
Some do that. Most of them actually purchase the music because the RIAA and similar groups have enormous fines for not having the originals. There are 800 numbers you can call to report suspected piracy and they will come out unannounced and search the school's music library to make sure they have purchased originals for all of their music.
Since kids tend to damage or lose the originals many directors keep them in their library and only hand out the photocopies -- which is entirely legal.
A side effect of this is why school music programs are always broke. They have to spend a lot of money on the music alone, and whatever is left over goes to instruments, uniforms, and eventually the students. IMO this is good example of everything that is wrong with the industry. Schools should get this stuff for free so they can spend the money on education and not have to worry about copyright.
Link: http://www.cfs-fcee.ca/copyright/CFS-Fair-Copyright-Flyer.pdf
http://www.pirateparty.ca/ , and we now have a new website
I mean seriously, when you pull stunts like this, barring even the other view from being fielded, how in the hell do you expect us to take you seriously? This kind of thing disgusts me. I'm actually for copyright and protections and the like, but every time they do this kind of thing I lose that much more of my support for their position as they are obviously not even trying to be reasonable.
As to the MP and students distributing the flier, good job. The other side has to be heard. Don't let these guys get away with this BS. And don't even think about apologizing. They are the ones that should be apologizing to you. They obviously aren't interested in real discussion.
It's not the wants and needs of teenagers that is bringing the end of copyright. It's the simple forces of reality.
You know the song "Happy Birthday". It's copyrighted. The song itself is a mere 95 bytes in size. The data overheads involved in transmitting the file probably outweigh the file itself. Yet copyright law essentially tells us that Time Warner "owns" this song. That the act of copying it is a sacred right, reserved only for those whom the privilage is conferred upon by the rightful owner. The rightful owner of 95 bytes of data. An amount so small that no currency exists that can measure its worth.
But Happy Birthday represents only the purest and most absurd form of copyrighted work. As Moore's law has progressed, and continues progressing, and as our networks get faster and faster and disc space cheaper and cheaper, even music files 5MB in size have become trivial amounts of data. Soon even 50GB Blu Ray movies will be considered too paltry to be worth protecting. For some, they already are. This isn't a simply a consequence of people being too cheap. It's a consequence of the data being too cheap to buy.
People realise this. They're not stupid. They see how easy, accessible and trivial data is in our digital age. The internet is a deluge and trying to tell them that certain datas cannot be copied because they are under some sacred divination is like telling people in a thunderstorm that they cannot collect rain water(This is in fact done in certain places). You can pass such laws, but ultimately resonable people will not obey them. They will not obey the law, not because it is unjust, but because it is entirely irrational. In ten years time, claiming the latest 5MB pop song should be protected will be as ludicrous as claiming the same for "Happy Birthday".
As the realities of the digital of make the concept of copyright more and more irrational, I find it increasingly difficult to even find arguments justifying its continued existence. With the de facto perpetual copyright that has evolved, its irrational claims and the draconian measures used to enforce it, more and more I find myself viewing copyright as a system that will be inherently gamed by its proponents and which will, inevitably evolved to the absurd position we now find ourselves in. Frankly, I think copyright is akin to the system of direct democracy and propositions run in California. A noble goal, and even a worthwhile one in the beginning, but which in the end became a destructive farce and totally unworkable.
I'd like to hear some justifications for copyright that aren't 300 years old. While I see some benefit to the system, ultimately, I am like someone seeing the benefits of Prohibition while also seeing the great harm it has done to society, politics and the legal system. My current position is that copyright needs drastic reform and moreover, if that reform is impossible or unworkable then we need to scrap the system entirely.
May the Maths Be with you!
I agree whole-heartedly. I was in band from the 4th grade all the way through til high school graduation and I saw what copyright "protection" did to our music program. I remember having to share one sheet of music for 4 people because our director didn't want to take a chance at violating copyright by making an extra copy or two; whether a violation would have occurred or not didn't matter (and I'm not sure it would have), the fear of it happening was enough. Except in areas where the band actually makes a profit (all of our concerts were free at the time and open to the public, no profit was made except during marching band season) how is this not all covered under fair use? It's ridiculous. The only reason we didn't have financial problems was because we had such a good group of lobbying parents in the past that pushed the district for money, allowing us to build a substantial back catalog of music we could play from. I can see why smaller schools don't even start up band/orchestra programs though, it's too damn expensive. IMO, the RIAA will be a major culprit in the death of music education in America.
Next they'll have talking heads on sympathetic cable news networks suggesting that Canada is being taken over by Socialists and "real patriots" should start showing up at meetings with guns
This is where the strategy breaks down, as we've had numerous socialist governments at the provincial level that have been variously disastrous (Ontario), middling-competent (BC) and really quite good (Manitoba.)
So "socialist" ain't the scare-word up here it is in the USA, although that's helped by Canadians being generally braver and more tolerant of diversity than Americans (see our gay marriage laws, for example.)
The difference is due to two things, I think: we have a long history of robust alternative political experimentation, so we tend to go, "Ok, another bunch of wingnuts... let's see what they have to bring to the table..." because we have lots of examples, particularly at the provincial level, of wingnuts not turning out to be any more dangerous/stupid/insane than the mainstream parties.
On the other hand, we have no imperial ambitions, and that means we aren't afraid to be seen to try and fail. This makes us more successful, in the long run, because it gives our political and economic system more freedom to experiment. Whereas the Americans know they'll be mocked around the world if they try anything and fail, which often leads them to simply not try, except in the area of military adventurism where even failure is so terrible and terrifying that there isn't a lot of mocking going on.
In any case, attempts by Americans to influence Canadian policy have not been notably successful even with our most neo-conservative Federal government ever, and antics like these at the town hall meeting are only going to result in conditions that make it politically impossible for the Conservatives to table legislation that is seen to kowtow to American corporate interests.
Americans typically see Canadians as stoic and think we're passive. You see we're self-deprecating and think we lack confidence. You see we're polite and think we're weak. Then you come up against our hard limits and wonder what you were thinking.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I'm thinking, 10-20yrs of incarceration for flagrant violations for ripping a digital copy of a CD or DVD for personal use, 25-40 for sharing it, and financial damages in the millions of dollars per shared song or book. That should adequately provide a disincentive for the casual intellectual property thief. Obviously forfeiture of your entire estate and a lifetime of collections to prevent future economic misdeeds is the only adequate preventive measure.
For thieves of software and commercial theft, adding chemical castration should nip the problem in the bud.
And of course to claw back the rampant theft of content the content cooperatives like BSA, RIAA and MPAA should get a surcharge of 50% on all R/W media including hard drives - 75% for SD media that's more frequently infringing, and on all streaming communications like Internet, Cable TV, cellular phones and POTS. Clearly the passing of digital or analog data across international borders is likewise a circumvention of just management of artist's rights - a "jurisdiction hole" and must be prevented totally. An overriding "Supercopyright Body" should be instituted consisting of all of these constituencies.
To ensure fair distribution of content licensing all equipment that contains an amplifier, recorder or speaker should enjoy the surcharge as well. After all if you play music in your car with the windows down that's a public performance. Naturally for all of this equipment adequate licensing protective measures of DRM should be mandatory as well.
I'm sure we can count on the righteous defenders of artists' rights to distribute the take equitably after accounting overhead and costs.
Help stamp out iliturcy.