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Canadian Copyright Lobby Fights Anti-Spyware Legislation

Posted by Soulskill on from the stop-being-jerks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New Canadian anti-spam and anti-spyware legislation is scheduled for a key vote on Monday. Michael Geist reports that the copyright lobby has been pushing to remove parts of the bill that would take away exceptions which currently allow spyware to be installed without authorization. 'The copyright lobby is deeply concerned that this change will block attempts to track possible infringement through electronic means.' There have also been proposals to extend the exemptions granted to telecom providers to include the installation of programs without the user's express consent, which Geist says will 'leave the door open to private, surreptitious surveillance.'"

22 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Let me guess... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Either overtly, or in practice, this demand for private surveillance powers would cover them putting spyware on my machine; but not my putting spyware on their machines....

    1. Re:Let me guess... by polle404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and next term, they'll have it amended with a nifty little clause, so you're not allowed to uninstall it, either, i'd wager.
      scary stuff...
      and I thought Canadians were the levelheaded ones of that particular continent? ;-)

      --

      ~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
    2. Re:Let me guess... by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wonder how it'll fair against the privacy act, considering it would fly afoul of the retention of data w/o consent.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    3. Re:Let me guess... by QuoteMstr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm ambivalent on whether the parent is troll, but regardless, he has a salient point: when a significant portion of society breaks a law, there's not something wrong with the society, but with the law. Authority to govern comes from the consent of the governed. Ubiquitous lawbreaking without social consequence* is tantamount to retracting that consent. It's a terrible situation: not only is there a very real personal danger of capricious enforcement, but when a lawmaking apparatus is so aloof that it deems most of the people who make up a society unfit to be part of that society, that society is likely very sick in other respects as well.

      * That is, practically nobody will shun you for sharing files, or smoking pot, (or in the 1920s) going to a speakeasy, but if you are acquitted of a murder on a technicality, you can expect to lose many of your friends.

    4. Re:Let me guess... by QuoteMstr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're talking about individuals. I'm talking about society. As far as individual acts go, as Dan Ariely said, a fine is a price. Some people are willing to pay it. But I'm not talking about individuals weighing the risks and reward, but rather indications that particular laws are unjust.

      I'm talking about wide-spread lawbreaking without social consequences for the lawbreakers. If littering were common, and nobody seemed to care much, then there would be a case for repealing the laws against it. But neither criterion is satisfied, really, so we can conclude that we actually do want laws against, err, opportunistic waste disposal.

    5. Re:Let me guess... by aztracker1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, I pretty much consider littering one of the most serious breakdowns of society... you are literally polluting your own environment directly. I'd rather have my son pirate every piece of software on his computer, and every bit of media he has a hold of than to see him litter. That's the truth of it... Not that I really condone the piracy of all software and media.

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    6. Re:Let me guess... by jim_v2000 · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Authority to govern comes from the consent of the governed"

      Ah, I thought it came from strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.

      --
      Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
    7. Re:Let me guess... by haruchai · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We were, mostly levelheaded until the right-wing nuts managed a takeover of the center-right - sound familiar?
      Then the centrist and center-left basically fell apart and, shockingly, the only thing preventing the minority government
      from gaining a majority, which would really screw anyone who gives a damn about basic freedoms, global warming,
      equal rights and transparency in government are the Quebec sovereignists.

      Scary times indeed.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    8. Re:Let me guess... by Again · · Score: 2, Funny

      Not that I really condone the piracy of all software and media.

      I agree. I wouldn't recommend that anyone pirate Microsoft Access. Ever. For any reason. At all! No reason at all. Believe me, don't touch Microsoft Access. Just let it die. Please?

    9. Re:Let me guess... by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's the continued criminalization of a tiny fraction of the population. Most people don't want to live in a trash heap, so they don't throw trash everywhere. When it comes to things like piracy, it's far more complex. With copyright, one can break the law and realize that its existence is better than its nonexistence. Many justify this (and I'm not arguing for or against here) in large part because the original purpose of copyright was not to stop individuals from copying things for personal use. That narrow interpretation of the law is a relatively recent abuse.

      The purpose of modern copyright (for at least two centuries) has been to protect authors, composers, artists, and musicians, not the publishing industry. More to the point, a large part of its purpose was to protect those people from the industry---so that people who create an original work of authorship can shop it around to a publisher and have recourse if the publisher steals the work, publishes it without permission, and keeps the profits. It was primarily concerned with large-scale commercial copying, not individual copying---to such a degree that the impact on the commercial viability of the work is a consideration for a fair use defense. Indeed, when copyright was created, the notion of personal copying was absurd.

      Indeed, the thought of prosecuting individuals wasn't really even a consideration (at least in the U.S.) before the 1980s and Sony v Universal. Indeed, we can largely blame this mentality on the dissenting arguments posed by Blackmun et al. Prior to that, small-scale copying was not only mostly ignored, but in the few cases where it came up (e.g. Williams & Wilkins Co. v. United States), they got smacked down by the courts pretty badly. Over the past thirty years or so, however, copyright has taken a rather dramatic right turn towards corporate welfare, with absurd term extensions that essentially eradicate the public domain as we know it, dramatic scaling back of fair use rights, lawsuits against individuals and small-scale copying, and various egregious anticompetitive practices like the absurd "three note rule" (The Chiffons v. George Harrison), all of which are intended to further tighten the publishing/recording/movie industry's grasp on the creations of we, the artists, musicians, authors, etc.

      So even though I don't condone copyright infringement, even I as a composer, writer, and computer programmer have a hard time with the way copyright is being abused to go after two bit infringement, enough so that I'd rather see copyright law and enforcement rolled back to about 1970, but not enough so that I'd want to see copyright go away altogether. It still is very useful at preventing corporations from stealing people's creations... up until the point at which they sign the contract, anyway, at which point the content creators are usually screwed.... You know... maybe we should roll it back farther than 1970... or at least seriously revisit the notion of works for hire and seriously tighten up what constitutes a work for hire, seriously limit corporate ownership of copyrights, and in general take back copyright from the leachers... and I don't mean the ones on Bittorrent.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    10. Re:Let me guess... by Evil+Shabazz · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Authority to govern comes from the consent of the governed"

      Ah, I thought it came from strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.

      Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!

      --
      Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
    11. Re:Let me guess... by SlashWombat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would have to agree with this, except that most copyright ends up being owned by the very large corporations you suggest are the current demons. To make copyright fair again, I would suggest that copyright not be transferable from the original authors. Indeed, this should be back dated 100 years to totally undo the shit that these companies have perpetrated on the global population. I would also suggest that the copyright period be reduced to something more reasonable, say 50 years ... If you haven't made money/reputation in that period of time, you never will!

    12. Re:Let me guess... by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's getting to be a pretty good argument for abandoning Windows. I'm pondering a BSD machine with Firefox and P2P software running in jails, so even if the program itself had some sort of catastrophic security problem that allowed RIAA, the MPAA or whoever else (FBI, CIA, whatever) to throw in some spyware (if any of these guys even know what FreeBSD is), it would be pretty damned useless.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  2. Two faces of a coin by Voulnet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The more spyware and copyright lobbyists get mentioned together in legislation environments, the better. Since the majority of the folks in the judicial system are not tech-savvy, this may be a good chance to print a very bad (and true) trait on the operations of the copyright lobby.

    1. Re:Two faces of a coin by QuoteMstr · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think corruption is only a partial explanation for these terrible laws.

      As we age, through repetition, our worldview becomes burned into our minds like a phosphor afterglow on an old CRT. We then tend to face novel situations by constructing analogies between them and our ingrained repertoire of concepts, which explains the prevalence of car analogies for computing. But like all analogies, these are imperfect, and when aged lawmakers try to legislate based on these analogies, we get bad policy. Thus, to get truly effective policy, we need people who have an innate understanding of the subject: as the cynical old saying goes, "change comes one funeral at a time."

      By the way: when will people start using computer analogies to explain cars?

  3. We don't allow that sort of thing by Rix · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lobbyists are not allowed to give any significant amount of money to politicians in Soviet Canuckistan. Bribes "political contributions" are limited to a few thousand dollars and are stringently regulated.

    1. Re:We don't allow that sort of thing by AHuxley · · Score: 2, Insightful

      a few thousand dollars by a few thousand Canadians and your into significant amounts of money.
      Never forget the lure of a job after politics, scholarship for family, friends.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:We don't allow that sort of thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Lobbyists are not allowed to give any significant amount of money to politicians in Soviet Canuckistan. Bribes "political contributions" are limited to a few thousand dollars and are stringently regulated.

      So? You want to know how this works around here (many European countries)? Politicians get exclusive vacations after which they change their agenda by 180 degrees. Or they get very high-paying "consulting" contracts. Or once their term is over, they end up in a high-paying position in a company of their choice.

      Anti-corruption laws are made by politicians for politicians. They cannot work.

  4. Re:Am I reading the summary wrong? by AHuxley · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The copyright lobby is pissed. They want to go fishing. The law would allows them to sneak but only collect data within limits, if they stumble over your emails ect, it gets very tricky.
    They want sneak and peak open season.
    If their "off the rack", one size fits all IP hunting Windows backdoor application gets all your data, so be it.
    If they have to stand in open court and explain case by case how they 'protected' personal information during and after the hacking, it spoils the fun of the rapid IP to conviction shock and awe.
    Best to get all data protections dropped and get a licence to hack anyone, anything, anytime. No pesky state detective license, federal law, state like "microphone" recording laws. Your IP is seen in the wide, game over, no fancy lawyers in court asking 'questions'.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  5. Re:Am I reading the summary wrong? - YES YOU ARE by Inschato · · Score: 2, Informative

    As the law stands now, they can install spyware without authorization.
    The bill would change this.
    They're trying to remove that part of the bill.

    Got it?

  6. Off-topic but on-topic to your post: London. by Animaether · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I always thought this to be rather counter-intuitive, but it strikes me time and again when I visit London...

    Compared to San Francisco, New York, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc. downtown London is squeaky clean. Not just the parks, but random streets, areas near train/underground stations, etc. as well.
    I hardly ever see any cleaning crews, so it can't be that they're busy cleaning all the time to keep things clean.

    Then at one point in my first visit, I -had- a piece of trash.. an empty coke can ..and after 15 minutes of walking around with the darn thing (I hate littering), it struck me: it's damn near impossible to find a trashcan in London.
    You can walk for miles in London and not come across any non-private trashcan. Not on the streets, not in train stations unless you happen to find one in some back corner or sneak into a fastfood place, not anywhere inside parks - you're lucky to find one or two near the entrances.

    Could it be? Could removing trashcans and not having cleaning crews going around all the time have some psychological effect on people that they get the strong impression that their trash is -their trash- and should not only not be littered, but not be conveniently dumped in government-approved receptacles?

    Another option is that on my three visits, I happened to take routes that magically steered me clear of a wealth of trashcans to be found in London.
    I'll have to keep a keen eye out next time I go.

  7. Shame? by divisionbyzero · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Do these RIAA and MPAA have no shame? Seriously. How can they ask for these things with a straight face? Must be desperation in the face of an obsolete business model.