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EU Demands Canada Rework Its Copyright, Patent Law
An anonymous reader writes "The draft intellectual property text of the EU - Canada Trade Agreement has leaked, with news that the EU is demanding that Canada fundamentally alter copyright, patent, and trademark law. The laundry list of demands includes copyright term extension, WIPO ratification, DMCA-style legislation, resale rights, new enforcement provisions, and following patent, trademark, and design law treaties. The net result is that when combined with the ACTA requirements, Canadian copyright law may cease to be Canadian." Reader TheTurtlesMoves stresses the "first sale doctrine" aspect of the Canada - EU negotiations. Once an artist sells a creative work, should she get a cut of any future resales of that same work? The EU says yes at least for some types of works, and it wants Canada to see things its way. "Europe's Directive 2001/84/EC says that the right covers only 'works of graphic or plastic art such as pictures, collages, paintings, drawings, engravings, prints, lithographs, sculptures, tapestries, ceramics, glassware and photographs, provided they are made by the artist himself or are copies considered to be original works of art.'"
Aren't we constantly told that the EU is so much better in regards to patents and copyrights and it's only the big bad US that is constantly trying to push all this stuff on people?
They have enough asinine copyright laws as it is. Seriously? An extra charge on blank optical and tape media because it "might" be used to pirate? Does this go for hard drives and bandwidth? I'm with the current US and Canada system. The artist don't benefit much, it's the royalty houses are the ones that really benefit. Don't they get enough from performance, broadcast, sales, etc..? Artist can go broke trying to collect their money.
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So long as it's the Europeans bending them over the kitchen table and not the Americans, the Canadians will be perfectly happy.
Since our current conservative party government thinks leadership is waiting to be told what to do by other countries, I guess Canada can expect EU-style copyright laws shortly.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Just as a matter of principal, Canada should give them a nice hearty "F**k you, eh!"
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Europe isn't a utopia when it comes to copyrights. Everyone made a big deal about that copyright term extension act that was proposed by Sonny Bono, and while it was a heinous bill at least it didn't revive expired copyrights like the copyright extension legislation in the EU did.
Please tell the EU to go fuck itself and/or adapt its copyright and patent law to the Canadian model.
And possibly to close Disneyland Paris, stop accepting money from **AA and start developing some common sense.
Crap, I think I overdid it with that last part. They are, after all, politicians. But if they're supposed to represent the European population, let me be the first to say this isn't what all of the population wants.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
As a Canadian, to all foreign powers who demand we change our laws to match yours, I say fuck you. Get your house in order before you tell us how to get ours in order.
I politely say, "that's nice". Please take a seat there by the Americans who have made the same demands. we'll see you after them. They've been waiting a few years, so you make want to bring a lunch and something to read. Really, the government is in a minority position (has been for a few years) and has plenty of real trouble to deal with... they also want to be elected with a majority some day so they are not apt to piss off the population too much.
The U.S. has proposed provisions that would mandate a DMCA-style implementation for the WIPO Internet treaties and encourage the adoption of a three-strikes and you're out system to cut off access where there are repeated allegations of infringement.
What is the fundamental difference between physical art and digital art such that the digital art shouldn't be covered by the first sale doctrine? As far as I can tell, the only difference is the presence of a lobby...
The last time I checked Canada wasn't in Europe. Let's hope our politicians realize that.
Actually a few countries in the EU have passed DMCA-like legislation. But from the article:
Anti-circumvention provisions. The EU is demanding that Canada implement anti-circumvention provisions that include a ban on the distribution of circumvention devices. There is no such requirement in the WIPO Internet treaties.
This sounds pretty much like wanting DMCA-style legislation.
Canada should not allow itself to be bullied into adopting bad copyright law. While the European Union appears quite eager to be as bad (or worse) than the United States in terms of harmful copyright legislation, I sincerely hope Canada will put its citizens interests above those of copyright holders. I'm not against globalization, but countries must sometimes defend their sovereignty for the sake of their citizens.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
This type of news is disgusting to me as a Canadian.
Throughout the summer, Canada held an enormous copyright consultation in which large corporations expressed an interest in these types of changes, and artists, creators and citizens expressed an interest in the exact opposite direction to this.
Michael Geist usually carries all the latest news about this topic.
At the same time, I think we have nothing to worry about. In a country that shows a 30% voter turnout (at best), that makes 6.9 million voters. Historically, over 500000 canadians joined the protest against the last attempt to bring laws like this. Thats a 7% swing in the vote towards the party that will stand up against this type of law making. Thats enough to win an election in Canada.
With all this hype over copyright and trademark law, I expect it to be a hot topic in the next election, and with us running under a minority gov't, we could end up with an election at any time.
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
Even the French-Canadians don't want anything to do with Europe.
If you are as pissed off about other countries trying to write our laws write your MP and the following Ministers.
Tony Clement
Minister of Industry
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ic1.nsf/eng/00093.html
minister.industry@ic.gc.ca
Bev Oda
Minister of International Cooperation
http://www.bevoda.ca/
Oda.B@parl.gc.ca
That is not what international law is at all. International law is the stuff that happens in The Hague and it has been around a long time and is desperately needed. It governs such silly every day things as trade. If you trade between countries (between sets of laws) which one goes? Well, that is what international law is for.
And it is in Holland because Holland was ONCE a world-power (yes really) but lost that status but still had a need to maintain its trading empire. So while the british and other powers settled trade disputes with the law of the biggest gun(boat) Holland needed something more.
International law is an entirely different beast then this, what we are talking about here are treaties. It may look the same, but it is fundementally different.
In fact, the current system is so wrong because it seeks to bypass laws altogether. The media companies are waging a very complex war against basic law by trying to get a new set of laws introduced by means that were never intended. Trade treaties were supposed to be "We sell you X and you don't charge for it and we allow you sell us Y without charging tariffs on it". Not "you will subject your citizens to our laws".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Copyright_Directive
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Is it just me or is the EU starting to sound like the US?
It's not really "Anti American" (some of us still like individual Americans) -- it's "Anti export of American laws to the rest of the world".
It is entirely American companies who have been pushing to have the DMCA exported, who are responsible for including it in that secretive ACTA treaty they're not allowed to tell us the details of, and it's American intellectual property stakeholders who are trying to push this on everyone else.
The goal is seemingly to try to export laws to the rest of the world that makes all laws and technologies subservient to the wishes of content and media companies. Sadly, we can't even accuse America of colonialism in this case -- it's more like oligarchy.
As far as changing the right of first sale so that the artist gets a cut every time the piece is sold -- I say horseshit. That makes no sense.
Sadly, I fear that soon most nations will get swept up in this stupidity and before long we'll only be able to do what the media companies tell us we're allowed to. If they get this enshrined into every country's laws, before long, they'll be able to dictate how technology works so guarantee that nothing which they don't want us to have (and for which they can't continue to bill us) is allowed.
Time to start voting from the rooftops.
Forget about the small ragtag bands of Middle Eastern terrorists. They aren't a real threat to freedom and democracy.
Legislation like this, pushed by supranational organizations, is. It is a far, far bigger threat to everybody's freedom and the democracy of Western nations than any terrorist organization.
Defeating the entire purpose of the law in the first place: to protect small time artists.
Where did you get that?
I'm pretty certain that the entire purpose of the law is to make large multinational corporations the gateholders to our arts and culture, and prevent small-time artists from entering the market from without sponsorship from said corps.
EU is not a monolithic body, and concerning copyrights it's a violent battleground between the two sides. New repressions are raised as proposed laws by member countries then struck down by the EU parliament majority. Laws forbidding such repressions are raised and fought over as well. Commissions (which are generally pro-copyright and do most of the work) try to circumvent the parliament (which has the final vote and is generally pro-freedom), then the parliament members notice the shenanigans, bitchslap the commissions into place and try to set things straight. Sometimes the commissions manage to slip something under the radar of parliament, sometimes the parliament passes laws that make some commissions' efforts illegal.
I'm pretty sure this treaty was a draft prepared by one of the commissions, which when it hit the parliament, would either be struck down or modified so heavily not a word would go unchanged. OTOH the commissioners could try to pass it as "pretty much final version just pending a couple signatures, please adapt to this and when the treaty goes live your law will match the requirements of the treaty 100%". Of course when the treaty goes live it would be nothing like it was when this proposition was made but the harm has been done.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Here in Western Canada we call them "udders".