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Wikileaks Says Public Forced Canadian DMCA Delay
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist reports
that a new WikiLeaks
cable confirms
that the Canadian Conservative government delayed introducing a
Canadian DMCA in early 2008 due to public opposition. The US
cable notes confirmation came directly from then-Industry Minister Jim
Prentice, who told US Ambassador David Wilkins that cabinet
colleagues and Conservative MPs were worried about the electoral
implications of copyright reform."
At least they listened for once.
Of course, if our politicians actually, you know, GAVE A FUCK, then they wouldn't have re-introduced the same tired shit. But hey, once at least the court of public opinion stopped a politician from being, well, a lying scumbag asshole politician
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I'd sure be nice if politicians were this concerned with passing legislature that their constituents supported all of the time, instead of only during election season.
They still need to be worried about this. The Conservatives won't be getting my vote next week specifically because of DMCA 2.0 (and the Internet snooping and censoring that is certain to follow).
...actually works out fine for Canada in the last couple years. Conservatives are concerned about losing votes and decide not to bring most controversial issues to the table (e.g. abortion, same-sex marriage), knowing that the oppositions can bring down the government at any time they like. On the other hand, oppositions do not obstruct legislation or stop the government from getting things done because they are also concerned about the votes. With a majority, the Canadian DMCA would have passed with ease.
They just pass it under urgency in the evening with about one day of notice to the public.
Surely what WikiLeaks is really saying is something we all know: The governments of the world no longer act for the people of their countries.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
So there's an issue that is sufficiently unpopular that they even fear they'd lose an election over it if they implemented it before the election? Hell, not even tax hikes have that effect! To some degree, most people understand that taxes have a reason to exist, some even welcome them, while most accept them as a necessary evil.
But a DMCA would have been an issue that would have cost them the election. Well, clue me in then: If nobody that should matter to a politician (i.e. the people possibly electing him) wants it, who does he actually represent? The people? Obviously, he does not.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Right, because deregulating an industry is a "great" idea. *rollseyes*
The problem with the CRTC is not that it exists, but that it is a captured regulator. It is a regulatory body controlled by the industry it's supposed to regulate.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
People tend to give more of a damn about things that affect them directly than things happening in other countries. Even if the "other country" thing is comparatively horrific (as in the case of copyright here vs war and killing there).
Whether anyone knows this is happening or understands the consequences is a much bigger concern. The media and other copyright promoters do everything in their power to convince everyone that "we've got to stop the pirates" when in reality most of what they're doing will have little to no impact on pirates but will affect average users severely.
Take a really simple example. How many pirates bother watching the 2-minute (per language up here in Canada!) FBI/Interpol warning on their movies? Probably very few -- its either stripped off or at least the "unskippable" flag is removed on almost every torrent. Yet legitimate viewers have to watch the thing over and over and over again.
And don't even start on those DVDs where they decided to mark the ads and previews as unskippable.
Or all of those various CD "protection" hacks in the late 90s/early 2000s that did little more than prevent the discs from playing on older (legitimate) CD players. Yet it didn't stop them from showing up on Napster within a day or two of release.
Some people welcome them on other people (not just donks -- I wish everyone would pay the 20% that I do). When I was poor(er) and qualified for all kinds of credits that pushed my effective tax rate down to single digits, I thought they were reasonable. I'm sure the 47% of people that pay no income tax (especially if they get a refund) welcome them.
When I was a college student, I used to get refunds, and that made sense, I had no extra money. Now I'm at a high bracket, and I'm happy with paying my taxes. If I'm well-off enough to be in a higher bracket, that means that I can't complain...I have a lot more spending money than I did in college, and actually have savings for retirement! Obviously taxes are not ruining my life.
That said, although I'm all for contributing to needed services, I don't want my money wasted on pork. So I very much support government transparency and decreased spending. If the decreased spending leads to lower taxes, yay. Lower taxes leading to cuts in needed programs, that's not so good.
And yes, the problem is that nobody can agree on which programs are the ones we need and which ones are the ones that are pork. There is no perfect solution.
Politicians, like all power figures, are innately tied to the influences of power. In this case, a powerful nation to the south, which has powerful incentive to push intellectual poison on the rest of the world to prop itself up. [yes, I am a citizen of that powerful country, but I can see the handwriting on the wall. The US has no real manufacturing infrastructure. Our agribiz infrastructure is no longer first rate in the world market, and our last strongholds for world relevency are intellectual property and military might. Without IP, I believe we would crumble like the former soviet union, due to the shortsighted practices of our corporations who have no sense of national loyalty, only loyalty to money-- and our politicians who are loyal to those corporations, and not the voting public. As such, the US is a sinking ship, with bandaids over huge holes of economic policy, and bilge pumps of government bailouts running 24/7. It is NOT sustainable.]
This whole issue with "Worldwide DMCA" would dissolve rapidly if [when] the USA finally tanks. Without the US to make a fuss over it, the corporations would be unable to leverage such global policy positions on the rest of the world, and the effort would suffer huge spirals of inefficiency as every little government everywhere suddenly had the 300lb gorilla with the billy club removed from the parlament floor, and politicians had golden parachute cords cut.
As suicidal as it seems, what is best for the WORLD right now is for my country to suffer the consequences of its own complacency, and to deminish-- in profound and spectacular fashion.
Props to the people of Canada for telling my government to shove it. I love you guys.
Wikileaks: the election has been running for a month now. Waiting until four days before the election to start to release a tidal wave of revelant documents (and only the unclassified documents with mostly common sense stuff) feels like a bit of an ambush. We're a rational democracy (more or less), we'd like same time to digest and debate issues rather than being forced to assimilate everything in a weekend.
You obviously want to vote NDP this election but just don't know it yet. One of the things on Jack Layton's platform is election reform, specifically proportional representation which is exactly what you want. With proportional representation, issues won't be "rounded-out" by arbitrary dividing areas up into ridings. National issues say with about 10% interest will get 10% power in Parliament. Not swept under the rug as-is now because the member you want to vote for is half-way across the country and there isn't enough interest in your area to have someone on your ballot. Vote the NDP in, get the election system fixed and then vote as you will. Layton has a PhD in Political Science if you read that article by the way so he knows where the rough spots are.
Of course, voting in the NDP to fix the election system takes foresight to see that you can vote in the next election for whoever you want with a better system. Most voters don't want/can't see beyond one election so it's a difficult proposition to push.
Shh.