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Canada Encouraged US To Place It On Piracy List
An anonymous reader writes "Copyright, U.S. lobbying, and the stunning backroom Canadian response gets front
page news treatment today in Canada as the Toronto Star covers new revelations on copyright by Michael Geist (who offers a longer post with links to the cables)
from the U.S. cables released by WikiLeaks. The cables reveal that former Industry Minister Maxime Bernier raised the possibility of leaking the copyright bill to U.S. officials before it was to be tabled in the House of Commons, former Industry Minister Tony Clement's director of policy Zoe Addington encouraged the U.S. to pressure Canada by elevating it on a piracy watch list, Privy Council Office official Ailish Johnson disclosed the content of ministerial mandate letters, and former RCMP national coordinator for intellectual property crime Andris Zarins advised the U.S. that the government was working on a separate intellectual property enforcement bill."
The head of Spain's RIAA has been found to have encouraged Spain to be included in the "Special 301" list, as well.
This is especially irritating, since it is that same organization who has used "Special 301" as an argument to pressure the government into modifying our laws to combat webs which offered links to warez. It is worth pointing out that those same webs have been found to be completely legal for years, since they don't actually host the copyrighted material.
It is just amazing that a country will bow and modify its laws just because it was included in a "piracy list". Especially if what they intend to change is rather ineffective and too vague. Any web which links to material without the original author's permission can be blocked, which will probably result in 1. no less piracy and 2. abuse of this new law by others.
I don't understand why they would block the webs that link and do not host the material, instead of blocking those that do host the material.
Well, actually I do. It is, of course, because P2P links would be impossible to block (users would need to be blocked) without resorting to a HADOPI-style law - which they don't like because it is considered too impopular.
Ignatieff may or may not have been able to do things more effectively as leader. But that's not anywhere near the whole story. The Conservatives, thanks to the fundraising efforts they made to collect major political subsidies, are sitting on huge piles of money. They have millions to waste in advertising even before the election. And they do spend millions in advertising before the election. Even Jesus Christ would have had trouble defending himself against all the slander backed by subsidised CPC ads. They got the Goebbels Big Lie out there early, and often, and the Liberals didn't have millions in ads to respond with. The Liberals didn't try pulling the same Nixonian dirty tricks against Harper either.
Ignatieff thought that his performance in the House of Commons (that few watch), his occasional appearance in the conservative media (hah), and his trips to meet and interact with groups of Canadians, would be enough. Sadly, it wasn't. The first two had no chance of countering defamation the ads' targets were inclined to go along with anyways and the last, by its nature, couldn't affect enough people.
This would have happened whether a "Conservative, right-wing" government was in or the Liberals. To understand, you need to read a 2008 story from the same watchdog, Michael Geist (to whom all Canada should be deeply indebted for tracking these issues for years):
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/443867
The key phrase in the story is "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."
Americans are sometimes surprised to learn (Condi Rice was one, which was disappointing from a foreign-affairs scholar) that Canada is the US' largest trading partner, more bilateral trade than with your #2 (China) and your #4 (UK) combined, nearly as much as China+Japan (#3). So imagine how large a trading partner the US is for Canada - 80% of the total, last time I checked, that is, 4X as much trade as with all other partners combined.
When the US really wants to lean on Canada at trade discussions, their only difficulty is choosing which levers to pull: making trouble over standard inspections of meat and grains? Lumber? Re-investigating whether Canada subsidizes iron ore, holding up imports while doing so?
So you can find some profoundly anti-Canadian stances being taken by Canadian trade officials - until you see the larger picture and find they were arranging to charge all Canadians an extra $100/year for media content ($3 billion from 30 million people) to smooth the path for $6B in exports - of the $76B total, they only have to pick less than 10% to threaten.
It had everything to do with the ends justify the means right wing politics of Harper.
Read the OP:
“In contrast to the messages from other Canadian officials, she said that if Canada is elevated to the Special 301 Priority Watch List (PWL), it would not hamper — and might even help — the (government of Canada's) ability to enact copyright legislation,” the cable says.
Days later, Canada was elevated on the piracy watch list.
Harper has been copying the republican play book throughout his term in politics. Manufacture a crisis that needs the response he wants anyway.
You can't form a majority government unless you win 50% +1 of the seats in the house. To do that you do NOT need 50%+1 of the vote.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." -Steinbeck
"Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times." -Vonnegut
"It is a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?”"-Vonnegut
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.-Albert Einstein
Get the drift yet?
Take the Red Pill.