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The Behind-the-Scenes Campaign To Bring SOPA To Canada
An anonymous reader writes "SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., but lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries. With the Canadian DMCA back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, Michael Geist reports that the recording industry wants language to similar to that found in SOPA on blocking access to websites, new termination policies for subscribers, and an expanded SOPA-style liability for sites that could include YouTube and cloud-based services."
Another reader points out that similar mischief is afoot in Ireland: "The Irish government's new 'statutory instrument' threatens to do some of the same things as SOPA, mainly introducing the power to force ISPs to block websites suspected of having copyrighted material on them."
I can probably get more bang for my buck by buying one of their politicians instead of buying one in the U.S. anyway.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Same answer applies every time abolish copyrights and patents.
Copyrights and patents prevent speech, prevent innovation, prevent progress.
The only real free market approach to protecting your ideas is a trade secret, that's all. Government must not be allowed to meddle with businesses and protect business models and practices.
When somebody uses his savings to start a woodshop, as an example, if they fail and business dies out and they are out of their investment, there won't be government standing there with a handout, and it shouldn't be - it's personal risk.
Same with copyrights and patents - these are government handouts at the expense of the larger free market economy and it makes no sense to protect one type of investment over any other type. Government shouldn't be subsidising any businesses at all ever (banks, insurance companies and Solyndra come to mind).
Abolish copyrights and patents and check out the link I posted in this comment, it leads to my other comment on the same topic, but it's not my comment that is of interest, it's the response to my comment, with /. readers being vehemently opposed to the idea.
Why are /. readers opposed to this? Because they think that their business model is more important than a woodshop founder's business model. So the woodshop or a restaurant founder can go eat shit if his business fails (and a woodshop and especially a restaurant is a very location based heavy business, if you are in the wrong location, your business will fail, while on the Internet, businesses have access to near global markets, so there is a huge advantage for the software/book/movie/audio, etc. types of businesses there).
It's hypocrisy, it's short-sightedness, it's hubris and it shows the true colours (as in character) of the crowd.
You can't handle the truth.
Any provisions that can be boiled down to
A Association Is Collaboration
B Accusation is Conviction
needs to result in the bill being killed.
Linking to %BadContent% should not be a crime per say (unless thats a majority of what you do). And Blunt killing of a server (or server farm) should not even be considered.
Also there should be a short waiting period (to send a takedown REQUEST to the site owner) before a whole server gets nuked.
The last thing that should be in any law is if it is found that the complainant acted "In Bad Faith" then he should receive 7/8ths of the punishment that was involved (and be open to CIVIL remedies).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Why does Tyranny always come back to societies over and over. Seems throughout history, humans just can't put an end to dictatorship rule! All these new laws are being put in place to control our lives until we all become puppets on a string.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
If you look at the global rankings, http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/, Canada's politicians are rated higher than US ones, which means less corrupt, and therefore, more expensive.
In Uzbekistan they are really cheap, but what would you do with your bought politicians there?
Those Scandinavians will cost you a bundle . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...just not as it is currently implemented.
Terms of 7/14/20/28 years may still be appropriate, as the rise of technology has made duplication of intellectual works easier to copy and disseminate. Those who create content are no longer concerned about a dozen possible sources of competition in duplication, but tens of millions. The ease of publishing and typical shelf life should, actually, serve to reduce - not extend - copyright and patent terms, as the ability to bring a product to mass market is on a significantly shorter timescale than 200 years ago.
Interestingly, there are methods in place which provide for (almost) easy compliance with copyright laws. but they apply to only the narrowest slice of content. I'm talking about mechanical licensing fees - 10c per physically recorded track or permanent digital download. Problem is, it only applies to the composer of music, and only to mechanical rights. Not to arrangement. Not to synchronization (video). Not to masters (people performing the work). Not to written or spoken work. Not to images. Not to video clips. Not to patents.
The biggest problem is not the existence of patents and copyright, but the byzantine implementation and licensing, and the one-sided legislation which is being written to perpetuate these institutions.
IP laws are a good thing; the way they are implemented is flawed.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It doesn't matter how much more expensive it is to buy politicians here, the Canadian government will without fail just follow along with what ever the US tell it to do. Why else would it sell oil lumber and power to the US at a loss?
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
They're trying to keep their old business model alive as long as possible.
Understandable, from the point of view of keeping electronic fund management programs, which buy and sell stock based upon numbers moving in certain directions. Who's going to invest in a studio that gives its films away after the initial Tour de Theatres? The belief is that the really big money is in holding onto the film for 2 or 3 hundred years (where they once burned the originals in the backlot, eh?) Hollywoods is cranking out films far faster than they were 10 years ago - I could keep up with that pace at theatres, but not anymore. Something tells me the real money is made in two installations - initial theatre run and initial DVD sale, after that it's a trickle. But it's still their stuff and they want to hold onto it in pur-pe-tu-ity.
Time for government to wake up and realize they're being pwned by business. If government doesn't change, then it's up to the people to change the government.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Positions of power must exist in order for humans to organize themselves. Civilization is logically dependent upon such positions.
People who desire positions of power tend to put effort into attaining them, whereas people who have no such desires tend not to expend such effort (or even to put effort into avoiding the responsibility).
Most motivations for desiring positions of power are either the maximization of personal profit, or the purely corrupt desire to control others. Not all, just most.
So, since power is mostly attained by people who desire it, and most people who desire it do so for harmful self-serving reasons, over time *all* positions of power wind up saturated with corruption.
The only attempts that have been made to prevent this boil down to:
1) divide the government out into multiple branches to avoid concentration of corruption
a) this fails because the branches can simply find ways to align their corrupt interests, and cooperate in their evil.
2) empower the people to hold their government accountable for their corruption (through voting and legal actions)
a) this fails because most people are both too stupid and too busy (working for a living + raising a family takes a LOT of time) to actually do this.
b) also fails because, over time, the powerful use their power to introduce ever more ways to keep their actions secret or otherwise avoid accountability.
3) regularly rotate non-power-hungry civilians into positions of power
a) this fails because said civilians do a piss-poor job of living up to the unwanted responsibility, resulting in chaos. e.g. athens.
So, to summarize:
those who remember history are doomed to watch it be repeated.
Sorry to taint a vitriolic stereotype-ridden debate with facts, but the fact is part of the reason lobbying isn't as effective in Canada is we enacted stringent campaign finance reform a number of years ago. ...something the USA woefully needs.
From http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/federal-campaign-finance-laws-canada:/
- Only Canadian citizens and permanent residents may make contributions to registered parties, registered electoral district associations, leadership and nomination contestants of registered parties, and all candidates.
- Individual contributions to these political participants are limited to a maximum of $1,000 annually (adjusted for inflation).
- Individuals may also make contributions that do not exceed $1,000 (adjusted for inflation) in total per contest to the leadership contestants of a registered political party. This is an aggregate cap applying to all the contributions given by one individual to all leadership contestants in the same leadership contest.
- Corporations, trade unions, and other unincorporated associations are prohibited from making contributions to registered parties, registered electoral district associations, leadership and nomination contestants of registered parties, and all candidates.
Yes, you read that right ONE THOUSAND BUCKS. Makes it pretty tricky to buy your MP.
In the US, you can campaign directly to an individual. In Canada, you can not.
Have you seen what the US does to countries that don't?
Move in for 10 years, mess up the place and then give up?
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Most people believe in intellectual property laws to some extent.
and there is our problem. that is creating the grounds for exploitation.
for, these people are causing us to play on home ground of the exploiter. let me picture it with an analogy :
the stance of these people resembles people who believed in aristocracy and feudalism, but thought that nobles should not abuse the people.
as long as you play in their ground, they will have the upper hand.
Read radical news here
Actually Jean Chrétien told the Bush to go to hell when he tried to get us activaly involved in the middle east back in 2003. We already had peace keepers there anyway. Then we had Paul Martin that took the fall for Chrétien and the liberals spending scandal. Then Harpper was elected 2006 and put Canada into an offiensive position to kiss up to Bush.
Lobbying an MP in Canada is nowhere near as useful as lobbying one in the US. If an MP defies the party line in a vote of any consequence it becomes a major scandal. So, unless you make that cheque out to a certain Mr. Harper you're wasting your money.
Parliamentary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliment are more fluid in governance and leaders are subject to much more public exposure. Especially when the is a minority government and a third party tends to end up with control (the leading opposition party always tends oppose). The leader, the prime minister can be replaced in public opposition grows to strong, this provides the opportunity for the party to attempt to rebuild it's reputation with another leader. Overall it seems to function better than directly electing the executive and the legislative.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Oh that's a very good investment by the copyright trolls, none of the content available in the US is available in Canada (Hulu, some YouTube videos, Netflix titles, Kindle titles and collections, you name it). You couldn't get it by paying for it, even if you really wanted to, so it's a prime market for piracy. Also, Canadians pay a levy on recordable media, so it's legal for them to create "backups" of things for "personal use"... good place to try to make some money in lawsuits and seizures.
Bow before me, for I am root.
They put Stephan Dione and then Michael Ignatius in as leaders. To be honest, I don't even know who the liberal leader IS at the moment and I don't really care.
I'm voting NDP next election. The liberals can't get their act together, and anyone that isn't pants-on-head retarded is better than harper.
Its the harper government thats trying to get all of this various legislation pushed through for their corporate buddies.
The Chretien government said "No. We'll put a tax on blank media, because we agree that it will be primarily used to copy your works. We'll let you have control over the distribution of that tax to the artists whom you represent. We are not however installing any laws that would give you any kind of direct control over the Canadian people"
The Harper Government says "Wait, how big was the yacht you mentioned is under construction and will be done just in time for my planned retirement?"
If I write my own book, I believe that no one should be able to steal my work and profit off of it without my permission. If I write a piece of software, I have the right to choose to open source it or sell it to others. Good luck convincing me and the masses that they shouldn't profit off their own work.
There are legitimate concerns about the SOPA and the current IP laws, but not one is going to care that you feel exploited because you can't download Skyrim or the latest Twilight Saga for free. I am sure the serfs and slaves under the feudal system can empathize with your plight.
This is the way "democracy" works in the UK too.
Under our FPTP system parties are often elected to be given effective 100% of power in parliament with sometimes as little as 30% of the public vote. Then, when parties are in power, they form a cabinet, which is basically 10 - 20 or so people with the PM at the top, the PM heavily influences the cabinet, but then what the rest of the part things is irrelevant as if they want to push something through they can use the whip, which largely forces MPs to vote along the lines the cabinet wants.
So basically, in the UK, 30% of the public vote is enough to give a small clique - the cabinet - effective 100% of control over how the country should go.
It's obviously not healthy, and is precisely why corruption is such a big problem (i.e. see the recent phone hacking stuff, the expenses scandal, and so on) - when you give a handful of people so much power, based on so little support, and leave no real counter to that power, then of course they'll get drunk on it and take bribes, because they know there's no one with the power to stand up to them. On some issues the Lords may intervene, but now that government has succeded in replacing the hereditary Lords with Lords chosen by MPs to a great extent then they've actually removed the semi-independance that hereditary peers even if not democratic, brought to the Lords. This is not to say I think hereditary peers are ideal of course, but simply that by allowing governments to install their own puppets in there instead, you remove the whole point of the Lords - a check and balance against bad government.