Canada's Copyright Notice Fiasco: Why the Government Bears Responsibility

An anonymous reader writes Canada's copyright notice fiasco, with false and misleading notices being sent to thousands of Internet users, has attracted growing attention with the government promising to address the issue. This morning, Michael Geist posts internal government documents that show that the government was aware of these risks before launching the system, but did nothing about it. The documents show that the government decided to forge ahead with the system without any regulations, despite repeated warnings that additional rules on the scope of the notices was needed.

Comments

Problem

[penguinoid]

Sir, if we pass this law the media companies will do something that will show everyone that they are a bunch of lying pricks!
Uh, and that's a problem how?

Where's the Beef?

[lazarus]

The only information I can find saying that the regulations are not enforced is what is in Geist's article. He notes that the regulations are located here and then goes on to say that the government decided to go ahead and implement without these here. The problem is that the second article does NOT say (anywhere that I can find) that it was implemented without regs. It claims that it is the final step in the copyright modernization act which is in fact what the first government document was all about.

Either I'm missing something or Geist is making assumptions about what Canadians actually have based on the action of a US company that is already being sued for their practices. Someone please enlighten me.

Re:Where's the Beef?

[gstoddart]

This was not the first time Moore decided against reforms to the notice-and-notice system. Further government documents reveal that Bell Canada recommended reforms in January 2012 (before the bill was passed) that included a removal of a minimum statutory damage for failure to to forward a notice. Had the reform been accepted, the government would now be in a position to recommend that Internet providers not forward the misleading Rightscorp notices without fear of liability.

Basically, they were told their legislation was flawed. And, as usual, they're too focused on their own agenda and ideology to let little things like a poorly written law stop them.

They knew these problems existed, and did nothing about it.

These are the kind of clowns who will write a law which is clearly unconstitutional, and then whine about activist judges who don't see the supreme glorious wisdom in their bullshit ideology.

Mostly they consistently do the same crap over and over again, and keep going "la la la" when someone tells them their laws have to stand up to scrutiny by the courts.

Stephen Harper seems to believe he can simply decree something true and have it stick. In that sense, he's pretty scary.

Re:In other words ...

[MightyMartian]

There's a blogger on Canadian constitutional matters that actually has a good description of the Tories; he calls them "lazy revolutionaries". The Tories seem full of all this desire to reform various aspects of the Canadian government, but seem too lazy to actually do the legwork. That's how they end up in fiascos like the copyright notice incident.

While some ascribe malice to the Tories' actions, it's become very clear to me, particularly during the years of the majority government, that while maliciousness may play a part in some of what they do, a good deal of what they do is just simply incompetent.

Wouldn't intentionaly misleading imply its ilegal?

[SirDrinksAlot]

Wouldn't intentionally misleading letters demanding money amount to fraud or racketeering? Perhaps if Bell and them were really concerned they could turn it around on the copyright holders.

Re:Poor policy, as usual ...

[Kernel Kurtz]

This is all true, but I'm quite thankful that the courts have been doing a pretty good job protecting us from the government.

I think Harper has lost more Supreme Court and Federal Court cases than any government I can remember. Hope it keeps up that way.