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

In other words ...

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

"... 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 ...

In other words, the Canadian government is either a psychopath, or the Canadian government enjoys the citizens to get screwed

If there is a sentence I could tell the Canadian government it would be " FUCK YOU !! "

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.

Re:In other words ...

[tlhIngan]

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.

Quite likely, given that the Stephen Harper Party basically is like that. You see, the real reason why the Tories are so successful is because of Stephen Harper. He rules from the top down. This means his messaging is EXTREMELY effective because no one is allowed to speak out of line. Media scrums are very carefully controlled - if you're not a "pre-approved" reporter who submitted their question ahead of time, you're not going to be picked to ask a question.

When someone accidentally does open their mouth, then, it reveals they aren't any better or knowledgeable. Harper pretty much knows this - the other parties don't have as much party discipline which leads to foot-in-mouth issues. But by muzzling his party, he ensures they don't make these mistakes.

Basically you have to assume incompetence - they're really just little automatons who follow Harper's word. When you ask them to go off-script, they get the deer-in-the-headlights look.

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?

Poor policy, as usual ...

[gstoddart]

This is a government who consistently fails to make evidence based policy, who routinely allows ideology to substitute for facts, and whose definition of "consultation" is informing people of what they plan to do.

This is a government who will do anything to give business a leg up, and who think that they should be able to pass laws which don't meet Constitutional and other requierments.

They routinely pass laws which are terrible, and which won't hold up to a court. And like a bunch of winy morons, they feel their incompetently written laws should trump the guidelines for what is a valid law.

Basically they're assholes and luddites, who routinely craft poorly thought out laws.

Re:Poor policy, as usual ...

[gstoddart]

The problem is they often spend as much (if not more) money promoting what an awesome job they're doing than they actually spend on doing that job.

They basically use public money as a PR machine for their own agenda, and their spending on advertising and promoting often outpaces the actual program spending.

So much of what they advertise is for partisan purposes.

Because it's easy to find examples of signage promoting "Canada's Action Plan at Work" where years later the sign is still up in front of an incomplete project they never actually funded.

They're all PR release, and no substance in a lot of ways.

And since they came into power on the heels of the Sponsorship Scandal, this is even more galling.

Way too many vacuous statements and claims, not nearly enough of doing anything.

Re:Poor policy, as usual ...

[MightyMartian]

I can't remember a time when governments at the Federal, Provincial and sometimes even municipal level didn't use public funds for the purposes of self-aggrandizement. The temptation to use legislative clout for partisan gain is just simply too great.

Re:Poor policy, as usual ...

[Somebody Is Using My]

That seems to be the price of democracy; that politicians spend much of their time considering their re-election.

Arguably, in a representative democracy that might be all they SHOULD be doing.

After all, the whole idea in that sort of government is that the politicians represent the will of their constituents. Rather than have a small group of men making up the laws themselves (an oligarchy), the representatives are - supposedly - little more than conduits we use to enact the laws we want. These political agents vie for the job by proving how able they are in representing our goals. In other words, we don't send 'em to the capital to make laws for us, but to pass the laws we want.

Of course where it all breaks down is that this requires an informed and involved constituency. For a variety of reasons most democracies do not - and are not encouraged - to have this. This is not due only to voter apathy, but because the politicians have made the system so complex and difficult that most people have neither the time, the training nor the desire to become involved. We-the-people are not giving our agents the explicit instructions they require; at best, we manage a collective moan about how certain things may not be to our liking.

At the same time, large organizations (corporations) - who /do/ have the time and interest to engage in the political process - are able to more easily transmit their needs to those same representatives (usually in the form of legislature conveniently written up and passed to government to pass into law). So politicians remain conduits (just to the wrong people) but due to the electoral system still need to spend most of their time proving their worth.

Ultimately, the goal should be to be make it easier for individuals to become involved in their own governance. Smaller government, simpler laws and more local authority are all ideas that may work. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to the problem and certainly those in power - who benefit from the current way things are - see no advantage in changing things.

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.

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:Where's the Beef?

[dryeo]

Managed to get up to 38% of the people who actually voted last time, with a lot of close ridings and quite a bit of fraud, though they've changed the law so that in this election we'll never know about any investigations for fraud.
We have the tyranny of the minority due to multiple political parties.

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.

Can ISPs send their own notices?

[oneiros27]

I apologize for reading the article, but it says that ISPs complained that they didn't like the $5000 fine for not forwarding the messag ... but can they forward it and add their own message?

Something to the effect of 'you should know your rights', with the maximum penalty they could face, how they can fight against it, etc.

If they come up with a boilerplate message, and not something that needs to be customized for each letter being sent, then you're minimized the incremental costs. And I'm guessing that they had plenty of lawyers involved with reviewing the bills as proposed and the law that was finally passed.

I would think the 'we comply with the letter of the law, but not the intent' approach would cheaper & more effective than trying to deal with lobbying politicians who already have their minds made up. (provided you don't do something that might get you sued ... but getting sued and going to court might be better to establish the limits of the law than leaving it to politicians)

If the law's written in such a way as to prevent them from sending a message triggered by the requirement to forward the message, then you send it to *all* of your subscribers.