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Canadian Prime Minister To Music Lobby: Here's Your Copyright Term Extension
An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian government's decision to extend the term of copyright
for sound recordings in the budget may have taken most copyright
observers by surprise, but not the music industry. The extension
will reduce
competition, increase
costs for consumers, and harm
access to Canadian Heritage, but apparently all it took was a
letter from the music industry lobby to the Prime Minister of
Canada. Michael Geist reports on a
letter sent by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the music
lobby on the day the change was announced confirming
that industry lobbying convinced him to extend the term of copyright
without any public consultation or discussion.
...and make decisions with their wallet.
FTFY.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
When all the candidates on the ballot are bought and paid for by the corporate interests
PC's got stomped in the recent provincial election. This guy just isn't paying any attention.
Eh?
I hear a lot about elections fraud, to the point that I do not believe harper, or any of our recent leaders have had anything to do with any votes cast by anyone. They live in a privileged world and are given these roles (and not by us). Think how bush inherited a country from his rich daddy, very similar.
My government appears to have too much time on it's hands and not enough common sense. I see no projects dealing with advancing our energy storage technology, path building technology, or data storage/logical manipulation/layout technology. I think the most I've heard about in 30 years has been the 'canada arm' when we should be building space elevators.
Our people do not covet, learn, or care about the future, decisions like this made in the dark pretty much show exactly what the people in charge think of us.
Revolution, burn them all, burn their familes, burn their lands, take everything. We've got everything we need for logistics to keep operations running thanks to computer advancements, I don't see why we even need these people.
Our government is no longer ours.
We must develop a new deep AI which will attempt to do what is best for our country and people.
Burn the politicians, burn parliament hill, we need NONE of these people and computers CAN handle the complicated logistics, and do a better job of it.
Isn't that Copyright protection was extended. That's bad enough, buit is in good company of poorly thought out laws that burocracies and governments have to live with.
What really bothers me is the Canadian government following the Amerian example of sneaking new laws in completely unrelated bills. A change to the copyright act should have been made in a bill ammeding the copyright act. How can a legal system possibly be sutainable when you have to start looking at annual budget bills of some obscure decade to figure out the copyright statues currently in place?? This practice serves no purprose, other than as a trick for governments to sneak in legal statues they would otherwise not legally be able to do due to opposition, either legislative or public.
It changes your DNA and makes you believe you are helping everyone while your hand is sticking out waiting for your reward of wealth/power/fame...
Am I the only one who used to have faith that our elected leaders had our best interest at heart so we did not have to worry about what they were doing?
You think that is why we are here today?
And our future leaders are being groomed by todays leaders, how scary.
I want to vote for the guy who does not want to run for office. What is his name, Noneof Theabove?
Politicians don't have souls.
Come on guys, you had to see this coming. The "conservatives" of that type are all for change if it's paid for.
Harper is as corrupt and evil as is his political party. They represent only the wealthy and they cheat and steal from the middle and lower class Canadians at every opportunity. It's disgusting how liberal conservative lifestyles are. Conservative politicians live like kings, while the working people suffer from lack of capital. Evil in action.
Harper proves that he thinks of himself as either a king or a dictator. No democratic process whatsoever.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Or a Mexican. Or Ukrainian.
DISCLAIMER: Not a Canadian.
I dislike the ridiculous copyright laws as much as anyone else, but does it really matter much in reality? The internet has made it so easy to access all manners of information and the average person really doesn't care much about copyright laws as far as their own personal use goes. Much like more and more people really don't care about others smoking pot or two men getting married, I think we'll eventually reach a point where the general population will collectively not care about personal piracy and it won't be cost effective for the record industry to try to enforce any laws.
I suspect that within 30 years most of the music labels will have ceased to exist as we currently know them. They have no real purpose any more and creating and publishing your own content is only going to get easier and cheaper as time moves on. I would imagine that we'll also see payment systems mature a lot as well and it will probably be easy to cut out the big sellers like Apple and Amazon as well because it will be no less difficult to transact directly with the artist. They'll probably exist, but mostly as agents to handle some of things that the artists don't care to oversee themselves.
Until public domain is reinstated, there is no such thing as copyright.
Copyright was a social contract, when they suspended public domain, they reneged on their side of the contract. The contract is now null and void.
I wonder if they used "leverage".
Is that what you call a giant pile of estate lawyers and other representatives of dead artists?
All political and religious organizations are suicide cults. They reject scientific truth in a scramble for wealth and power at the expense of enslaving their people into a eugenic slave state. They want to end life in the universe, and every policy they implement is just another evidence of their suicide cult.
It'll take a concerned group of activists a lot of energy to fix this problem. We don't just need to fix this one issue- but a slew of issues and we're up against financially powerful adversaries. It only seems like the government has overwhelming power because most people go along with it and the army is well-funded. However all it takes to change a society's position (including those in the military) is to poke at it. Agitate the government into doing something the people won't stand for and frame it in such a way that makes a significant chunk of the population want to stand up to and/or join up on the opposing side and you've actually got a chance at a solution through violent and possibly even non-violent means. No war succeeds purely through violence so it's not unfathomable that a liberal set of individuals couldn't impact the political direction of a country- even a very powerful one.
Go look at the Free State Project as an example. While you can certainly poke fun at these people they have made progress and have had a fair amount of success. This despite being a minority population in the United States thats spread out across the country. However this population of people moving together in one place (New Hampshire) has proven successful. The project is 83% of its way to a target goal of moving 20,000 people to the least populated state. More than 12% have already moved and another 12% are natives to the state. The 12% figure might sound low, but the agreement among signers is to move within 5 years of reaching the 20,000 goal. Unlike other efforts the people who sign are serious about moving. People are encouraged to check out the Free State Project's events (ie visit New Hampshire for conferences and festivals, etc) and everything.
What I do is just vote for the most left leaning candidate I can get my hands on. It's better than nothing.
When you don't vote then that's a signal to the rich and powerful that they can get away with even _more_ than they did the last time around. What do you think happens when their lap dogs win in a landslide? Same thing as anyone who wins an overwhelming victory, it emboldens them.
Vote the most popularist person you can get. Here in the States I'll vote Hilary even though she's a a corporate douche because at least she won't gut the last round of medical reforms (which I have several friends/family dependent on).
Moreover we're adults. We shouldn't pout and cross our arms and say if I can't have everything I'll take nothing. Take what you can get. The Phrase "it can always get worse" really _does_ mean something...
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I think Harper knows he won't make it in the next elections, so before leaving he is sabotaging what remains of Canada as well as filling his pockets.
Thanks Harper!
It's not just an Italian car.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If this is 70 years, period, and not lifetime plus 70 years, then it may be tolerable, I think. If 50 years was the previous term of copyright, it would conceivably be possible for an artist to create a work when very young and outlive its copyright. This is even true for 70 years, but that seems like a better balance between public and private good.
Never buy music or video ever again, watch these termites disappear.
Ahh but you can't can you.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Seems reasonable to protect the interests of musicians. Why should somebody be able to steal the work of others?
Just because technology makes it easy to steal music, doesn't make it right. Owners rights should be protected.
Harper is just the first politician to obey the TPP treaty, which perverts the independence of member nations. I use the word 'perverts' because it is the CAPTCHA word.
the movies and TV shows that I watch, the music that I listen to, and the books that I read. What the movie/TV and music industries and publishers really want is for everyone to have to purchase their products, and then pay each time that they watch/listen/read them! Sorry, I did not RENT these products, I BOUGHT and PAID FOR my copies of them. They are mine to read/watch/listen to as often as I like without any further payment to anyone ANYONE who thinks differently about it can KISS MY ASS! In Times Square. At Midnight. On New Years Eve. On Worldwide TV!
If it's good for Canada - or Canadians - you can count on Dear Leader to do the opposite. Day in, day out, from the Harper Horror Picture Show.
Hey Harper, the guy who brought us words like Prorogue, Omnibus, Closure and Unilateral .. words that aren't usually associated with democracy. Here is is doing whatever the music lobby wants. Expect this legislation to be repealed. That's a word: R.E.P.E.A.L.E.D. And another word for Harper after October 19: unemployed. Justin Trudeau is a bad actor, and Thomas Mulcair is too far to the left, but they can't be as bad as the clown show we have now. Harper has been a pocket dictator for quite a while now. His best before date is up. That's the interesting thing about politicians that Vladimir Putin could take a lesson from: politicians are like baby diapers and cat litter: they need to be changed from time to time ---and for the same reasons.
We've all seen and heard this kind of government behaviour before: In the communist countries.
In Eastern Germany there was a failed popular uprising in 1953. One of the most famous authors of that time, Bertold Brecht, coined a phrase following it that became immortal: If the government is not happy with the people anymore, wouldn't it be easier to dissolve the people and elect a new one?
He is spot on for today as well. It used to be the parliament would represent the people, and if we felt dissatisfied, we could dissolve it and elect a new one that represents us better.
But in almost all western countries, politicians have taken control of the political process that was intended to control them, and basically you don't have a chance to actually get a new government. You can choose different names, but they don't really mean different things. And more and more you hear politicians talk about their subjects (oh wait, isn't that the wrong way around? Yes, actually it is, but we're moving back to medieval mindsets!) in a way the reminds you of Brecht.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Does anyone know what the extended period of time was changed to by the Canadian government?
I think the reason this was done was because of american diplomatic pressure. The US state dept has classified Canada as a 'pirate country' right up there with China, and other countries that make billions from counterfeit knock-offs just because we have different copyright laws. Further, the US has pushed hard, and successfully to have the the 70 yr term included in the new (quasi secret) Trans Pacific trade treaty. None of the other countries wanted that term but the US got it in there anyway. Canada finds it very difficult to do things the US is strongly opposed to; and once the Treaty was approved we would be stuck with 70 years anyhow. This is very much a case of 'Resistance is Futile' and the Borg is the US state department.
softcoder.