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.

Comments

Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[unique_parrot]

...and make decisions with their wallet.

Re: Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who voted for them? Does it matter? You have to vote for someone and there is nobody the industry cannot buy. No money, no politics. Now open that pretty mouth wide while we shit into it.

Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[Opportunist]

Like there is an option to vote for someone who isn't a corporate whore.

The main difference between a prostitute and a politician is that the prostitute only sells her body, not her soul.

Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[Opportunist]

Yeah, he did it 'cause he believes the copyright industry really, really needs more time than lifetime + 70 years to recover their investment.

Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[AK Marc]

There is lots of evidence that the music industry gave bribes, they are just the legal kind, called "donations".

Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[voss]

Actually its not life + 70 years its 70 years period.

Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[ArcadeMan]

We have more than two political parties in Canada. The choice isn't limited to "Conservatives or Liberals". You can vote for NDP, Green Party, etc.

Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[currently_awake]

In his defence, a rather large cheque was also in the letter.

Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[zedaroca]

The main difference between a prostitute and a politician is that the prostitute only sells her body, not her soul.

I think the main difference is that prostitutes keep their promises.

Re: Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[Bert64]

There are plenty of people the industry cannot buy, but under a democratic system the large established media companies can always ensure that these people never have enough mass media coverage and thus the voters aren't aware that they exist and don't vote for them.

Re: Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[sumdumass]

I love it when idiots claim to know the obvious but fail to see it. Ron paul in the states ran verry little tv ads nor sucked up to any corporations and had quite alarge and popular following that generated huge amounts of donations.

All i heard is crying that its too dificuly. But thats just code for not everyone thinks the way you do. You don't start at the top either, You generally start at the bottom or mid level and work up.

But hell, lets just pick impossible goals, go at them in the most difficult ways, then wear our tears of defeat as a badge of honor while crying that its some huge conspiracy by corporations and whatever other boogerman of the month. That way it can always be some others fault and you have something to constantly bitch, moan, and cry about.

Re:Politicans who forget who voted for them...

[dryeo]

The Conservatives changed the rules to make it very hard and expensive to get on the ballot. Up until the last election there had always been close to a dozen names on the ballot for my MP, this made it easy to do a protest vote for someone like the Rhino party, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Last election there was only 3 or 4 names on the ballot as it is expensive ($10,000?). I don't think even the Green party was on the local ballot.
Parliamentary system so all we vote for is our representative.

Sure, a "letter"

[fph il quozientatore]

all it took was a cheque from the music industry lobby to the Prime Minister of Canada.

FTFY.

Re:Sure, a "letter"

[dryeo]

Well this government has been using copyright(1) to deny citizens access to taxpayer funded research and I'm sure they'd love to keep unfavourable research secret forever, I doubt they're looking that far in the future.
1. All government stuff is under the Queens copyright in Canada.

Votes mean nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

When all the candidates on the ballot are bought and paid for by the corporate interests

Re:Votes mean nothing

[Dunbal]

Democracy is just a sham anyway. It only really works to your advantage if you happen to be one of the dumbest people in the country. Then you can trust that the "majority" are smarter than you and will make a better choice than you. If you are of average or higher intelligence then enjoy the fact that your leaders will always be picked by people stupider than you, since you will be in the "minority".

Re:Votes mean nothing

[Bert64]

Leaders picked by birth are basically 50/50 wether they are power hungry despots or benevolent dictators...

Politics on the other hand almost always attracts a specific kind of person, those who want power and will do whatever is necessary to acquire it. Succeeding in a democratic system requires getting enough people to vote for you, which requires sufficient media coverage otherwise the voters won't even be aware of your existence. With such a system, it's no wonder that large media companies hold so much power.

Re: Votes mean nothing

[Dunbal]

That's what we have today. Except "merit" is measured by capital or income and "smarts" measured by the ability to lobby.

Re:Votes mean nothing

[AthanasiusKircher]

Democracy is just a sham anyway. It only really works to your advantage if you happen to be one of the dumbest people in the country.

...I think someone needs to read up on world history and the relative performance of various political systems.

Well, what stats are you looking at? Plato (in the Republic) discussed various forms of government, and democracy was the second-worst, eventually inevitably (according to him) degrading into tyranny.

And if you look at the track record of historical democracies, the giving of greater power to the public at large is often a prediction that a transition to a totalitarian, tyrannical, or autocratic form of government will follow. The people at the bottom of the socioeconomic system are desperate and will chase leaders who promise them anything, and all it takes is one or two such leaders with bad intentions, and things can turn bad really quickly.

Of course, those who promote "modern democracy" tend not to acknowledge such systems as true "democracies" -- they are instead oligarchies or totalitarian states or whatever that claimed to be "democratic" but were something else. But that sort of analysis generally neglects the fact that the totalitarian regimes are often at some point granted power in a democratic system... and then they become very difficult to unseat. One can find examples throughout history -- from the decline of the Roman Republic due to increasing populism and increasing power given to more people, ultimately leading to a string of dictators concluding with the Empire under Augustus Caesar, to the chaos and horrors in things like the French and Russian Revolutions where temporary periods of democracy rapidly gave way to terrors, purges, and then a return to autocratic or totalitarian rule, to the rise of power of Hitler in the Weimar Republic, a regime initially voted into office by majority rule (and then politically manipulated to turn into the Nazi state).

Democracies are dangerous things, and they put a lot of trust in both the people (and their leaders) to not vote away liberties, particularly in times of instability when the poorest and worst off are desperate enough to elect anyone, even someone ready to destroy democracy and negate rights in the name of helping them. I'm not saying there's a significantly better alternative, but democracy is certainly not the panacea that many people seem to think it is.

Re:Votes mean nothing

[Black Copter Control]

Leaders picked by birth are basically 50/50 wether they are power hungry despots or benevolent dictators...

.....

That depends on the society. Your description fits European hereditary systems (oldest surviving son of the current ruler).

In West Coast native society, heredity chose which families the next chief came from, but matrons of the community chose which child from the candidate families would be the next chief. Needless to say, a more thoughtful and caring child was more likely to be chosen under that system.

What Bothers me Most

[Rashkae]

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.

Re:What Bothers me Most

[dryeo]

It's different in Canada. A majority government can force through any bill they want with only the courts to keep them in check (thank god for the Constitution act of 1982).
What this government has been doing is creating huge omnibus budget bills, like 800 pages with all kinds of horrible unpopular shit hiding in there, then they limit debate and invoke closure to pass it before the opposition can even finish reading it, little well bring up the negative parts in question period.

You're wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians don't have souls.

Didn't he say "open for business"?

[dbIII]

Come on guys, you had to see this coming. The "conservatives" of that type are all for change if it's paid for.

Once again

[ArcadeMan]

Harper proves that he thinks of himself as either a king or a dictator. No democratic process whatsoever.

Vote left

[rsilvergun]

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...

Re:Does it actually matter

[mikeabbott420]

We're building a deep international surveillance state combined with growing capabilities in machine learning and pattern recognition. I expect the laws we ignore today will be enforced internationally, effectively and draconianly as part of "trade" agreements with a side helping of "Terrorism!" and Who will think of the children!" in the future. I don't know what will happen but I expect ownership of copyrights will be even more valuable in the future.

It's far fetched, but possible to imagine a future as extreme as one where a combination of listening to a song in public, facial and other recognition. persistent public tracking and law enforcement linking to corporate databases might get you sanctioned for listening to a song you aren't paying a fee for.

Re:Alberta not lesson enough?

[compro01]

I don't know Canadian politics, so not sure what you mean by your comment.

In the recent provincial election in Alberta (generally regarded as the core of the Conservatives (Stephen Harper's seat is in Alberta). It gets stereotyped as the Canadian version of Texas), the Progressive Conservative Party (who have held government in that province since 1971 (and before them, the also right-wing Social Credit Party held government since 1935) and before the election held 70 out of the 87 seats in the provincial legislature) were swept out by the social-democratic New Democratic Party. It was a really stunning reversal for the province that has been electing right-wing governments for longer than most have been alive to shift straight to our leftish party and, if the recent polling results are to be believed, it has given the federal NDP a serious boost and turned the upcoming federal election (which is expected to happen in October) into a three-way race.

Re:70 years doesn't sound over-the-top

[vux984]

it would conceivably be possible for an artist to create a work when very young and outlive its copyright.

And this would be bad because?

I don't get paid again for the work i did last week, but you need to keep getting paid for something you did at 15 when you are 85 years old? Seriously? WTF?

The purpose of copyright is to provide a limited monopoly to provide incentive to create. Are you SERIOUSLY arguing there are 15 year old artists and authors that are sitting there thinking... I was going to create a new work of art today, but then i realized i wouldn't still be getting royalties in my 80s and realized I couldn't make ends meet like that, and went to work on an assembly line instead...

And therefore less art is created, and the world is poorer for it.

Really?

Welcome to Communism in the West

[Tom]

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.

American Pressure did it.

[softcoder]

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.