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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.
When all the candidates on the ballot are bought and paid for by the corporate interests
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.
Politicians don't have souls.
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 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.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time