Canadian Politicians Demand DMCA 195
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting that a Canadian parliamentary committee has demanded that the government establish a Canadian DMCA. The demand, which comes in a study on counterfeiting and piracy (PDF) released on Wednesday night, recommends ratification of the WIPO Internet treaties, increasing damage awards for copyright infringement, creating new offenses for selling modification devices, and encouraging prosecutors to seek jail time for piracy violations."
Canadian Politicians Demand DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)
I demand new Canadian politicians.
- Canadian Voter
Pardon me... (Score:5, Insightful)
But who exactly demanded the DMCA-like policies? Politicians pretty much everywhere are ciphers for constituent and special interests, and so it is unusual in the extreme for a legislative idea to come tumbling unbidden from legislators' heads. So, I'm wondering whose doing the demanding such that the legislators are responding.
Because we all know (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a fucking break. Can we not come up with a better punishment than jail for non-violent "criminals?"
What about the citizens? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does that work exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, it made some small amount of sense when the DMCA was put in place in the US because it hadn't been tried before. There were no examples of the DMCA in another large, first world country failing spectacularly. I still think that Orrin Hatch is an idiot at best, but at least they had some justification for it.
But these politicians have no such defense. The DMCA was a failure by anyones metric, online piracy is out of control and pirated materials are sold without much problem. How could anyone in their right mind think that more of the same will help anything? How could anyone think that this is in Canada's best interest? This makes no sense.
p.s. This isn't meant to say anything about canada in general or to endorse piracy.
Ah, an "Industry Committee" (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as parliamentarians voted to break for the summer, the Industry Committee issued its report on counterfeiting and piracy, unambiguously titled Counterfeiting and Piracy are Theft.
Ok, two things.
First off, "Industry Committee". A group that, by it's name alone admits that it does not represent the people. It represents business interests.
Secondly, "Counterfeiting and Piracy are Theft". No, they're not. Otherwise you wouldn't need laws against counterfeiting and copyright violation, now would you? Theft was already on the books as a bad thing.
What they are trying to do is to make things that aren't theft equal to theft to support their agenda. Which represents no person - only business interests.
Re:Canadian Politicians Demand DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)
A Canadian version of the DMCA, simply put, will do absolutely NOTHING.
If people are copying software, music and movies now, what makes anybody think that increasing fines, or putting stiffer punishments is going to deter people from doing it in the future?
The plain and simple fact of the matter is just this: Most people who download music, or copy DVD's don't realize that its illegal, or if they do know that its illegal, they simply don't care.
Creating a duplicate law in Canada to mirror the already proven ineffective DMCA in the US is just one step closer to having a more American nation. There are ways to deal with the copying of DVD's or the downloading of music. This is not a good way to deal with it.
Also, for those who didn't RTFA, this "demand" is based on data collected from a study done almost 10 years ago, and even the conductors of the study claimed that the numbers were at best, sketchy. It seems to me that its just more pressure from American corporations to get their laws pushed onto Canadians as well.
Lets see a real study into this... with real numbers. I bet we'll find that:
A: The movie industry is doing just fine! (Spiderman 3 set all time records... I think that says it all.)
B: The piracy problem isn't as bad as they make it out to be. (While they calculate lost profits based on a per file transfer basis, they fail to remove those people that likely wouldn't have bought the movie anyways.)
Re:Pardon me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Expected, and probably inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
As the Americans have discovered, it is difficult to get rid of crappy laws. The lobbyists know this: they just have to have patience and find the right stooges in power to do their bidding, then they're set.
Re:What about the citizens? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Canadian Politicians Demand DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, get the fuck out! Laws like this ONLY hurt the "honest" people. Everyone else is going to continue downloading anyway and this won't slow that down one bit.
Re:Canadian Politicians Demand DMCA (Score:3, Insightful)
Since there's no such thing as uncopyable data, the DMCA has no effect on leeches or thieves. They were violating the law before, and the'll be violating the law in the future. The only effect it has is a negative one on honest people. Not a good day for honest people at all.
Write your MP (Score:1, Insightful)
I know, all systems are flawed and MPs are corrupt, blah blah blah; BUT, we have MPs for the purpose of representing us in Parliament. Use them.
Write your MP. Tell them that you do not support this, and that your vote will be based on who represents you best, and not what colour they wear on their party logo. Maybe, just maybe, if we get enough support we can start to direct our government in a direction chosen by it's citizens instead of corporations.
I wrote mine.. wappel.t@parl.gc.ca
Re:Write your MP (Score:4, Insightful)
might be a bit off topic, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
See, these events are the ultimate result of creating a nanny-state. Eventually the government will want to take away ALL your rights, while insisting it's doing it to "protect you". People insist that the US is a police state, while I as a Canadian can be arrested for unpopular speech, have severe limitations on the ownership of weapons, don't have the right to protect my property with physical force of ANY kind, including open-hand control, and now can have my private property destroyed by the government just because I'm suspected of maybe intending to commit a crime. Face it, we lost our rights a long time ago. Those of you protesting against this DMCA act are trying to close the barn doors after all the animals have run off, and the rest of the barn burned to the ground.