Canada Election Result Bad News For DMCA Opponents 311
An anonymous reader writes "For those with a stake in the opposition of Jim Prentice's C-61, the Canadian DMCA, this previous week's election results will be displeasing. The Conservative Party, which promised to reintroduce the DMCA if elected, gained 19 seats this election, mostly at the expense of the flagging liberal party, a mere 12 short of a majority government. The increase in Conservative representation, as well as the relatively low profile of this issue amidst other, more pressing concerns, increases the likelihood that the son of C-61 will come to fruition. On a positive note, the number of MPs supporting Geist's copyright pledge has increased to 34. Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion, however, the efforts of the copyright-pledge MPs will have to rally the full opposition across three major parties in order to defeat the bill. A mere 12 MPs now stand between the Canadian public and the MAFIAA's hungry maw."
The people have spoken (Score:5, Insightful)
Very few outside of geeks care about the DMCA.
n00bs (Score:5, Insightful)
" Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion"
And give Slashdot's historic disregard of non-bias, I think we're tied.
Re:The insider point of this (Score:2, Insightful)
They then say that we need to modernize the existing laws because they talk about cassette tapes.
Considering the new legislation talks about video casettes but completely omits DVDs, the hypocrisy of that statement cannot be understated.
Flaimbait? (Score:2, Insightful)
A mere 12 MPs now stand between the Canadian public and the MAFIAA's hungry maw
where does the article say that *ALL* conservatives are would vote for this and *all* NDP, Bloc, Green and Liberals would vote against ?
increases the likelihood that the son of C-61 will come to fruition
While it *may* indeed be horrible for DMCA opponents if/when it's drafted, this awful bill doesn't even exist yet and there's been no indication it's on the docket in the near future.
... Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion ...
disregard of public opinion on what? DMCA? The economy? the environment? I'm a conservative, a canadian, AND I agree with and suport fair copyright - but c'mon ... this aritlce kinda sounds like flaimbait to me ...
The ironic catch-22 (Score:4, Insightful)
The consequences of first-past-the-post is that the most powerful party gets even MORE power, while less powerful parties get less than they deserve (analogy of making the rich richer and the poor poorer).
The irony is that only the most powerful party at any given time would be able to change this undemocratic reality, and shift to proportional representation. But obviously, they don't want to, because that'll reduce their power. It's the opposition which always supports changing FPTP to proportional (which will increase their power). But lo and behold, as soon as the opposition becomes the primary party, they immediately go to the start of the paragraph and realize they don't want the change anymore. Now, the former power holders want to change, but they no longer have the power.
The only party who can change the system, don't want to change it, and those that want to change it, can't. This statement will hold true regardless of which party is in power.
Beautiful irony, isn't it?
That system works fine! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your system seems to be much better than the one we have in Brazil, where the results are computed for the whole state, instead of by district.
The result of a proportional voting system is that *every* special interest politician is elected. We have dozens of representatives elected by different churches, and they all vote in a block on religious issues. We have dozens of trade union representatives. We have the "ruralist bench", representatives elected on farming issues. We have representatives for individual *issues*, rather than for the population as a whole.
As they say, politics make strange bedfellows, and when everyone represents a very narrow special interest, the strangest laws get approved by the congress in Brazil, no wonder this is a "third world" country...
The district voting that's used in Western Europe and North America seems to be a much better system, although it magnifies small differences in the popular vote. It's better to have 70% of the representatives elected by 50% of the people than to have 70% of the representatives each elected by a very small slice of the population.
Re:Vote Skew (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem here at Slashdot is that the people don't seem to understand the principle of party-line votes.
It's true that, with only a dozen votes to gather in order to pass a bill, the Conservatives might go shopping for - forgive me - the odd maverick willing to go along with them on just that one vote.
And that might happen, but I really doubt it. The Canadian party system (and consequently the parliamentary system) is predicated on bloc voting. That's not going to change now, because it's the only leverage the parties (as opposed to the MPs) have on the Conservatives. Expect party discipline to be stronger than ever.
Until the number needed for a majority drops to 1 or 2, the size of the minority means almost nothing. The fact of the minority is enough to force the government to behave differently than it would if it had a majority.
Re:Vote Skew (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should the NDP or the Greens have to merge with the Liberals simply because they're small?
Re:Vote Skew (Score:1, Insightful)
Consider also that the Liberals are at a historic low, and the Conservatives still couldn't pull of a majority government.
Here is an interesting thought exercise. If you ignore Quebec (ie Quebec had separated), the Conservatives would have a majority government.
The current voting system is distorted because of a popular regional party (the Bloc), and it seems highly unlikely for any party to form a majority while the Bloc remains popular.
Also look at the low voter turnout -- no one wanted to vote in this election because we all knew the result would be another Conservative minority.
I doubt it. There has been a long term trend to lower voter turnout in Canada (and the US) for decades. I think the reason is much more complex than the current government. Personally, I blame MTV/MuchMusic and political correctness.
I don't know anyone happy with the result of this election or even the fact that we had it.
I think the NDP and the Greens are pretty happy. The NDP got more seats and the Greens got to look like a real party. Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae are pretty happy since they will be able to dump Dion from the leadership position and one of them will be likely to take over.
Re:What the Hell is Wrong with Canada? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DMCA = Political Suicide in Canada (Score:3, Insightful)
whereas Conservative kind-of translates into "old-school values"
Not today's conservatives; today's conservatives are a sad shadow of what they should be, and that is fiscally conservative. Instead it really is Bush politics, and "I'll-do-like-I-want-so-back-off" way of thinking. If they were real conservatives, they would have won a majority. But they're not, sadly. I don't know what sort of kool-aid they're drinking in Calgary and Ottawa, but this is not even funny.
But of course, like you said, even the conservatives are pretty tame. Only one scandal and three outrages a month!
Re:What the Hell is Wrong with Canada? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the Hell is Wrong with Canada? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:n00bs (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry to say it, but the Reform merger ruined the tories.
"Unite the Right" really amounted to a bunch of secular, principled conservatives compromising to quasi-fundamentalist American style conservative values. It got them elected, but at what cost?
Re:The people have spoken (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully, with all of Ray Beckerman [blogspot.com]'s submissions to Slashdot, a decent percentage of Slashdot feels this way; that for every Jack Thompson [wikipedia.org] (who, thankfully, has been disbarred [wikipedia.org]) there are lawyers who practice the law for more noble reasons.
Hopefully Canada doesn't catch the copyright madness the U.S. has; I'm glad to see that the DMCA is finally coming back to bite some of the politicians who voted for it [wired.com].
Every country needs lawyers and activists fighting for the rights of the consumer; big business should not receive a lot of the special privileges that it receives.
Re:Vote Skew (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I rather like minority governments, and I think most Canadians do.
We're classical conservatives in that sense. Our country works pretty well. The less governments can do to break it, the better.
Re:Vote Skew (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm guessing you're American. In every other western/(semi-)anglophilic country, universal healthcare is considered as radical as public schooling, or publicly funded defence. Just FYI.
Re:The insider point of this (Score:2, Insightful)
If what you say is true about "modernizing" things, then why in the heck did they propose legislation that effectively makes it illegal to rip a DVD even if you own it? Or if a copyright holder places any kind of encryption on any kind of media you have purchased? It's idiotic to have a private copying section in copyright law, for which we are paying a levy, and no legal way to exercise it. Same for "fair dealing". Same for the wonderful new privileges in C-61 that are meant for educators and libraries. Do we even *have* "fair dealing" or any of these provisions anymore if we can't legally exercise it?
Never mind "modernizing". Bill C-61 didn't even make sense. All they had to do was put in a clause saying something like "the anti-circumvention measures in this bill do not apply if the copying is not otherwise infringing", like people have been suggesting for years in other jurisdictions. But no, they obviously hadn't been reading much on the subject and heaven forbid they consult the public or their own kids. It was still legislation written as if it was last century. They may as well have taken the Liberal's previous C-60 bill and slapped their name on it. It wasn't much of an improvement.
Re:Vote Skew (Score:2, Insightful)
True, but:
Liberal Popular Vote: 26.24%
NDP Popular Vote: 18.20%
Green Popular Vote: 6.80%
Add that up, and it comes to: 51.24%
A majority govt. So, with the voting of this mediocre election, the NDP, Greens, and Liberals would form a majority coalition govt.
A majority of the votes, yes, but not the majority of the seats.
Liberal Seats: 76/308
NDP Seats: 37/308
Green Seats: 0/308
= 113 seats or 36.6%
This in part of the reason that coalition don't happen in Canada.
You may have missed it but Democrats control (Score:3, Insightful)
The president may still be a Republican, but Democrats control the house and senate and have done for four years now (the period between elections) - they are the ones who are in control at the moment...
Re:The people have spoken (mod me up please) (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, if you live in Canada, have linux, and own a dvd and a laptop, grab them both and go down to your MPs office. Boot up the machine, take the DVD out of its nice official commercial case, pop it into the drive, and start playback.
Then explaining to him/her how you are breaking US and (possibly soon to be) Canadian law by watching a DVD you own on a laptop you own (i.e., the machine has to circumvent the encryption in order to play it back to you).
I find drawing an analogy to making it illegal for anybody but the dealership to open the hood of your car a good example (sure, in theory, it may prevent hotwiring and such, but...)
Re:Vote Skew (Score:3, Insightful)
Aboriginal make less than 5% [statcan.ca] of the canadian population. To give them 20% - or anything more than 5% - of the Parliament would be highly anti-democratic.
Re:What the Hell is Wrong with Canada? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's obvious that people didn't vote IN the conservatives, they just voted OUT the liberals.
The thought being that despite their good work, there were one too many cock-ups (the gun registry) and one too many scandals (gomery report) for the liberals to keep on going. Obviously Canadians don't want the conservatives in power, but they don't want the liberals in power either, and the NDP and Greens are not prepared to run a majority government.
Re:The people have spoken (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, they wrote a manual on how to make parliament non-functional, followed it to the letter, and blamed the opposition for them not being able to get anything done.
Go figure.
C61 is worse than US laws. (Score:4, Insightful)
People seems to assume this is some sort of made in Canada fluffy bunny DMCA lite. It isn't. This is an RIAA wet dream.
People tout the lower $500 fine per file, but that is downloading, most people get busted for uploading in the USA (which most file sharing clients do) the fine for that is $20 000 per file. Which is also the fine for breaking any DRM. Say hello to bankrupting lawsuits in Canada for your kids file sharing.
It also makes "making available" a crime, where this is being challenged in the states, it will be a codified law with this bill.
It also gives the power to corporations to make anything they want law, by make EULA 100% binding. Something else that was shotdown in the USA.
Say goodbye to any semblance of fair use, or first sale doctrine type rights. They are all out the window.
Basically whatever corporations say goes and huge fines if you disagree.
Of course that this was returning was only announced days before the election so no opposition could be built up against it.
Harper views this is an increased mandate. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes that is more or less what happened, but just like last time, Harper will continue to do whatever he pleases and govern like he has a majority.
Given no one wants another election, we can look forward to about a year of Harper dictatorship as he pushes any legislation he feels like.
For Harper the election was win-win. He had a shot at majority, but even if he failed, he would get another year at minimum where he was untouchable and could do what he wanted all the while taunting the opposition.
Re:The people have spoken (Score:3, Insightful)
Standard anti PR FUD. (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason PR failed is exactly because of campaigners like this one. Usually representing entrenched party interests (getting their 4 year dictatorships). Every discussion would have Liberal and Conservative representatives (the main beneficiaries) spewing anti PR FUD.
PR is not about producing minority governments. It is about producing coalition governments. Failure dispense with the all or nothing fight for majority governments, and refusal to cooperate in governing coalitions with minorities is also part of the resistance. A coalition as a viable governing can be very workable and many (most?) western democracies have some form of PR. It is more cooperative and less political.
Any party that tried to entrench old cronies (another common piece of FUD) would suffer extensively at the ballot box. If we had MMP and Brian Mulroney was a list Candidate, the party would sink into the toilet. The opposition would have a field day saying a Vote for the Conservatives is a Vote for Brian Mulroney. Parties are politically expediant and they would axe any member that the public found disagreeable.
I would like PR, but it will never happen because of the extensive FUD machine arrayed against from the mainline parties who benefit disproportionately from FPTP.
Unfortunately FUD is the favored and often winning tactic to block any change.
Re:The people have spoken (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah because Dion and his hacks decided to clam up and not vote on any bills because Harper turned every one into a confidence vote.
Exactly. Now we all get to watch as Harper does it again. Dion kept trying to paint himself as the only leader who could handle things yet, as the official opposition, he repeatedly demonstrated that he didn't have the force of will to vote against the government and trigger a snap election.
Harper's been acting as a defacto majority for the entire time he's been in office. He tags the "confidence vote" rider on every single piece of legislation he puts forward knowing full well that the opposition won't, despite people vehemently screaming that they didn't want what Harper was pushing, have the guts to take him to task for it.
Because of our first past the post election system, where only 37.64% of the populace gave the Conservatives 143 seats, 12 away from a majority, politicians are more worried about looking good to the electorate so that they'll get a majority next time. Harper knows this giving him, and his Conservative allies, the opportunity to do pretty much whatever he wants.
Harper and his Conservative party have no desire to actually work with the representatives of the other 62.36% of populace, like we expect them to, so we end up with laws the majority don't want, pedantic name calling and, taxpayer funded gamesmanship.
And will someone please tell me why Harper isn't in jail yet for violating his own fixed election dates law? This election wasn't caused by the opposition voting down a piece of legislation, they'd already shown they don't have the courage, it was initiated by Harper and his party directly. So I'm wondering, why aren't they in jail yet? Oh wait, I forget, laws don't apply to politicians only to those they "represent".
Re:Vote Skew (Score:2, Insightful)
MMP and PR condemn us to permanent minority governments, with most parliamentary effort going into backroom deals to stay in power instead of governing.
Actually, just having more than two parties is condemning us to minority governments. When the Bloc and the NDP can take as many seats as they have been, it becomes increasingly harder for the Liberals or Conservatives to get 155 for a majority.
Three back-to-back minorities with first-past-the-post...no MMP required.
with MMP or PR, since every party will get some share of the vote, the only determinant of whether Olivia Chow gets a cushy job with a $155,000 salary is if she keeps the NDP party bosses happy.
I agree with you that back-room politics is distasteful. However, MMP allows some seats defined by the party, while the rest are still riding-based (i.e. the people of Trinity-Spadina still control the fate of their representative in Parliament). That's the "mixed" part.
It's already up to the party bosses to determine if Ms. Chow is allowed to run for the T-S seat, or if they will nominate another candidate for the riding.
I'm not against STV as an alternate to MMP - it's certainly easier to explain to people.