Geist's Fair Copyright for Canada Principles 43
An anonymous reader writes "Canadian law prof Michael Geist has been leading the charge against a Canadian DMCA including the creation of a Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that now has more than 38,000 members. Having delayed the legislation, he now outlines what Canadians should be fighting for — more flexible fair dealing, a
balanced implementation of the WIPO Internet treaties, an ISP safe
harbor, and a modernized backup copy provision."
it's german (Score:5, Funny)
With Mr. Geist leading the discussion, I'm sure it's very spirited. The RIAA doesn't have a ghost of a chance.
Re:it's german (Score:5, Informative)
Instead of trying to tilt one way or the other, we try our best to come up with compromises that suit all legitimate parties and society as a whole. Instead of saying, "w3 sld 2 d/l L R mp3s n war3z!" the rational amongst us will come up with some points that we can all agree on. What this does is force the other side to compromise as well. If the CCRA won't budge, then we can realize that they're full of back bacon and they can leave parliament hill.
We've always had an opposition party and called it Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. The idea is that you are supposed to be critical of your government - and that you never have your loyalty to the country (or the crown) questioned. This gives us a lot of options when the government messes up. If my local conservative MP doesn't want to listen, I can call Keith Martin's office and tell them all about it. They'll follow up. If the Industry Minister proposes crappy legislation, I can call the Industry Critics and send them a portfolio on the details.
And yes, I got your ghost joke.
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That only works in a minority government as the opposition can in theory throw the government into an election. And the senate, well when was the last time they actually really stopped a government bill?
Fortunately Canada has a minority government right now, for if not this wou
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1. We all know that he's a corrupt asshole.
2. We got tired of his shit after Meech Lake.
3. If it's not "Hey, Chinboy's going to jail", we just don't care.
Our politicians aren't noble, not by any stretch. I wouldn't go far enough to call them 5-year dictatorships. After all, they have to get re-elected, and we'll remember.
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We do things differently in Canada. Instead of trying to tilt one way or the other, we try our best to come up with compromises ..
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IMO One of the reasons this is less common in the USA, at least in political discourse, is that we lack "real" political parties. Political parties used to be organizations that could field politicians that reflected the organizations interests, and would carry the organizations name on the ballot. By requiring, (in most states) pa
Re:some stats regarding Canadian internet and p2p (Score:1)
Re:Why Is This In Politics???!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
US companies funding US lobby groups to pressure the Canadian government into passing US-style DCMA laws? I think it's very relevant.
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US Governement already have to bear the differences in welfare and crime rate. They could just get have additional problems in trying to justify better civil liberties and absence of RIAA/MPAA messing with people lifes.
Mexico from this point of view is such a better neighbour
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"This section is for news relevant to United States government politics.
It was created primarily to cover the 2004 US Presidential Election, but today exists for occasional stories that fit the bill."
As we can see the part you quoted is just historical.
38,000 Canadians? (Score:1, Funny)
38,000 frantic Canadians standing around saying "eh? take off ya DMCA hoser". Adorably cute. I could just kiss Canadians.
Re:38,000 Canadians? (Score:5, Interesting)
The U.S. has roughly ten times our population, so in terms of political significance it's more like 380,000 Americans. At one point we had about two people joining every minute. Imagine if every 3 seconds an American signed up to protest the DMCA.
Re:38,000 Canadians? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:38,000 Canadians? (Score:5, Funny)
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Mandatory: "The DMC, Eh?" (Score:2)
State sanctioned. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:State sanctioned. (Score:4, Insightful)
Talk about mass rebellion all you want, it's people like him who will do far more to make things balanced (as opposed to the lopsided solution piracy presents).
While I wish him well, he's really just trying to maintain/regain ground. Ultimately, the upcoming generation that refuses to engage in the ridiculous game of "pretend" that the distribution agencies insist we all play (as in, pretend these bits are really hard to copy) will do more. It'll just take a while.
"Piracy" (sharing) isn't a "solution", it's just a description of reality. The sooner everyone accepts that, the better we'll all be.
the new camcord legislation is costing ME money (Score:5, Informative)
Several months ago there was an amendment to our copyright legislation (bill C-59) that made the "camcording" a criminal act....mostly due to the "rampant piracy" [insert blame canada here] reported by us corporations.
I couldn't find a date when that legislation was passed (introduced June 1, 2007 - does that mean passed as well?) but since then, only TWO people have been charged and the second was just a couple days ago.
Thank you MPAA (and canadian derivatives) for wasting my fucking tax dollars to prop up your business model. It's doing a swell job catching all the bad camcords going to the U.S.
Thank you Bev Oda and Maxime Bernier for representing foreign interests. traitors.
The previous Michael Geist /. link:
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/12/1150200 [slashdot.org]
Re:the new camcord legislation is costing ME money (Score:5, Informative)
The bill received Royal Assent on the 22nd of June making it law after that.
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This and the successful Bear Patrol show that the Conservative Government are able to produce real Made-In-Canada results. And this is a minority Government. Imagine how much more they'll be able to go to protect us if they had a majority Government!
- RG>
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Better they "waste" money making laws that make sense than laws that are inherently bad.
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Traitors is a very good word for those two. Should be dealt with accordingly.
Re:the new camcord legislation is costing ME money (Score:5, Insightful)
Camcording a movie is certainly not hurting the public welfare; it does infringe on intellectual property, but it cannot be defined as a crime, especially that the law specifically mentions that in order to be a crime, one has to camcord the movie ***WITHOUT*** the permission of the theater manager.
Judges will take a very dim view of a law that lowers them to the level of a movie house manager...
What you should do - VERY IMPORTANT (Score:5, Insightful)
The bill will be introduced sometime in the next month or so. It is now considered, thanks to the efforts of everyone who called and wrote in December, a high profile bill.
A bill goes through 3 readings in the House of Commons. After the third it is passed to the Senate. After the first and second reading the bill may be sent to committee for hearings and modification. Now here is where it gets tricky. After the second reading the committee cannot make major changes to the bill, so if the proposed copyright legislation is really broken (and by all indications it will be) it needs to go to committee after first reading where it can be completely overhauled if need be.
But it is the discretion of the House leaders (each party) whether it goes to committee after the first reading.
So you all need to write the Leader, House Leader, and Industry critic of the opposition parties to tell them this bill must go to committee after the first reading so we have an opportunity for hearings and major revisions. Send copies to Stephen Harper, Jim Prentice (Minister of Industry), Josée Verner (Heritage), Peter Van Loan (Government House Leader), James Rajotte (head of the Industry committee) and your local MP while you are at it.
This might sound like a lot of work, but because of the minority government this is probably the best time for this legislation. Remember, committees are made up proportional to seats in the House, so the Government has to bargain with the opposition there too.
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The most pernicious effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
By the terms of the DVD-CCA, properly-licensed DVD players **CANNOT** play DVDs from outside the region they are assigned. Of course, everyone has region-free DVD players, but it is absolutefuckingly sure that such players **WILL** be outlawed, as well as the DECSS software everyone loves and hates.
However, such a law will bit parliament big-time in the arse: Canada is a country of immigrants, much more so than the US, as there is no "Canadian melting pot" as immigrants are encouraged to retain their cultures*. Now, you are going to tell indians that they are not allowed to watch movies from India? Tell the Chinese that they are not allowed to watch movies from China? Tell the French that they are not allowed to watch movies from France? Tell english that they are not allowed to watch British movies? but they should only watch what Hollywood decides they should watch?
Like, yeah, this is going to go right well down with the plebe...
Better yet, in our Constitution is a Charter of Rights [justice.gc.ca] which does not gives a shit about commercial interests trampling the individual freedom of, say, watching a movie of one's choice.
* An old ploy to minorize the french by having immigrants consider them like yet another ethnic group (never mind that the french actually founded Canada as we know it almost half a millenium ago -- my ancestors were well established here when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth!).
P2P (Score:1)