Canadian copyright disaster looms
p2pnet.net news view:- “They shouldn’t take money from giant corporations and then hand those companies laws that grant them windfall profits at public expense.”
“They” refers to politicians and in this instance, it refers specifically to Canadian Members of Parliament. But it applies just as handily to politicians everywhere.
In America, the situation is horrifying. There, lobbyists owned by Big Music, Hollywood, Big Tobacco, super-size oil companies, car makers, pharmaceuticals, cosmetic manufacturers, and so on, freely creep the halls of power, “persuading” politicians to act in vested corporate interests.
It’s not quite that bad in Canada. But we have a government that’s close (in any aspect) to the tainted US Cheney/Bush administration and under it, anything could happen.
“Uh-oh,” posts Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing.
“Bev Oda (the Canadian Tory Heritage Minister who funded her campaign with money from the big entertainment, software and pharma companies) is poised to bring down new copyright legislation that will plunge Canada into the dark ages, outdoing the USA for sheer boneheaded lunacy.”
Michael Geist, Canada research chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, has been hammering that theme for some time, now, as have copyright lawyer Howard Knopf, Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) advocate Russell McOrmond, and many, many other Canadians with an interest in the well-being of the nation rather than the bank balances of the likes of the corporate music, music and software industries, to name but three legacy groups lobbying relentlessly to have Canada’s copyright laws changed.
“The USA had an excuse in 1998 when it passed the Digital Millennium Act – no one else had tried legislating copy-proof bits before,” says Doctor. “It was a dumb idea, but it hadn’t been absolutely proven wrong at the time.”
He goes on:
Now it has. Nearly 10 years later, bits are still getting easier to copy. Entertainment companies are demanding that governments change the laws of physics to preserve their old business models, and the public expense is immeasurable. Record companies like Sony, Warner and Universal are terrorizing the world by suing hundreds of music lovers every month. Security researchers are afraid to look into harmful DRM because they might fall afoul of copyright law (some of them do it anyway and end up in jail). Companies are afraid to compete because they might get sued for violating copyright by playing an iTune on a Zune or a Zunetune on an iPod.
Canada should be looking to celebrate and protect artists and companies with copy-friendly, Internet-native business models. These made-in-Canada successes, like Barenaked Ladies and Fading Ways Music, are thriving in the face of copying.
Instead of protecting these businesses, Minister Oda is proposing to attack them in order to prop up the ailing, American record labels and movie studios.
We kicked Oda’s predecessor out of office because she sold out the public on copyright. Oda’s not far behind. MPs should represent the public. They shouldn’t take money from giant corporations and then hand those companies laws that grant them windfall profits at public expense.
Ever taped or PVRed a show so that you can watch it later, otherwise known as time shifting?
Or ripped a CD so you could listen to it on your MP3 player, called format shifting?
With changes to Canada`s copyright laws expected as early as next month, these mundane 21st century activities could theoretically be open to prosecution â unless the Conservative government steps in with expanded “fair use” or “fair dealing” protections for consumers.
Close observers of the file say all signs point to a new regime that will improve safeguards for major music, film and media companies and artists for unpaid use of their material, but neglect to make exemptions for personal use of copyrighted content.
Consumer advocates like Ottawa-based lawyer Howard Knopf are urging the federal government to protect Canadians with wide exemptions in the Copyright Act for “fair use.”
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Boing Boing – Canada’s about to have a copyright disaster , January 11, 2007
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January 15th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Jon,
Are you able to keep a link someplace (aside from a donate link) on the last “headline” you had? ty.
January 15th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
It is interesting that you should mention this, particularly with the morning I’ve been having. While the idiocy that the entertainment industry has been perpetuating for a while now has certainly been annoying to a small extent, it hasn’t really personally affected me enough to make a stand. Until now.
The second season of Rome, which is one of my favorite television shows of all time and have been waiting forever for thanks to delays by HBO, finally premiered tonight on the Movie Central. I pay good money for this service through my cable provider, Shaw. Since Rome was coming on a couple times tonight, both of which being very late, I decided that it would be in the best interest for the wife and I to set our PVR to record the show for later viewing, when we have some free time to do so. After all, like most people in North America we have work first thing in the morning, so even though we would like to, no staying up late to watch the show as it airs.
Really, we pretty much have no choice but to record Rome with our PVR if we want to see it at all. I’m sure most would see this as completely fair, and that we are well within our rights to do so. For what it’s worth, the majority of stuff we do record usually gets deleted afterwards. The visual quality just isn’t all that great, and since I’m a fan I don’t mind buying the DVD’s later when they come out, which is exactly what I did with the first season of Rome.
Well, imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and went to check the PVR, to make sure Rome recorded ok. I was shocked to find that only the first two minutes of the show were there. Turns out that the analog signal (using S-Video to connect the cable box to our PVR) was laced with the copy never flag. Naturally this halted the recording.
Great, so now what? Well, our only options are to get a device that strips out these kinds of signals, so that future recordings aren’t affected, and hit the torrent sites in order to get the episode of Rome that we’ve now missed. All that thanks to the greed of an out of control industry. Makes me wonder what the future holds should cruel and unfair laws ever come to pass here in Canada, like the DMCA that America has or worse. For my trouble, I would likely get huge fines. Add that community service, and then even jail time perhaps. All because the industry forced me, a perfectly nice guy and law abiding citizen, to go to extraordinary measures just so I can watch a TV show that I am a fan of.
I’m finally starting to wonder if it’s really worth all that trouble, and especially the risk. Life would be a lot more boring without good television shows to watch. Being a child of the baby boomer generation, I was raised by television. It would be very hard to let go, but if making a stand by withholding my hard earned dollars is the only way to be noticed, then I guess that is what I will have to do. What we should all be doing in fact. Enough is enough already.
Anyways, great article Jon. Keep up the great work!
January 15th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I might be able to add it into the ’support’ box. I’ll try later.
Cheers! And thanks for the thought …
January 15th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Canadian cable and satellite television service providers already take advantage of copy protection to sell their own PVRs at inflated prices. Until now the type of additional restriction on analog outputs that you describe has been disabled because of numerous bugs in the digital receivers which prevented it from working properly. Looks like it’s finally arriving.
As a western Canadian subscriber to the HDTV service from Starchoice, I feel short-changed because they don’t offer western time-zone feeds for several HD channels. That means that I can never see the HD shows on those channels unless I buy their $700 PVR to do time-shifting. I can currently record the analog output and watch it in low-def, but maybe I won’t even be able to do that in future.