p2pnet - rss feed: Jim Prentice: still touting Canadian DMCA
p2pnet news Politics:- | Freedom:- It’s incredible.
Canadians from across the country have made it crystal clear to industry minister Jim Prentice he needs to scrap his ill-inspired bill C-61, dubbed the Canadian DMCA, and come up with something which looks after the people who elected him instead of hard-core American interests.
And yet he’s still trying to pass C-61 off as a “made-in-Canada approach that will benefit all Canadians”.
The quote came in a letter Prentice sent to the Toronto Star in an fruitless attempt to rebut sharply critical analysis by Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.
“After months of saying little and refusing to meet with many user, education, and consumer groups, Industry Minister Jim Prentice is apparently planning to counter as many negative articles and editorials as he can find,” Geist blogged, continuing >>>
After yesterday’s Toronto Star letter (which generated the predictable critical response from Star readers), Prentice writes to counter the Sudbury Star’s negative editorial. Of course, it is worth noting that Prentice has missed a few:
Owen Sound Sun-Times
Prince George Citizen
St. Catherines Standard
Nanaimo Daily News
Victoria Times-Colonist
Welland Tribune
At that’s just the editorials. There are many other articles and groups that have voiced their criticism of the bill as well.
Given that he can expect many more negative pieces, perhaps he’ll just begin using the same form letter that he has sent to thousands of Canadians assuring them that this really, really is a made in Canada copyright reform.
‘All rights reserved’
Geist is also running a colourful series he’s calling A Week in the Life of the Canadian DMCA starring Jim and Josee and their three children, Stephen (age 16), Rona (age 10), and Diane (age 4).
Part III says >>>
In the morning, Josee teaches a class on media in the digital world. The class is conducted in a distance-learning classroom and includes both her students and students from a school in Edmonton using Alberta’s SuperNet network.
This is the second year that she has run the course and she is using the same lessons, which include extensive copies of articles for course materials. In the afternoon, Josee teaches a communications class, making use of a website that features a copyright and an “all rights reserved” notice.
A student in the class presents a research assignment that features short excerpts from a DVD copy of the movie Broadcast News and passages that are cut-and-pasted from an electronic book that contains a digital lock. Josee is a big Calgary Flames fan. The Flames are playing that night with the game broadcast on pay-per-view. Josee has a dinner commitment, but decides to buy the game and record it with her PVR to watch when she gets home.
If Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s Bill C-61 becomes law, all of these copying activities arguably violate the law.
Documentary Organization of Canada
And adding to the growing anger aimed at Prentice and his efforts to bend over to commercial interests is another letter published in the Toronto Star, this time from Michael McNamara, chairman of the Documentary Organization of Canada.
“One thing Industry Ministry Jim Prentice left out of his poorly conceived Bill C-61 are the rights for ‘fair use,’ which are at the heart of free speech,” he says, continuing >>>
This should be of great concern to all Canadians, and it’s of particular concern to documentary filmmakers.
Currently, a filmmaker can legally use a short excerpt from a film under fair dealing for the purposes of critique or analysis. But under Bill C-61, if you break a digital lock to get the excerpt (from a DVD, for instance), you are guilty of breaking a section of the Copyright Act, regardless of the legality of the ultimate use. A filmmaker using a clip in a documentary might be in the clear as far as the meaning of “fair dealing” goes, but could be charged under the digital lock laws and dragged into court.
This will essentially bring an end to the concept of “fair dealing” and open public debate in any electronic media. All access to material for the purposes of critique or discourse would be guarded by the corporations owning the duplication rights. Think of the fair use of clips in films like Supersize Me, Fahrenheit 911 or the Canadian doc The Corporation. Access to logos or corporate commercials for the purpose of telling critical, challenging stories would surely be denied.
Prentice says “we all have a stake in fair copyright laws.”
In that case, he should consult all stakeholders.
We would be pleased to help.
Stay tuned.
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.Stumble It!
sharply critical analysis - Jim Prentice vs Michael Geist, June 18, 2008
blogged - Jim Prentice’s Letters to the Editor, June 18, 2008
Toronto Star - Re:Canadian approach to copyright, June 18, 2008
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June 19th, 2008 at 7:05 am
But guys it was made in canada, the american interest came up to ottowa with a suitcase full of money and told jim what they wanted and they wrote it there
PS They forgot their suitcase
While i’m at it here is one for Mr Geist
The mom in your story does the ‘word jumble’ in the paper (just like many canadians), this is a simple cipher where the letters in the words are reranged and while simple is technically an encryption. Many canadians would now break the law on a daily basis. And if they are still sold those old puzzle books with letter shifts, letter replacment puzzles (ciphers) would also cause one to break the DMCA.
Even simply reading the commonly passed around text joke where the first and last letters of each word are correct, but the remainder are mixed up (yet you can still read it correctly) may qualify
June 28th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Let it go Jim…