Digital TV erodes technology rights
An Infoworld article by Tom Yager describes how the transition from analog to digital television demonstrates the erosion of our rights that current policy directions represent.
As you read it, there are differences between the Canadian and US situation that are worth noting.
While “the entertainment lobby” failed to “impose a tax on videotapes and recordable discs” in the USA, one subset of that lobby, the music recording industry (same major labels), succeeded in Canada.
While the consumer side of the bargain is being seriously eroded as part of C-61, the levy (not really a tax as taxes are in theory accountable and transparent to the taxpayer) on blank audio recording media remains. The erosion of the consumer part of the bargain may in fact be a prelude to the abolishing of the regime entirely given consumers won’t support something that is so unbalanced, and the major labels already changed their mind and oppose it.
It is really only music composers and performers who support the regime (and expansions of the regime to the Internet), with two major forces (consumers and the major labels) squashing them in the middle.
February 2009 is the date for the switchover from analogue to digital television in the USA.
In Canada the switchover date is August 31, 2011.
The conclusion of the article is universal. The more complex and expensive the entertainment industry makes accessing content legal, the more people will be driven to the underground. I would add to this the option I have taken thus far, which is to disengage from content owners who wish to lock their content to only work in this deliberately incompatable environment.
There will always be creators distributing unlocked content to those of us who use devices without foreign locks, and they need and deserve our support.
A recent Angus Reid Poll on Copyright demonstrated that there is still a high percentage (approximately 45%) of people who support the current direction governments are taking.
The support comes from demographics who are also statistically less technical (older people, women, etc), and who are less likely to have hooked up a home theatre or installed software on their own computer.
While 45% would be a fail if this were an exam mark, in the current broken Canadian political system 45% is Majority Government territory. Numbers this low are often politically manipulated to enact policy with a minority of support.
As time goes on, more people will recognize that this “Copyright” policy direction includes an attack on our information technology property rights, including our right to choose our own brands of hardware and our own software. People will learn that this was never about protecting the interests of actual creators (who increasingly oppose this policy), but the monopoly interests of major distributors. As this happens, the percentage of people who support the current direction of Copyright policy will fall even lower than it is today.
The key question in Canada is whether a bill will be passed before people understand the nature of the current policy direction, or whether this increasingly technically informed public will have to be lobbying to remove bad law already passed.
Trying to remove a currently bad law is what technologically literate people in the USA are doing, trying to abolish or at least limit the damage of the DMCA they passed a decade ago in 1998.
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet deputy editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He`s also the CLUE policy coordinator and p2pnet contributing editor.]
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June 20th, 2008 at 8:23 am
It is fishy that Angus Reid provides no information as to the demographics used in the survey. I would like to see the number of people who were polled, their geographic location, a breakdown of the number of people by age, sex, etc. It does not bode well that they do not include any of this basic information which, anyone who has taken a course regarding surveys knows, is the basic criteria to make a survey legitimate and honest. Does Angus Reid think that Canadians are stupid?
June 20th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Also see ‘Educated Canadians oppose copyright act changes’ – http://www.p2pnet.net/story/16161
Cheers!
June 21st, 2008 at 1:32 am
note these polls do not take into account th eyouth that has been awakened and the 32000 more facebook members who have joined in less than 8 days, also while you say 45% the funny part is that is incorrect.
its more like 45% disprove and average 30% approve. With 20% not commenting. The poll itself did not sample enough of the very youth from age 18-35 which even if 10% of them vote will change the face of the next govt.
Quebec, those idiot bloc heads better realize that once youth gets a grasp over there , the NDP and liberals will run you over un less you change your PRO – MPAA ( that c-10 lady MP who every day got up and whined for them) and PRO – RIAA party.
Basically the BLOC party is dead and so is the conservatives.
In there stronghold province , 45% oppose the bill while 37% approve. It is pretty sad when you bring an issue to the table where you piss off the very people that gave you what , a majority , no a minority.
Look to the green party getting its 1st seats, the liberals gaining in quebec as well as ndp.
and over all see a much less NEO CON presence in canada.
FIX the bills that were stupidly made, correct the economy, and fix the environment.
ALSO the new liberal carbon tax is REALLY BAD for people on FIXED incomes, we dont pay much taxes and wont make up the differacne the landlord shoves back at us.
Bad very bad. need a fix there otherwise good move dion.
June 21st, 2008 at 4:24 am
So I guess they wheedle a tax on external hard drives now since they have become the storage choice of many, and hold about 120 DVDs.
That 45% includes media industry employees, the elderly, PC illiterate, gov reps and those with mental dysfunction (44% in all)