Hollywood cites Canada on pirate blacklist
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- It’ll be a few weeks yet before American president elect Barack Obama officially takes up the reins of office.
But already, Hollywood is hammering on his door.
Canadian law professor and unofficial Net spokesman Michael Geist has already said the election has led to, “considerable speculation about what the change in administration might mean for US pressure on Canada on intellectual property issues”.
If Hollywood’s MPAA has anything to say about it, “the pressure will only increase,” he said, going on:
“Eighteen months after MPAA pressure led to a Canadian anti-camcording legislation and just weeks after the first successful conviction under the new provision, the MPAA has asked to Obama to target Canada … in its intellectual property trade policy.”
Ars Technica’s Nate Anderson also picked up on the threat and in a post quoting an MPAA missive to Obama’s transition team, and accompanied by the extremely graphic graphic on the right, “at the end, when the MPAA offers up its 2009 country blacklist,” he notes Canada, China, India, Mexico, Russia, and Spain are singled out.
Anderson goes on »»»
That irritates Canadians like Michael Geist, the law professor who helped lead the charge this year against an industry-friendly overhaul of copyright law. The MPAA document “makes it clear that the copyright lobby groups will continue to blame Canada, despite the fact that Canada is compliant with its international obligations,” he writes. “Claiming that Canadian law is akin to China or Russia ought to be dismissed outright, yet the ease with which the Canadian government caved to pressure on the camcording issue has apparently emboldened the same lobby group to demand even more.”
Giving hope to the MPAA may be news that Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), who (literally) represents Hollywood in Congress, could be tapped as the new US Trade Representative. (USTR is also overseeing the ACTA process.)
Ed Black of the Computer & Communications Industry Association demands that whoever get the job “leave existing parochial, corporate or constituent interests behind now that his or her new constituency is the American public… Browbeating our trading partners to ratchet up IP protection or face trade sanctions has alienated our friends… While a ‘what’s good for Disney must be good for America’ approach to IP foreign policy may once have made sense, it now impedes efforts to repair our international relationships.”
Making such lobbying documents public may not produce any substantive changes in how business in Washington gets done, but it certainly generates more public scrutiny of the various interest groups that plead their cases before the President-Elect. In the case of the MPAA, some of those public reactions have been… strong.
“It’s time to stop this madness, and President-elect Obama should treat these fleecers of the American consumer with the utmost contempt,” says one. “Any actions as their lapdog enforcer would severely diminish my respect of his administration.”
Definitely stay tuned.
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Michael Geist – MPAA Wants Obama To Target Canada Over Copyright, December 9, 2008
only increase – MPAA to Obama: Get Canada!, December 10, 2008
Ars Technica – What the MPAA wants from Obama: 3 strikes, Canada crackdown, December 10, 2008
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December 11th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Give them an inch they’ll ask for 3 pounds
(convesion from length to weights intentional .. this is the MPAA)
December 11th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Ed Black of the Computer & Communications Industry Association demands that whoever get the job âleave existing parochial, corporate or constituent interests behind now that his or her new constituency is the American public⦔
It’s not “new constituency”, people of America were always the constituency, and they were ignored in the interest of korporate kartels.
December 11th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
nad with a guy like the conservatives have with no confidence in the house a commons what do they do
appoint 18 senators , shout off that all the other elected mps arent eleced , and cry and whine like bullies do after they get there come up ans
we should get the coalition in and MAKE LAWS TO COMBAT ABUSE OF COPYRIGHT
OUTLAW DRM, AND OUTLAW LOBBYING BY ANY ENTITY THAT HAS A TIE TO A FOREIGN GOVT OR CORPORATION
THAT WOULD END THERE WEEE ISSUES
December 11th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
It is not going to make us go back to the theater.
We are boycotting these parasites to death.
It is a question of national security.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
and what a resounding success storey ONE CONVICTION
OH WOW there musta been thousdnds a kids caming and it was definately worth all our tax dollars
THIS is WHAT HOLLYWOOD DOES TO THERE OWN PEOPLE DRIAN THE ECONOMY AWAY
December 16th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Lol MPAA fails.
. Yes DRM should be criminalised. Lol owning thoughts is just dum. I could say ha I thought about having sex with this person first, its my intelectual property so fuck you , you can rent it if you want though? Well how can you claim ownership to only some ideas. Why cant ideas about sex involving people count as IP. I mean its just as stupid. NExt I will be saying i got 1st dibs on shooting the mpaa leader. 
I mean comeon. JUst because you think of something does not make it yours. So how come they can. I mean IP is bs. How can you inforce ip? its imposible. it failes.