Canadian election Net, Tech Q and A
p2p news / p2pnet: With the latest Canadian election nigh, Net and tech issues are low – non-existent? – on the list of issues the contenders the Liberals, NDP and Conservatives principally, but not exclusively, are addressing as they tour the provinces making wild promises they’ll never keep in their bids to convince voters that they, and only they, can successfully run the country.
However, CIPPIC (Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic).hasn’t forgotten and recently launched a site specifically asking for party positions on copyright law reform, police surveillance powers, telecommunications policy reform, and legislative responses to spam, spyware, ID theft, and other privacy invasions.
Below are responses to date (in order received from the parties) from the CIPPIC Election 2006 Q&A site.
Copyright Law and Technical Protection Measures
Do you agree that we need legislation to protect Canadians from harmful technologies like the Sony-BMG rootkit DRM?
Christian Heritage Party
Yes
Marijuana Party
Technically speaking, there is no difference between spyware and the Sony-BMG DRM tool. Any device that modifies an individual’s operating system without prior notice breaches his/her privacy, period.
Double standards must be avoided; hence, there should not be a distinct legal category for major players like Sony, just because they are bigger and have more lawyers than lonesome geeks working in their basements.
Communist Party
Yes. While recognizing the legitimacy of intellectual property rights it must be balanced to protect citizen’s privacy rights as well.
Green Party
The Green Party of Canada feels dismay and concern over the fact that Canadian consumers have been aversely affected by the Sony-BMG rootkit DRM, and are worried about the damage that can be caused by similar technologies. This harmful tool being used by Sony and BMG can damage consumers’ computer equipment, open the door to hackers and internet piracy (through the surveillance aspect of the software), and it is designed to impede civil liberties as simple as the lending of one’s music CD to a friend. The fine print that comes along with this technology demands that music buyers do not use their product for personal ends – anyone who has lost their CD must erase any music that they have saved to their computer, and buyers cannot travel (ie. leave the country) with their compact disc. Finally, the fine print also tells the buyer that Sony is not liable for any damage above $5 to the consumer’s computer equipment that may be inflicted by their technology. The level of disinformation and disrespect for consumer’s rights that is exemplified by Sony-BMG’s use of the rootkit is deplorable, and the Canadian government must take action against such violations. Green Party MPs will work to create strong legislation around this issue, so that the businesses at the forefront of consumer technology must abide by regulations that require them to assume responsibility for the quality of their products and that make them liable for any harm caused by their goods. However, legislation mandating the provision of adequate information must also be passed so that businesses cannot shirk their responsibility of informing consumers.
Liberal Party
The Liberal Party of Canada supports technology that protects digital artistic content and we will continue to work hard to facilitate consensus amongst stakeholders in copyright matters. We introduced a wide ranging piece of copyright legislation in the last Parliamentary session that encourages creativity and protects the rights of creators, while ensuring diffusion of knowledge and access to cultural products.
Copyright Revision and Innovation
Do you support Canadian innovators’ rights to reverse engineer or otherwise deal with a work for the purposes of security or interoperability research?
Christian Heritage Party
Yes. Excessive protectionism inhibits innovation. That benefits no one. Reverse engineering for security or interoperability is not the same as copying.
Marijuana Party
It is true that the fair dealing clause in the Canada Copyright Act is much more restrictive than the American “fair use” Common Law defense. But what appears even more problematic to us, is the very narrow guidelines with regards to educational institutions. Art 29.4 (1) appears totally outdated, and we recently noticed that some teachers in Canadian universities now openly defy their copyright/royalties obligations because it seriously hampers their work. (By the way, do not expect students struggling to make ends meet to go and complain that they haven’t paid all the usual fees!) Universities, as long as they remain independent from their funders, are a hotbed of innovation, and provisions of the Canada Copyright Act dealing with educational institutions should be revised as soon as possible.
As you may know, the Marijuana Party is against cannabis prohibition, because prohibition is unenforceable, unscientific and is an arbitrary way of excluding certain natural substances from the market economy, to the benefit of patented drugs and genetically modified organisms. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of Canadians do not feel “morally compelled” to comply with a legislation that violates their basic rights.
We thus fear Canada is heading in the same direction with regards to intellectual property. The current system favors wealthy patent and digital rights owners (and their lawyers!) But in the meantime the willingness of the general public to comply with the law is eroding, since giant DR owners like Sony or Microsoft are also flooding the marketplace with very profitable Minidiscs, DVD burners, 500G hard drives and other gizmos that make piracy as easy as 1, 2, 3. This is all very confusing! What is a 15 year old youth supposed to think?
Eventually, the disrespect of rigid intellectual property rights which is plaguing the entertainment sphere, may spill over and affect the research and educational fields as well. More flexibility in the law is definitely needed.
Communist Party
Yes but measures must be put in place to protect intellectual property rights within reason.
Green Party
The Green Party believes that Canada needs legislation similar to the fair use laws enjoyed in the United States in order to support innovators’ rights. Because such activities as data and file sharing result in losses for artists, it is important that we implement a surcharge on data transfer, which would then be channeled back to the artists themselves. The Green Party of Canada proposes a system of website certification to distinguish between sites that observe copyright laws and pay for access to data and sites that do not. A surcharge on bandwidth transfer would then be implemented for uncertified sites that are transferring significant quantities of copyrighted data.
Liberal Party
The Liberal Party of Canada supports an effective, open and growth oriented approach to technology protection measures.
Spyware
Do you agree that we need stronger laws and enforcement mechanisms to protect Canadians from unwanted behaviours associated with spyware?
Christian Heritage Party
Yes
Marijuana Party
We totally agree, and must stress once again that any technology that modifies an individual’s operating system without notice breaches his/her privacy, and may also hamper the valuable work usually done with a computer (academic research, professional contracts, etc.) Spyware and DRM “Rootkits” (as long as the consumer is unaware they are installed on his/her machine) should be treated the same way.
Additionally, of particular concern is the “bloatware” pushed to the consumer by aggressive salespersons working for otherwise “trustable” firms.
Here is a very specific example: last spring, the Marijuana Party leader had a particulartly bad experience with promotional bloatware. He was led to believe that he needed to install a particular kind of browser to retrieve webmail from his new account – a misleading information from the very start. After installation, the “RAM guzzler” taking up to 55 MB of precious memory made his 4-year old computer almost unuseable. Our leader formatted his hard drive in a hurry and lost some information, not knowing that the “trustable” Sympatico/MSN browser – and not some mysterious virus – was the cause of his problems. Selling bloatware is the equivalent of selling a car owner the wrong kind of fuel, or the wrong set of tires: it is IRRESPONSIBLE AND CRIMINAL. There should be a way of communicating important technical information to the customer, other than in small print on page 43 of the user’s manual!
The Marijuana Party will endorse all initiatives aimed at better informing consumers, with regards to what may affect their physical health (legal and illegal drugs, genetically modified foods) and the health of their computers! As silly as this may sound, computer malfunctions directly affect one’s physical health: anybody stuck with a nasty computer virus while having to meet rigorous professional deadlines experiences a lot of stress!
Communist Party
Spyware and all other software designed to secretly invade citizen’s computers and other cyber-media devices should illegal.
Green Party
The Green Party recognizes that stronger laws are required to deflect the threat associated with spyware. We believe that it is important for the Canadian government to support and substantially enlarge the special police task force focused on internet activity in order to target not only spyware but also criminal activity such as child pornography which is facilitated via the internet. We also believe that it is important for Canada to participate in Interpol’s international efforts against piracy and criminal activity via the internet.
Liberal Party
The Liberal Party of Canada agrees that spyware poses a serious threat and we are committed to working with parents and content providers to keep the internet safe.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
specifically asking – Election questions for Canadians, December 6, 2005
January 10th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Get a load of the Christian heritage party.
Short simple answers that get right to the point without tons of pointless speel.
Are they really politions???
January 10th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Soooooooooo if I’m reading this correctly:
The Liberals agree spyware is bad unless it’s part of DRM?
Hmmmm what are the chances that whomever answered these questions for them either:
A) Didn’t understand or want to answer the first question about Sony
B) was working for the RIAA as it fits their bill exactly.
January 10th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
“The Green Party believes that Canada needs legislation similar to the fair use laws enjoyed in the United States in order to support innovators’ rights.”
What a dumb statement. In the US no one knows what fair use means. Only a judge decides what it is after tte fact. In other words anyone copying anything under the belief that fair use will protect him or her is guessing, and the guess coud cost him/her a lawsuit form the copyright holder, who is also guessing that the use was not fair use.
Only lawyers like the concept, a minefield for lawyer fees.
I repeat, what a dumb statement.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
January 10th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
I like answers that are to the point and not dodging the issue. If I were a Canadian, I would check to see where they stand on various other issues. I also take it that this party is not a dominate lamescream party.
I know that in the United States, there is only one political party, and it has two different official names: Democratic Party and Republican Party. People around the world who live in countries where they are free to vote for whom they wish should throw out all of the lamescream parties in order to purge corruption from the governments.