[Copyright Stuff] So, do you "Shameful" Canadians Care?

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Originally Posted by CommonTater

The big debate is over the making of electronic copies of media for private use...
For example:
Is it or is it not legal to rip a CD and put the songs on your iPod?
It is or is it not legal to copy a DVD movie for data protection purposes?

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More specifically, the debate is: how do you enforce the law? For example, we agree that shooting people should be illegal. Do you enforce that by having a law against shooting people, or a law against guns?

Likewise, we agree that driving while intoxicated should be illegal. Do you enforce that by having a law against driving while intoxicated, or laws against the possession of cars and intoxicants?

Arson should be illegal. Do you enforce that with a law against matches?

The means the US is trying to push on the world (and which C-32 would enforce, since it is not currently so in Canada) is a law against matches, and that's Draconian Capitalism: they want to give privately developed DRM technology legal status. In other words, if you break a DRM mechanism, or produce/possess/distribute software which enables such mechanisms to be broken, then this is considered the same as the crime of making and distributing illegal copies of a copyrighted work, even if you did not do so.

That's the kind of law that means if you buy a DRM protected device and tinker with it, you are now a criminal. Eg, Apple, rather than just saying you void your warranty if you jailbreak your own phone that you paid for, we will have you arrested and fined or imprisoned, and that will be true after your warranty has run out, too.

By my reading (and I asked Micheal Geist about this, and he agrees), the current version of C-32 leaves this defanged by limiting the consequences to the payment of damages. Which is to say, Apple could sue you and win, but if they cannot demonstrate that your actions actually cost them anything, then you will owe them $0. This way, people who are really pirating things pay a fine, people who are not really pirating anything in a significant way won't.

But presumably this is one of the things a conservative capitalist government will want to get tougher about, because they do not give a ___ about individual rights. It's a great example of how when right wing types refer to "big government" and "excessive regulation" they use the term socialist instead of the more accurate totalitarian, because rhetorically they are trying to pretend that the kind of the big government and excessive regulation they want is not also totalitarian in nature. There's a word for right-wing totalitarianism too...its got latin roots...

Also, of course, the conservatives want to pour money into the prison system here (so we can be more like America, and maybe even hopefully bankrupt health care!), and they will need people to send so hey, maybe you should get two years less a day for running a homemade windows kernel.

Copyrights and patents cannot be made a criminal matter since it's a grey area. No document that hasn't been passed by the parliament may be used as a law in a criminal case. Therefore a software license or some copyright document related to some other copiable content cannot be used to determine whether a person is a criminal. Imagine the same thing with patents. I make a computer application that does something someone somewhere has already done before and has patented it, I would be a criminal.

Don't confuse patents and copyright, they have almost nothing in common. Patents protect ideas, copyright protect original works. Copyright is what makes something like a GPL license enforceable. It is likely, as you say that two people can have the same idea, but it's not likely that two people write the same novel.

So, a patent would be something like, "I came up with the idea about writing a novel about detectives, you can't write any such novels", a copyright "I wrote this novel, you can't copy it, or take credit for my work".

I think people are missing the point here. If country A and/or businesses in country A feel that country B's laws will not protect their intellectual property then it is quite possible that companies in country A will take their services and products elsewhere. I know I would. This has not happened as of yet to a great extent but as the crackdown on piracy and theft of ideas continues to gain strength I would look for this to happen. It is in any country's best interest to be removed from this list since this is probably the same list or resource companies use to decide where to build and/or market their products.

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Originally Posted by Subsonics

Don't confuse patents and copyright, they have almost nothing in common. Patents protect ideas, copyright protect original works. Copyright is what makes something like a GPL license enforceable. It is likely, as you say that two people can have the same idea, but it's not likely that two people write the same novel.

So, a patent would be something like, "I came up with the idea about writing a novel about detectives, you can't write any such novels", a copyright "I wrote this novel, you can't copy it, or take credit for my work".

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Okay. Maybe mixing patents and copyright was a bad idea. But my point was that basically copyright infringement means violating a copyright license - a document that has been written by some random people and which hasn't even been reviewed by the parliament. I refuse to accept such documents as a basis for a criminal case. Only real laws can have that much power.

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Originally Posted by maxorator

But my point was that basically copyright infringement means violating a copyright license - a document that has been written by some random people and which hasn't even been reviewed by the parliament. I refuse to accept such documents as a basis for a criminal case. Only real laws can have that much power.

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No a copyright is automatically put in place on anything you create, no contract or license is necessary. Whereas a patent you pay a patent office, to grant an application. The copyright is not depending on a license at all, it's part of the law in all civil states, in the case of GPL it is a license that grants rights beyond the normal copyright, since it actually permits you to copy it under the conditions established in the license.

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Originally Posted by VirtualAce

It is in any country's best interest to be removed from this list since this is probably the same list or resource companies use to decide where to build and/or market their products.

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By this logic, we should encourage our citizens to become prostitutes, because sex tourism will improve the economy.

There is more to life than playing step n' fetchit.

Also, Canada is more significant as a market (the "and/or" equivalence is that quote is ridiculous), meaning if you want to sell your tish here, then you can play by our rules. If you don't, I am sure some local will fill the void ;)