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

Originally Posted by CommonTater

From the article...
And since when do we Canucks owe the US anything?
In case nobody noticed this is a soverign country, not the 51st state.

Born and raised here, beg to differ, LOL! And we just proved it again by elected the most pro-American party we could to a majority. They will certainly deal with this issue in a way that appeases these American priorities, just count the days. Don't forget to take a look:

C-32

Can't pass even as it is now, they will get really draconian capitalist style.

Originally Posted by phantomotap

You can't even take a joke in a thread that is itself a joke?

Soma

Look, they're making fun of us.

Originally Posted by phantomotap

I'm just curious if this influences absolutely anything you do, have done, or plan to do in any way whatsoever?

No of course. Well, sorta. I'm not Canadian or American and my country isn't on this Axis of Evil list. Never been there in fact, as far as I know. And the reason some EU countries may be is because they are lagging behind in adopting passed EU resolutions, or with Constitutions that don't allow them to create these laws.

But... it kinda affects me knowing copyright policies in other countries when I plan to develop for foreign markets. I actually see USA attempts at enforcing worldwide IPR policies and agreements as beneficial for everyone. In fact IPR agreement is a sine qua non condition for certain types of deals between companies in different countries, or may strongly affect the decision to enter a foreign market or what kind of measures are to be taken when entering it that may change the quality of the offering.

Now, we can discuss the current IP policies in place and agree they may not be the best. That in fact intelectual property laws needed to be, hmm, rationalized. But frankly, current conditions (rising piracy, organized and semi-organized hacking groups becoming more aggresive, etc) don't really favor the possibility of anyone suggesting the lax of these laws without being thrown out of the room. As far as I'm concerned, with the current situation, and thinking of my own interests, I favor a more aggressive response to IP violations. And the 301 Report is one of many possible contributions to just that.

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?

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.

That does bring the discussion to a level I don't feel very comfortable with, because while I did say I believe these laws should change to something less restrictive (I also support shorter IPR periods... although nothing like the 5 year nonsense of the PirateParty), I must confess that at the same time, the current DMCA and the future ACTA agreement is the natural course, giving the situation IP holders face themselves nowadays. And I don't even think software or music is the most troubled industry. Books have been particularly hit.

The thing is the DMCA and the ACTA didn't just pop out of thin air to ........ everyone off. While I won't deny I believe there's the presence of lobby influence motivated by profit, there's also a great deal of Reaction on those documents. And frankly, the so called Big Content can kiss my rosy cheeks. What I'd applaud would be more aggressive legislation with smaller processual costs that could actually do something for the small IP holder with fewer resources.

What?

EDIT:
IP != Internet Protocol
IP == Intelectual Property