Pirate Party of Canada - Press Release:
Today, June 2nd, 2010 the Conservative Party has restarted a process which it had hoped to finish years ago. Today they opened their Copyright Modernization Bill to the public. To give a brief history on the bill:
In 2005, the Liberal Party of Canada introduced the controversial Bill C-60, which was met with public outcry against its assault on personal freedoms, and died on the order paper when the opposition passed a motion of non-confidence and sent Canadians to the polls. An even stronger version was introduced in 2008 as Bill C-61 by the Conservative Party, which also died when another election was called.
Seemingly in response to this strong opposition, the Conservative government launched a consultation on the subject in the summer of 2009. Response was immediate, and over 90% of the more than 8,300 submissions were opposed to a repeat of Bill C-61. In fact, most favoured shorter copyright terms, strengthened fair dealing exceptions, and the elimination of legal prohibition on DRM circumvention.
As we can see based on the new bill, the government has no regard for the clear and overwhelming opinion of the Canadian public. Instead, it wants to introduce another draconian bill, known informally as the “Canadian DMCA” for its similarities to the controversial and ineffective legislation present in the United States. The bill includes prohibitions on the breaking of digital locks which will undermine fair-dealing by making it next to impossible to copy most media bought for personal use. This defeats the Tory attempt at balancing out their bill, by allowing consumers to copy media for personal use, yet not allowing them to unlock the media in order to copy it.
In response to this legislation, the Pirate Party of Canada is preparing to flex its growing network of activist muscle to arrange protests against this violation of Canadian consumers’ rights, coordinate with other concerned organizations, and reach out to politicians and news organizations to reinforce the past and inevitable future outcry against this legislation.
As the only Party in Canada genuinely concerned with protecting Canadian’s Digital freedoms, the PPCA is advocating for the expansion of fair-dealing legislation, in order to preserve, protect and increase the consumer’s personal-use rights on their media. We would also like to scale back Copyright to a period between 5-15 years, as opposed to the current Life of Author + 50.
Ultimately, the Party will be running a number of candidates in the next general election, standing as the only Canadian political party genuinely concerned with protecting all Canadians against the growing influence of copyright lobby groups.
Founded in 2009, the Pirate Party of Canada was established to protect the rights of consumers of intellectual property against increasingly-draconian laws enacted in response to the demands of corporate interests. Specifically, the Party is committed to reforming Canadian copyright laws, encouraging innovation through patent reform, protecting all Canadian citizens with strengthened privacy laws, and affirming their right to monitor their government by promoting the ideals of open government.
For more information on the Pirate Party of Canada, please visit our website at:
http://pirateparty.ca
-or-
http://partipirate.ca
Thank you for your time in reading this release. The Pirate Party of Canada will be posting all releases and content in regards to this bill on http://pirateparty.ca effective immediately and on http://balancedcopyright.ca starting on the 6th of June 2010.
If bought CD ‘I got right to backup for personal use’, THIS BILL NOTHING BUT BS ‘American Industry crying the blues’. I SAY F Canadian Government and their BILL. Fine how its right now ‘DOWNLOAD FOR PERSONNEL USE’ AND LISTEN BEFORE BUY CD.
“the elimination of legal prohibition on DRM circumvention”
I believe Canada doesn’t have any legal prohibition on DRM circumvention right now, so there is nothing to eliminate.
Darwin O’Connor,
If this bill passes, there will be, as such, we want to stop it from going through.
“In 2005, the Conservative Party of Canada introduced the controversial Bill C-60″
Actually this bill was written by the Paul Martin Liberals during their minority government.
Darwin, shhhh, you can’t secure as much outrage against a bill if it isn’t entirely a right-wing conspiracy to hand us over to the corporations and criminalize abortion.
That said, the digital locks portion of the bill needs to go no matter who is responsible for it.
[...] PRESS RELEASE: PPCA responds to C-32 « Pirate Party of Canada [...]
That was a type, Bill C-61 was introduced by the Conservatives, you are entirely correct, thank you for pointing that out.
[...] PRESS RELEASE: PPCA responds to C-32 « Pirate Party of Canada [...]
i agree that the drm section has to go, it is completely useless to say you can rip a cd to your ipod, yet not be allowed to break the drm, which ALL media these days have, effectively screwing over the consumer
i dont really care how long they have a copyright for 10 years, 50 years, don’t matter to me, but fair use is needed, schools need to be able to teach, i remember when i was back in high school, the students were not allowed to copy text from the textbooks because the school board was worried about breaking the law…..(although enforcement of that by the teachers was short lived)
I’m personally fine with Copyright lasting for the duration of the original creator’s life, so long as its not too restrictive on fair use, or healthy competition and improvement on the original concept such that a new and distinct material is created. Somebody bootlegging illegal copies of the work for the sake of personal profit is the activity that the copyright holders should be terminating, as it undermines profits and allows somebody else to get rich off of their work while at the same time decreasing the amount of income they receive, that is rightfully thiers.
Purchasing a CD and burning myself a copy to keep in my car, so that the original work remains in mint condition (because cd’s that get left in my car often become destroyed within a few months) and to protect my investment should not be any more an illegal activity than taking high-resolution photographs of my hockey cards and storing them on my computer so i can enjoy them without having to handle the originals with bare hands.
The use of copyrighted materials in public exhibition should be permissible in various circumstances such as in a relevant lecture at a university, or in a report made by a student, where the original work is cited, and due credit is given to the owner. If at a child’s birthday party there are 20 kids all watching a Disney film (found on a store-purchased DVD) on the host’s big screen TV, should this be considered an illegal and criminal copyright infrindgement offence? I think not. This assessment may be incorrect, and I am open to correction if a logical argument to the contrary can be provided, but I personally see this situation along the same lines as shutting down a child’s lemonade stand because they don’t have a vendor’s permit: A legalistic and dictatorial pursuit of the the very letter of the law, rather than a logical and tempered approach to trying to understand and encourage the spirit under which the law was originally intended.
I am also not entirely opposed to one-time activation requirements for software; Perhaps the following could be a useful model that is appealing to both parties: The copyright protection would come in the form of a unique key you must obtain either over the internet, phone, or postal service (postage perhaps paid by the game company for those who choose to have a paper serial key mailed to them due to online access or telephone access restrictions?) This serial will obviously get cracked (eventually) by nefarious individuals who simply refuse to pay for anything regardless of fairness or quality of product; this must be considered true for whatever technology comes about and accepted as regular loss just as theft is factored into the budget of all retail store operations. Impeding the ease of use of the legitimate consumer because of the actions of the thief is not good business practice. The legitimate user will be able to set up an account with the developer/distributer/etc containing minimal personal information (secret question, last 4 digits of payment option, passphrase, or email address) and is simply required to perform this action within 20 days of installing on what is deemed to be a ‘new’ computer. Having a computer make this judgement without tyrannical prohibition of new or upgraded components is not difficult code to integrate into an application if the programming staff is properly educated and given the appropriate amount of time for debugging etc. Postulating this to university students in a software engineering program (perhaps for extra credit or co-op opportunities) might even yield some fascinating new innovations in this field and foster intellectual growth and higher education. Once such an enforcement algorithm is appropriately integrated into the application, consumers will have to adjust to a minor inconvenience when changing motherboards, operating systems, or other ‘major and irregular’ system tasks. This is no more inappropriate or unnecessary, and should be viewed as no larger an inconvenience than having to carry your car keys with you everywhere you go, and needing to turn the ignition over with that key every time you wish to drive.
This new DRM being proposed by Bill C-32 is taking that example to the next level, and seems to immitate a situation in which you are required to use GM’s On-Star Service to speak with a customer support agent and confirm 2 pieces of personal ID before they remotely start your car for you. Failure of this security check, or a weak/damaged connection to the network will result in your car not working. You also receive a fine and possible jailtime if you modify your car to circumvent the ‘feature’ (which you own; this example applies no more to rented, leased or financed vehicles any more than personal fair use would apply to a rented DVD. Just clarifying that to pre-emptively nix that counterargument thought process).
The fact that this government has ignored the voice of the people (as expressed by ‘over 90% of the more than 8,300 submissions [that were] opposed to a repeat of Bill C-61′ ) needs to be addressed, and in my personal and humble opinion should result in a vote of no-confidence in this current minority government.
I think it’s sad that supposed advocates of internet freedom are supporting the anti-piracy attitude that “piracy is stealing.”
We’re living in a modern world now. Get over it. If your current profit model requires totalitarian police state enforcement in order to survive, you need to go extinct like the dinosaur you are, or evolve and embrace the modern world. If you think it’s wrong to download music, too bloody bad, it’s not going to stop no matter how many people you throw in jail.
Just look at the US and their so called war on drugs (an example which our Canadian government is trying to follow). They put more and more into enforcement, and yet more and more people consume these substances. Intellectual progress falters because nobody’s willing to look at “drugs” from a realistic standpoint.
Same sort of thing happens with “piracy.” Enforcement does nothing but bring about more fuss, more piracy, and better P2P technology. Meanwhile, the people who try to defend internet neutrality put on an anti-piracy face in an effort to gain support from the corporate brainwashed status quo and totally lose touch with reality.
Just grow up and admit it. Piracy is here to stay. Get beyond that basic realization and you can go on to find another way to feed and clothes artists. (Maybe try using corporate taxes to fund art programs, or increase the minimum wage so people will actually have free time to be artistic? Nooo, that would make too much sense…)
[...] PRESS RELEASE: PPCA responds to C-32 « Pirate Party of Canada [...]
[...] PRESS RELEASE: PPCA responds to C-32 « Pirate Party of Canada [...]
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