Billboard reports that NDP MP Charlie Angus plans to introduce a private member's bill that would extend the private copying levy to MP3 players. Mar.15/10Comments (9)
FCC Chair Julius Genachowksi has a strongly worded op-ed on a U.S. broadband strategy that is scheduled to be unveiled on Tuesday. Mar.15/10Comments (0)
There has been a lot of activity on the UK Digital Economy bill in recent days including a leaked recording industry lobby document outlining its efforts to push the bill through and news that the Lib Dems plan to oppose the disconnection and web censorship provisions. Mar.15/10Comments (0)
Heesob Nam reviews the South Korean experience with three strikes legislation that has been in place since July 2009. The government reports thousands of initial notices that have been passed along by ISPs. There have been no instances of using the subscriber termination power. Mar.12/10Comments (0)
The Globe reports that the wireless sector is at the forefront of the government's foreign investment deregulation plans. The issue was the subject of considerable confusion following mixed signals from the Speech from the Throne and the budget. Mar.12/10Comments (0)
Prime Minister Harper will be answering questions on YouTube over the next week, providing a chance to raise digital strategy issues in a digital environment Mar.10/10Comments (0)
The Australian government has stated that it does not expect to make any changes to its domestic laws due to ACTA, hoping to persuade others to follow the Australian approach. Mar.10/10Comments (1)
InternetNZ has just announced that I will be the keynote speaker at PublicACTA, an ACTA conference scheduled just prior to the next round of ACTA negotiations in Wellington, NZ. Mar.10/10Comments (1)
I have blogged in the past about the evolving communication strategy for Industry Minister Jim Prentice and copyright reform. Just prior to the release of the bill, I posted an "unofficial" backgrounder that noted that Prentice was hoping to shuffle the bill to the committee so that he would not have to deal with it all summer long. True to form, Prentice's brief responses at this weekend's Stampede Breakfast suggest that this is precisely the line that he intends to use. Having had limited success with the "made in Canada" claims and absolute disasters when asked about specifics in the bill (note that Kempton Lam reports that Prentice's chief of staff Jean-Sebastien Riouxsays that people have been "too specific" about the bill's shortcomings), Prentice is now hoping to simply not answer questions by claiming that there will be an opportunity to debate the bill at committee. In this exchange with Jan Rubak, Prentice is asked:
Question: Canadians have a hundred questions about the Copyright reform bill. Are you going to actually answer them straight-out sometime soon?
Prentice: Well there'll be opportunity at the Parliamentary committee to debate all of those.
In other words, Prentice does not plan to answer questions about Bill C-61. Having previously hung up on interviewers, he now hopes to hide behind a committee despite the fact that the bill has not even been referred to committee yet. Canadians should not have to wait months for answers. It is the time for the Minister to stand up and respond to specific concerns about Bill C-61.
I've posted typical responses from the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP to C-61. Several people have written with the Bloc response, which receives good coverage from Patrick Tanguay.
Since the introduction of Bill C-61 two weeks ago, there has been extensive coverage and commentary in the Canadian media. I've created a Google Map that tracks the coverage - red indicates a negative review, yellow a neutral one, and blue represents positive coverage. There are links to all the underlying articles on the map and I'll be updating this regularly.
There has been lots of attention paid to the huge growth of the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group (now over 81,000 members), but it is worth noting how many people have taken the time to write the government and their MPs over the past two weeks. The Copyright for Canadians letter writing tool has been used over 9,000 times, while the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights has sent over 20,000 letters and now offers its letter wizard in both English and French.
