With a copyright bill only days away, this weekend I launched a new Facebook group focused on raising awareness of the proposed changes and identifying opportunities for Canadians to have their voice heard. The reaction has been remarkable as hundreds of people have joined the group in less than 24 hours. If you're on Facebook and concerned about copyright, please join.
The Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook Group
December 2, 2007
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Law Bytes
Episode 218: Emily Laidlaw and Taylor Owen on Saving the Online Harms Act
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Almost 2300 people in 48 hours. Goes to show how many people are concerned!
I refuse to join Facebook sorry but Let me add my comment below. You should start a different group not on Facebook..
See Public dissent has it\\\’s place sometimes.
They have temporarily withdrawing the tabling of the bill.
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The whole idea of this law is stupid anyway. There saying that somebody downloading crappy sounding mp3\\\’s is a crime but play the same crappy tunes over the radio. It\\\’s a benefit for them, It\\\’s kind of like free advertising. Studies have shown that it helps sales not hinders them. If it was not true then they would not even bother playing music on the radio or TV cause according to them it harms music sales.
What bugs me the most about it is the retro-activity. Impossible to calculate. Was that photo taken 50 years ago or only 49 years ago? The guys dead and where still milking it for all it\\\’s worth. Look at famous paintings. There only worth money cause the artist got paid dick for it and now he\\\’s dead. Are we helping the artists? Look at the womans hockey cup fiasco. The artist wants a small fee per showing. Kind of like movies plus a fee for making it. Adrian Clarkson is just going to get somebody else to build her a new cup instead trampling on the artist rights of fair compensation.
A whole millennium of knowledge is going to vanish cause of these stupid laws. Because nobody is bothering to keep the formats current cause it\\\’s copyrighted there fast becoming unreadable. Like if I gave you a 5.25\\\” floppy would you be able to back it up ? I bet when Winders 95 becomes public domain in a 100 years. Nobody will be able to read the CD and the source code will long since vanished.
Add to that Copyfraud. That\\\’s when somebody claims a work is copyrighted even though it\\\’s been in the public domain for hundreds of years. Happens all the time. Yes you can fight it in court but who will when threated legal action from say some University ?
Exhibit A:
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These books where printed hundreds of years ago. Probably before copyright even existed but yet this university is claiming copyright on them..
Then there is the Unintended consequences:
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Things like protecting ink cartridges under the DMCA
You can\\\’t refill them cause we have hard coded a best before date into them and hacking that part is a crime with some absurd penalty of millions of dollars and years in jail.
This copyfraud happened to me already with some art that I had uploaded to the web, Somebody complained and it was removed but the problem was I had the original source files. there was no copyright infringement. They don\\\’t check the facts they just delete. It happens all the time.
The market now has expanded to world wide, we need less law not more law. Let the market decide what survives and what dies. These laws are like a perpetual monopoly. Hmm maybe that word is copyrighted ?
Anyway my rule now for almost 20 years. No buying Music CD\\\’s and no buying movies. Ever !!! Till they put some balance back into these laws.
why facebook?
I would gladly join the petition, but I am not going to register just for the purpose of signing the petition.
Just let me enter my emil address somewhere, let the autoresponder send a email to that address requesting verification. I click on REPLY, and you got a VALID!!! verifiable signature on yourv petition.
Publisher
I was a publisher in the United States and moved to Canada almost three years ago. Canada does not want to emulate American copyright law in any way shape or form. It is a 200 page nebulous mess. It was written to favour large corporations over individuals. Disney opened up the can of worms that is the current copyright law by lobbying to extend the copyrights of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. In other words, they wanted to cheat. So they lobbied. Bought politicians. Then the Recording Industry of America Association RIAA got involved and lobbied over and over again to tighten copyrights, for the express purpose of forcing people to buy the same songs over and over just because the format has changed.
Disney is known as the Evil Empire to anybody who has been in the publishing industry. They violate Fair Use laws all the time. They tried to take the right to Parody away from people. They sued fanzines. They buy properties from others and the first thing they do is issue threatening letters to fan clubs. This was very famously done to fans of Rocky and Bullwinkle. While Jay Ward was alive, he welcomed fan cartoons. He loved parodies. He nurtured his fan clubs. But when he died and Disney bought up his property, the first thing Disney did was issue threatening letters to everybody fan they could locate. Around the world.
You see, Disney pretty much started the odious practice of suing their own fan base. Which other large American corporation which owned intellectual properties gleefully followed suit: Archie Comics, MTV, Marvel, DC Comics, Paramount, after Gene Roddenberry died. Roddenberry was another man who nurtured his Star Trek fans. Star Trek fandom invented the fan conventions that Marvel and DC enjoy the benefits from.
We in the publishing field are starting to produce graphic novels that are Copy Left or Open Source comics and Graphic Novels. Our attitude is this: who cares what happens to our properties after we die? Having fans post our work and do appreciation sites are flattering and often very touching.
It has always been to my bafflement that large American corporations would try to stifle that. That they consider it a big insult that someone would put out a fanzine.
But that is because these corporations who lose their original creators to death or hostile takeover, are filled with suits and lawyers. They have no emotional investment in the creations. It becomes all about money. But in suing their fan bases, they kill the joy. If you look at the history of Barbie doll collecting, you will see a huge drop off in adult collecting in 1995. That is because that year they sued every distributor and every fan club that had the Barbie name on it.
The RIAA is wondering why there has been a huge drop off in CD sales. Well I will tell you. After they succeeded in suing a Native American woman on a reserve who makes $26,000 a year for “intent to distribute” 26 songs, to the tune of $220,000, the avalanche of people who swore on their mothers’ graves that they will never purchase another CD again, especially from a big box store, amounted to at least $2.2 million dollars in one day. On one newspaper comments section: The New York Times.
As an American who is so disenchanted with America that she will never live there again ever, you must trust me when I say that Canada: you do not want to step into the tar pit that is the current American Copyright law. There are parts that violate First Amendment rights that remain unchallenged because of the large war chest of lawyers on staff, versus individuals barely scraping by. So you can bet that if Harper adopts American Style copyright law, it will violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Don’t go there.
Richard
I do not want to join Facebook, however I wish to register my support. Is there an open online petition