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Canadian Independent Music Association Laments Absence of Three Strikes

The Canadian Independent Music Association, formerly CIRPA, has posted its submission to the digital economy strategy consultation.  CIMA says that Bill C-32 “pales by comparison” with the U.K. Digital Economy bill, noting that their legislation includes three strikes language.  The CIMA submission rejects concerns about due process in disconnecting Canadians from the Internet.

14 Comments

  1. Anarchist Philanthropist says:

    Further proof that companies like this need to be shut down.

  2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/08/bt-talktalk-challenge-digital-economy-act

    UK ISPs BT and Talk Talk are already challenging the digital economy bill citing concerns over fundamental freedoms.

    Charles Dunstone, chairman of TalkTalk, was quoted as saying: “The Digital Economy Act’s measures will cost the UK hundreds of millions and many people believe they are unfair, unwarranted and won’t work. Innocent broadband customers will suffer and citizens will have their privacy invaded.”

    Apparently this is a good model according to the Canadian “Independent” Music Association. Let’s invade some innocent peoples freedoms in order to further a cause against that which cannot be stopped. Whose running the show for this organization? I hope they know how to turn on a damn computer. At the bare minimum I would expect a person in this position to grasp that the enormous amount of information on the internet should never be denied to anyone. Yes even people who’ve done a lot worse than share with their friends their latest mp3. In conclusion I believe the members of the Canadian “Independent” Music Association needs to kindly remove their heads from the sand.

  3. “The CIMA submission rejects concerns about due process in disconnecting Canadians from the Internet.”
    Time to get rid of the CD levy and their “IP” welfare system.

  4. Sigh
    Never really read anything that made me want to vomit before.. Ah well, first time for everything

    Be warned, anyone that actually wants to read that drivel of a submission đŸ˜›


  5. What a load of crap…

    “Canada’s ISP’s have benefitted enormously from the ability of their customers to freely download illegally obtained material across their networks.”

    How? they’re not serving the content, ISP’s simply provide a gateway. They can niether control nor predict the usage of their customers, nor do they profit, other that their monthly fee, from a user abusing their system. Someone illegally downloading/uploading 50G of movies pays the same as someone legally downloading/uploading 50G of Linux distros. I fail to see how ISPs make any more or any special profit from illegal downloading. Further to that, in Canada, it’s illegal for an ISP to spy on you or perform deep-packet-scanning, if you’re using encryption. Whether it be movies or Linux distros, encrypted looks the same.

    If the CIMA would like communist or socialist style laws without due process, perhaps the CIMA and their respective artists should move to a country with a communist or socialist government. The last I looked, in Canada, we are a democrasy where citizens have a right to due process.

  6. Lawsuit time?
    What if all of us who are opposing Bill C-32 filed a joint class-action lawsuit against Moore & Co?

    Some venues to explore would be slander (he called all Canadians who opposed this Bill “radical extremists” or in other words “terrorists”), violation of Charter of Rights and Freedoms (some provisions of the Bill violate the Charter), fraud (this Bill is being passed against the wishes of Canadian citizens and is being funded by special interests groups), and so on.

    What does everyone think? If we cannot influence them using reason, we can influence them through courts.

  7. turning back the clock
    It doesn’t matter if a three strikes law comes into effect or not. It doesn’t matter if there is legal protection for DRM/TPM. None of that addresses the root of the problem, it only pushes it underground.

    If they got everything they “wanted”, including 3 strikes (or 1 strike!), it would slow the trends down for 6 months. They would then be crowing about how well it is doing. A year from now it would be back, more than ever and almost undetectable. And they would be back at the politicians again crying to outlaw VPN and encrypted connections and all cryptology (hint, TPM is based on cryptology).

    I came across an article recently from 2009. It is oriented towards the newspaper industry, but the attitudes could apply to many of the media distributors as well. It is more of a description of the kinds of times we live in. It expresses it better that I can.

    http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/

    So the best we can do is prevent ourselves from being shackled with nonsensical laws while this all plays out.

  8. Drew Wilson says:

    Wake Up Call
    I think it’s more about the artists that are barely paying attention need to get a wake-up call and oppose this. Thankfully, a number of Canadian artists like CMCC and artists such as myself are doing everything they can to oppose this extreme ideology of locking everything down and policing the internet.

    It’s neither a profitable, nor effective way to run a music business.

    -Drew “Frozen IceCube” Wilson

  9. @Drew “It’s neither a profitable, nor effective way to run a music business.”

    Well, it is actually, for the distributors. What I don’t understand is now that artists have a distribution system (internet/digital) available that does not suck most of the profits out of their work, why are they not rebelling against the labels? I suspect many do not realize that they no longer need to be fleeced by the fact cat middle men. I am hoping education and the increased used of the open licence model will help artists gain greater control and benefits from their work.

    It’s not the CIMA that is your friend, it’s actually the fair use advocates that they love to vilify.

  10. Just Wondering O_o
    I just noticed on the bottom of the CIMA page there is a Heritage Canada footer and the government of Canada logo. WTF? is this an official organization of the Canadian government? If not why are they presenting their logos on their page? Do they have permission, and if not are they using them without permission?

    J

  11. jimmyfakename says:

    how to train your politician
    Of course he does. He laments that theres no three strikes law or debtors prison for convicted downloaders/infringers in an attempt to make us think that the bill is balanced. oh, we didn’t get anything we wanted. We wanted gold plated porsches paid for by the canadian taxpayer, but didn’t get it thanks to pirates. all we got was DRM and yet you guys got all these fair use rights. It’s just not fair. woe is me. Look at this other country we paid off that actually gave us what we asked for! They’re a bunch of decent, swell guys, not like you commie socialists.

    Theres only one group here with a sense of entitlement, and its not the downloaders.


  12. oldguy said:
    “If they got everything they “wanted”, including 3 strikes (or 1 strike!), it would slow the trends down for 6 months. They would then be crowing about how well it is doing. A year from now it would be back, more than ever and almost undetectable. And they would be back at the politicians again crying to outlaw VPN and encrypted connections and all cryptology (hint, TPM is based on cryptology).”

    I’ve been saying this for a while. True pirates will adapt, they will always adapt. Once technologies such as darknets, onion routing, proxy-nets, etc become the norm, and all will be lost for the **AA industries in trying to control the Internet. The more they push, the more people who will move over in to this type of networking, worried that even everyday activity my be tracked and considered illegal. They’ll have no more bargaining chips and the cost of tracking (If even possible) will become preventative. There are bigger and more powerful industries who rely on VPN and/or encrypted connections than the **AAs. For instance…you can’t kill encryption without pissing off the banking industry and on-line retail industry…not to mention all the public-facing government services which rely on it. You can just imagine all the potential identity theives foaming at the mouth over the idea of this. Indirectly you’d piss off environmentalists as everyone moved back to paper for doing banking.

    In regards to VPN, if they try to ban it without banning encryption, someone will come out with the same thing under a different name since VPN is based on openly usable Internet protocols.

  13. …”In regards to VPN, if they try to ban it without banning encryption, someone will come out with the same thing under a different name since VPN is based on openly usable Internet protocols.”

    Virtual Private Network. It describes a class or type of communications network. It can be implemented in many different ways, all of them depend on encryption (private!). I have used or seen many different “VPN” implementations. Even somewhat bizarre ones based on DNS server responses and ICMP ping, slower but they work.

    Attempting to legally control the technology simply will not have the desired effect. The sooner the copyright industry and our governments face this, the sooner they will get down to addressing the root of the issue. Reference the article I pointed out above.

  14. Copyright laws?
    Why have laws that create extra cost the consumer? While we’re at it, why have any laws that cost the consumer?

    Let’s get rid of minimum wage too, and eliminate the employment standards act. This will help Canadian companies compete with China, and lower prices for the consumer.

    Screw the artists and content creators? This is progress?