Archive for March, 2012
Setting the Record Straight on the Copyright Lobby’s Latest Smear Campaign
The Other Shoe Drops: Music Reps Want SOPA-Style Website Blocking Added To Copyright Bill
Yesterday the Canadian Music Publishers Association added to the demand list by pulling out the SOPA playbook and calling for website blocking provisions. Implausibly describing the demand as a “technical amendment”, the CMPA argued that Internet providers take an active role in shaping the Internet traffic on their systems and therefore it wants to “create a positive obligation for service providers to prevent the use of their services to infringe copyright by offshore sites.” If the actual wording is as broad as the proposal (the CMPA acknowledged that it has an alternate, more limited version), this would open the door to blocking thousands of legitimate sites. The CMPA admitted that the proposal bears a similarity to SOPA and PIPA, but argued that it was narrower than the controversial U.S. bills. While that may technically be true – SOPA envisioned DNS blocking and targeting advertising and payment networks – the website blocking provisions look a lot like the legislation that sparked massive public protest.
Bill C-11 Extremism Continues: The Attack on Fair Dealing
On Monday, the Writers’ Union of Canada told the committee:
U.S. Says Canada Will Not Have A Say in the TPP
At a stakeholder meeting yesterday, the U.S. Trade Representative indicated that Canada would not have a voice in negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership. The USTR has adopted the position that late entrants such as Canada, Japan, and Mexico will have to take the agreement “as is”, potentially including copyright term […]