Michael Geist keeps fanning the important flames of dissent on this new copyright bill that the Conservatives are to table in December. Geist’s main complaints (slightly edited) include:
- The bill is likely to include …anti-circumvention provisions … [ed: digital locks on your machines so that using the things you buy the way you want to will be illegal] that have been proven to create significant harm to education, privacy protection, security research, free speech, and consumer interests.
- [ed: The bill does not …] address issues that affect individual Canadians such as protecting parody, time shifting, device shifting, and the making of backup copies. We should eliminate crown copyright and restrict statutory damages awards to cases of commercial infringement. Yet none of this will be in the bill.
- [ed: Lack of consultation.] The government last consulted Canadians on digital copyright issues in 2001. Technology and the Internet have changed dramatically since then, yet there have been no further consultations. Moreover, there is general recognition that this bill is chiefly the result of intense U.S. lobbying. The Industry Minister has time to meet with the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, time to meet all the major telcos on the spectrum auction issue, yet hasn’t made time to meet with user community on copyright.
Here’s a short vid about it, again by Prof. Geist:
This sucks. I will write a letter.
But I don’t think Geist has organized campaigns before. Asking people who to do 30 things – most of which are writing letters – without even a template is a little unreasonable.
Better to focus and target one thing at a time, I would think.
yes… i agree. i’ve asked some of these guys who are deeply involved in copyright to write out the 3-4 point bullets so that i can digest and send a letter.
we’re not quite there yet.