Canadian Copyright Group Seeks To License the Net 149
An anonymous reader writes "A new Toronto Star article from Michael Geist not only describes why Canadian Ministers of Education are pushing a copyright proposal that will harm Internet access, but also reveals how a copyright group is seeking to create a new license for Internet content. Access Copyright, a copyright collective, wants to use a new international text standard to license everything from books to blogs. Geist outlines in his blog how
Canadians can fight back against these bonehead proposals."
Oh I get it... (Score:5, Funny)
There should be a test for politicians about the internet. It should involve:
knowing the difference between the internet and the web;
being able to explain why censoring the web is difficult if not impossible;
why ISPs aren't liable for the content they host;
and some other stuff.
Actually, there should be an easier test - if you want to be a politician you should be BANNED FROM EVERY BECOMING ONE by law.
Yeah.
Re:Oh I get it... (Score:4, Funny)
knowing the difference between the internet and the web;
being able to explain why censoring the web is difficult if not impossible;
why ISPs aren't liable for the content they host;
and some other stuff.''
Right. The politicians have been brainwashing us long enough. It's time for us to start doing it to them!
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Are you wearing red tights? because you just became my hero...
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A series of tubes _is_ an acceptable analogy. No, it's not an _exceptionally good_ analogy (literally speaking), but it is certainly not below average. It illustrates a number of aspects about how the internet in practice functions. Yes, certainly, you can say that 'a network of tubes requires every bit of tubing to be physically connected to every other bit, but the internet can also be transmitted wirelessly!' - but that's stretching it.
FYI:
http://www.bbc [bbc.co.uk]
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Except that when you download a "WHOLE BOOK!" my tube doesn't get clogged because I'm on the other side of the planet--a network of tubes is very different from a series of tubes. Aside from that I'd like to think that /.ers use "tubes" as a reference to the general stupidity of the tubes speech, not just the tubes analogy.
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Seeing circuits as tubes, routers as pressure balance valves, firewalls as filters, certain types of DoS attacks as plugging a tube, and dropping packets as a leaky tube all are sensible enough extensions of a "fat pipe" metaphor.
Just get over yourselves, people. Just because someone knows a better metaphor for something doesn't mean he knows any more how that thing actually works. It also doesn't make him any smarter or
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2. If you read my post and still feel superior because you can point out where one person was wrong about one thing, then reread the post.
3. Obviously you don't understand plumbing as well as you claim to understand networking. You can balance flow of fluids through multiple paths, too. My house, for example, has a pressure equalization valve on the hot water line from two w
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You claimed he didn't get it wrong.
Your suggestion to "donate your sexual organs to science or medicine" wasn't an convincing argument to stop feeling something I didn't feel. We aren't talking about "one person" we are talking about Theodore Fulton Stevens, United
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If that's not saying he was wrong, I'm not sure what is. I was saying that the metaphor of a series of tubes for a series of network circuits itself is not unreasonable once you accept the metaphor of a single tube standing for a single circuit. I thought that was clear based on the context of the thread, but I may be mistaken about what's clear to other people since it's alway
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While stupidity is not mandatory to be a politician, it helps greatly.
As we can see.
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Reminds of a quote from somewhere that he who has the ability to take power should in no way be allowed it.
Obligatory Adams quote (Score:2)
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For a literary equivalent, try Chesterton's "The Napoleon of Notting Hill". The premise is that the hereditary monarchy has been abolished in Britain, and instead the king is chosen completely at random from the general population.
I guess it's still kind of sci-fi, but it was written way back before the genre was ossified.
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First they came for the child porn, and I said nothing, because my website didn't contain any child porn.
Then they came for the unlicensed copyright content, and I said nothing, because my website didn't contain any unlicensed content.
Then they came for the tutorials on how to circumvent DRM, and I said nothing, because my website was fully DMCA-compliant.
Then they came for the tutorials on how to u
Mwaha! (Score:5, Funny)
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to license the internet!"
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Kansas City Shuffle Eh? (Score:2)
Make the whole world watch somewhere else and then just invade Canada. We've got Oil, Snow (going to be rare when the World heats up), Fresh Water, and the Hacker Hellstorm. Just FYI, we don't have Mule Bombs -- but watch out for our Ski-doos (if you catch my snow-drift).
Fake Left, go Right. Kansas City Style. Gotcha.
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Yeah, but watch out for our beaver-bombs.
Frank and Gordon are working on them as we speak (inside joke for the Canucks in the audience).
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Beaver bombs? Why bother, when we've got the chicken cannon [wikipedia.org]. (Visual aid here [www3.cbc.ca].)
We'll save the beaver for, uh, other uses. 8^)
Copyright is a crime against humanity (Score:4, Interesting)
It is only the alienatied status of the modern worker that perpetuates the oppressive regime of copyright. The oppression of the ruling class that keeps workers in a constant state of anxiety, always burdened by financial worries, like Dickensian children chained to their machines, is what prevents creative workers from sharing their ideas freely, for the benefit of all.
For society to be free from the constricting bonds of copyright, it will be necessary to strike at the heart of the capitalist system itself. Only when the lies and distortions of the ruling class are confronted and rejected, only when workers are in control of the means of production, their efforts at last engaged, harmonious, and justly compensated, only then will we see a world where all people are free to share, copy, and most of all create those products of the marvellous human imagination that promote, in that golden phrase, "promote the progress of science and useful arts."
Until then, there's always usenet.
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Re:Copyright is a crime against humanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, you're confused. Once the orginal copyright holder disapears or dies, it becomes pretty much impossible to distribute the work because it's so hard to figure out who has the rights to get permission from. So there's a lot of classic works that are just going to die because people don't have
Re:Copyright is a crime against humanity (Score:4, Interesting)
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Internet copyright is about extending copyright way beyond what it is now. You copyright a book and everybody can still legally copy any single page of that book. Copyright on the internet means copyright on individual pages and even paragraphs.
The goal is to basically block anybody from
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Shakespeare will be copyrighted.
You can't simply reprint the first folio in facsimile and have an edition that will be suitable for casual reading or performance: anyone familiar with Project Gutenberg runs head-on into this wall all the time.
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No, you could still easily charge for stuff without copyright. Bookstores still charge for Shakespeare books, even though there's no copyright on that. What copyright does is prevent other publishers from taking your work and selling it without your permission or giving you an
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Much as I dislike copyright, your analogy is broken. Books are quite difficult to reproduce and distribute, whereas software is trivial.
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You said it wasn't copyright that allowed someone to "charge for stuff", and used the example of a bookshop selling books to support your argument. My point is this conclusion is wr
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You would still have the right to charge for software in a world without copyright. It wouldn't be as practical, which is one reason why we have copyrights, but copyright is certainly not w
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Of course you could. You have the "right"[0] to try and charge people for anything, if you want.
It wouldn't be as practical, which is one reason why we have copyrights, but copyright is certainly not what gives you the right to sell something. Copyright gives you exclusive distribution rights. There's a difference.
Copyright - more accurately the enforcement thereof - is what gives you the *ability* (ie: makes it "practic
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If it *could* be obtained for free without copyright, then chances are it currently is obtainable for free with copyrights. Copyright doesn't enforce anything pricewise, and it's *really* not effective against stopping people from giving stuff away for free. Copyright is effective at stopping large
Re:Copyright is a crime against humanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that, I'm pretty sure the Marxist post was ironic. In which case: hilarious! Rise up, ye proleteriat, and seize your rightful means of production! With your help we will recreate the glorious days of the Soviet Union, which only needed a few more years to shake the bugs out and acheive political perfection.
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I mean, ideologically Marxist societies exist. Shouldn't Cuba and North Korea have the greatest free flow of information in the world?
And if you don't believe that Cuba and North Korea have the most free-flow of information, why not? Clearly they are the closest thing to Marx inspired socialism on the planet right now.
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In Soviet Russia, copy right is wrong?
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You have the wrong idea on the subject.
Abolishing copyright would not be forcing anyone to do anything.
Copyright has the intent of giving an incentive for people to give their works away (not their ideas, ideas are supposed to be free). When you release a copyrighted work, you are giving it to the public domain in that act. In
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I think that mostly everyone should agree on that. That is a view I share with most people.
"I don't think we should be granting distribution privileges to authors anymore."
Perhaps a better suggestion is not to extend copyright time period? Or are you suggesting that copyright has not been an incentive to creativity in the past?
In _my_ particular opinion, more is lost by the public than is won with copyright laws, in _all_ cases, watching the whole pic
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Help! Help! I'm being repressed! See the violence inherit in the system! See the violence inherit in the system!
I'm not sure how this post got marked+4 Interesting, but it really smells of disillusioned communism. Copyright (and patents) were
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I'm not sure how this post got marked+4 Interesting, but it really smells of disillusioned communism.
Dude, you owe me a new keyboard.
If you upgrade to Nose 3.6 Ultimate Edition, you can pick up on scents that are even more subtle than this one!
The GP was pretty-obviously sarcasm.
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I realize that you are being ironic and everything... But just in case some people don't pick up the sarcasm and agree with you:
In every Marxist state, information is highly restricted. The la
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I'll ask you to name one - just one - significant author of lower or middle class origins from the classical to the modern era.
A man who could live and write with freedom without a substantia
proof (Score:2, Troll)
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Isn't that much of what politics is about?
I really think this is likely to disappear again without a trace once people explain to the supporters of this measure just what the effect will be. The article seems to do a very good job of that.
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At last... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Second, the implication of the exception is that using publicly available Internet materials is not permitted unless one has prior authorization or qualifies for the exception. This suggests that millions of Canadians outside the education system who use Internet-based materials are somehow violating the law."
Scoop is sort of confusing (Score:5, Informative)
TFA then goes on to say that ACs proposal is definitely bad, but, contrary to what the scoop suggests, TFA is mainly about the CMEC proposal. What it says is that educational use of online materials is already permitted under current copyright law, and introducing an "exception" that specifically allows it is going to have the negative consequence of making it seem that other uses are not allowed (e.g. fair use at home).
Re:Scoop is sort of confusing (Score:5, Interesting)
"Your half of the law will officially granting you part of what the courts have stated you already have, and in exchange our half of the law will grant us a half the stuff we want and can't get because legislators are listening to your complaints."
A fair and balanced compromise. Both sides get something. And it makes it ok to ignore complaints against it because in a compromise both sides are supposed to be unhappy and complain. Anyone still complaining about it is being unreasonable and greedy and unwilling to compromise.
This is exactly how the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) and the DMCA got passed in the US. Most people here are at least basically familiar with the DMCA, but few people have ever heard of the AHRA. One side of the AHRA granted the public a copyright exemption and protection for home recording and granted manufacturers a copyright exemption and protection against being sued for contributory infringment. Of course no one in the public had ever been sued for infringment for home recording and had no need of protection and home recording is clearly Fair Use and a "copyright exemption" "granting" something that is already Fair use is entirely redundant and worthless. And the Betamax ruling had just come out explicitly stated ing that manufacturers needed no exemption from contributory infringment simply for manufacturing a product that can record. And as a compromise for granting all of that, the RIAA got their half of the law imposing a specific DRM scheme (Serial copy management system - SCMS) in all new home digital audio recording devices. Oh wait, I almost forgot... the AHRA also imposses a signifigant TAX on all covered audio devices and all covered recording media (50% to be distributed to writers and 50% to be distributed to publishers), and this tax is imposed "in exchange" for "granting" the public home recording rights that they already had. Based on a quick Amazon.com search, this AHRA imposed media tax changes the price of a Memorex 52x Data CD-R Media 50-Pack Spindle from $6.40 into $16.45 for a Memorex 40x Music CD-R Media (50-Pack Spindle). AHRA "aduio" CDRs are taxed to be more than 2.5 times the price of a normal CDR. And "data" CDRs are forbidden to work in AHRA covered devices, devices with their own AHRA hardware tax.
And what was the effect of the Audio Home Recording Act? It EXTERMINATED all new products and all new technology and all innovation in consumer audio for a decade.
The new product and technology that prompted the AHRA was Digital Audio Tap (DAT). Most of you have probably never heard of DAT. DAT was basically an ordinary audio cassette tape with all of the quality and benefits of digital CDs. Back in 1992 DAT was hot new technology. The audiophile community was eager to get their hands on this new product and it was anticipated to become a mass market hit. But then the audiophile community started baying a few of these DRM crippled devices. They started recording themselves and their own bands. And then they discoved that the devices would not let them copy their own tapes. That they were in fact the copyright holder on these band recordings, and these crippled devices would not allow them to copy their own work - all in the name of preventing "copyright infringment". So the audiophile community was furious and despised the products. And the general consumer market rejected the products as well, and they totally flopped. Which is why most of you never heard of DAT.
And then the recordable minidisk was developed. A fully recordable CD, and a perfect pocket size 2.5 inches in size. Again, an amazing new technology and product that should have been a HUGE market success. And again, a technology and product that was DRM crippled by the AHRA and thus exterminated by the AHRA. A
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Well, there's your problem. It wasn't clearly fair use. In fact, since no use is categorically fair, it was unlikely to always be. In some instances it might be fair, and in others it might not be. It would depend on the circumstances around every instance of copying. Someone who made a copy of a song to avoid buying one would likely not be engaging in a fair use,
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I know you're a lawyer and I was about to take your word for it and assume that I just missremembered, but I just double checked and it is in there.
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Exceptions generally read like this: "Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, the following are not infringements of copyright...."
But 1008 doesn't say that the actions it covers are not infringements of copyright. It says "[n]o action may be brought under this title" which is a different thing. Acts covered under 1008 are infringements, but the are not infringements for which you can be sued. The main outcome of this is that copies made
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For a moment I thought the RIAA might have have getten too clever in their games and how it might bite them in the ass.... it crossed my mind that the DMCA lies under "this title", and therefore 1008 might be cleverly hijacked as a means to bypass the DMCA. However then I rejected the language. "No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement
Can you say RIAA? (Score:4, Insightful)
``Moreover, it is far better than a counter-proposal from Access Copyright that seeks to develop a new licensing system for the use of Internet-based content. According to documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, the copyright collective has asked the Ministry of Canadian Heritage for funding to become the Canadian collective for a new international standard that can be used to register any "textual work" from books to blogs. Armed with a collection of "registered" online text, Access Copyright will be positioned to create a new license for the use of Internet content.''
So, AC wants you to register your work with them, so that they can then license it to everybody? That's what the record labels do, right?
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Daddy knows best... (Score:1, Troll)
Gosh! I wasn't aware the Internet was theirs to license. Silly me.
Every story brings fresh doubt (Score:1)
Is it worth the pain?
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Ok AC troll - I'll play.
You dont have a constitutional right to bear arms - you have a right to an armed militia (read what you're trying to argue sometime). And some redneck with a shotgun in his pickup is not the intent of a well armed
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Hate to break the news to you, but Newfoundland and Labrador has been a part of Canada for almost 60 years now.
(Seriously, if you live in Canada, you should understand the reason to be less ambiguous than to try to use an ISO abbrevation that conflicts with Canada Post.)
"maybe I can interest you in a 100 acre farm"
Don't they measure things in hectares up there? Maybe your problem with establishing residency is that your farm is actually on the wrong side of the
When will they learn... (Score:1)
TFA can't even find a good reason for the copyright...in fact, it spends half the time telling us why it's a shitty idea. I knew American laws were stupid, but, damn, we overflowed into Canada. Leave them to their ice hockey, dammit!
Why (Score:1)
Fearmongering (Score:2)
There already is a limited education use exemption in Canadian Copyright law, saying it applies to blogs too sounds reasonable.
I think it is acceptable for a teacher to print out or save a copy of a blog that they are discussing in class.
First order of business... (Score:2)
Oh brother (Score:1)
The brilliance of the civil service mindset continues to astound me. My tax dollars at work
Missing information (Score:2)
Second, the function of Access Copyright is pretty simple: it licences content on behalf of the creators so that it can be freely used within shcools. The idea, a simple one, is that when some teacher photocopies dozens of copies of your short story instead of buying text books you will still get some payment.
Contary to common belief, especially among teachers, there no law natural or otherwise that allows them unfettered use of
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See here [cb-cda.gc.ca], under exceptions to Copyright infringement. That'd be enough to already do anything that anyone would reasonably want under the AC proposal.
Access Copyright adds absolutely nothing to this except possibly wresting control of copyright from ACTUAL copyright holders.
Don't do it... (Score:2)
... because it might give the wrong idea to people.
This is the first I've heard of this. I'm sure someone in the crowd can correct me if I'm wrong, but my basic interpretation of this seems to be:
I'd kinda like to address each of these in turn:
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BAH!!! He is a lawyer... *sigh* ... at any rate, the potential violation of international law still doesn't explain what the big deal is? The potential violation of international law takes up one measly line in his entire article... so I'm still at a bit of a loss
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Point 5: Politics. This is the real crux of Geist's argument, although he doesn't put it as plainly as he might.
ahhh... finally something that makes sense. I didn't think of it that way, but that part is a fairly chilling possibility. Enough small changes and you can effect a large change that would have originally been shitcanned... the whole slowly increasing the temp of the water that a frog is in analogy.
I'm not sure where exactly I'd stand on that one... if it was a strong possibility than I'd agr
Sure why not (Score:2)
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Turns out the article says the ministry of education wants to allow schools to use all material available on the internet and be exempt from copyright that way. Guess someone didn't think about warez there.
The copyright group in question wants to offer content provide
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What even the pron ;-)
licensing (Score:1)
I personally don't mind the idea of reimbursing the author of content. I'd guess if we don't have some way to do that, the only content available will be from people who don't have anything better to do (and little to say), or poor passionate artists.
Perhaps there would be some benefit to a mechanism that allowed large numbers of Internet users (e.g. all the subscribe
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Nah, its just that hell just froze over and pigs flew this morning. As a consequence the topic of copyrights wore thin and became boring so all the slasdotters went off to CowboyNeals place to oooh and aaaah over the Windows Vista Release candidate. Afterwards they plan to set up the worlds first Windows Vista user's fan club.
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Really? Two words for you: Celine Dion.
Wow - Canada Must Rock! (Score:2)
This is the worst thing Canada has ever done to earn your disgust? Wow. What a truly amazing country.
In the vast history of governmental screwups, this is hardly even a footnote. It's not like they've been tapping your phones without a warrant... Disclaimer: I'm Canadian.
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Perhaps something like a 2nd vote. One for your moral values and one for your social values (through your work). Of course this would give more power to the people. Something to do with balance yada ya
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And it sucks that some knee-jerk Canadian fool marked your post as a troll because in a nutshell,
"more laws == less justice" meets "kill the slavemasters & Don't tread on me", at least in the mind of anybody who values their liberty.
Laws that actually seek to control access to freely available information in what would seem to be a free country across a world-wide network should raise flags and people should shout them down.
Of course we're talking about a country which captiulated to media ba