Re:Yes, just like their health system! (Score 1)

You have mis-stated the facts. By international treaty, downloading copyrighted material in Canada is NOT legal, regardless of Canada's unwillingness to enforce the treaties it signs. It might be legal according to province or national law, but Canada's own agreements to international treaties make it illegal. Now, as a Libertarian, I do not agree with that state of affairs... but that is the way it stands today. So it is not me who is confused.

I should really be in bed, but first, i had to reply to this.

I did some quick research and while it was far from thorough (i didn't look through every treaty, i did a quick search on ones dealing with copyrights) it turned out something startling, there is no treaty that forbids personal copying!

That's right, of the 4 treaties that Canada has signed and/or put into law, not one of them says anything about 'personal'copying. public copying and reselling is illegal, no one is denying that, but personal?

3 of the 4 have been made into law, and all are quite old (one was to do with IP/Copyrights in the patent and world stage, nothing to do with infringement), the fourth one, the WIPO Copyright Treaty, was signed by Canada, however, no law has been made. Unless I missed something, there is no reference forbidding personal copying (post links to prove me wrong, preferribly to the treaty itself).

Also, international treaties are about as hard to enforce has it is to hold back a river with my hands. Take a look at the Kyoto Accord, or a better example, the US going against the WTO in banning online gambling. Kyoto is such a mess in many countries in terms of legislation to meet the targets.

A Treaty is not a law-binding piece of paper. It's a bunch of country leaders sitting down and creating a document, then signing it. There's no binding effect to that treaty, you can (usually) pull out, not to mention the general public might not like it.

Your words summed it all up nicely, you might want to follow them too...

I suspect you could use a little education about the facts yourself.