Digital Copyright Canada

The fifth meeting of the C-11 special legislative committee was held on February 29, 2012.

The first witness of the first session gave familiar arguments. While it was the Canadian Independent Music Association, they gave a mini-me performance of what the major labels already presented: The sky was falling, and the blame was entirely from citizens not paying for music. Oh, but lets not target actual infringers, they want to go after the alleged "enablers" of that infringement. Oh, and TPMs were a must and were allegedly necessary for their business.

The fourth meeting of the C-11 special legislative committee was held on February 28, 2012.

Witnesses: Canadian Federation of Musicians: Bill Skolnik, Chief Executive Officer; Warren J. Sheffer, Legal Counsel. Pineridge Broadcasting: Don Conway, President. Re:Sound Music Licensing Company: Ian MacKay, President; Matthew Fortier, Director, Communications. Association nationale des éditeurs de livres: Aline Côté, President, Les Éditions Berger; Jean Bouchard, Vice-President and General Manager, Groupe Modulo. Canadian School Boards Association: Cynthia Andrew, Policy Analyst, Ontario Public School Boards Association. Association of Canadian Community Colleges: Michèle Clarke, Director, Government Relations and Policy Research, Public Affairs; Claude Brulé, Dean, Algonquin College.

The third meeting of the C-11 special legislative committee was held on February 27, 2012, and followed what will be the normal process for witnesses where the 3 hours is divided into two parts.

The first session had three people marked as individuals, and the second session had someone from the Alliance for Equality of Blind people, and two people representing photographers.

While I hope to post commentary later, I did live-tweet (via @russellmcormond)the two "Internet fora" I attended today.

In the morning I was at CIRA's Canadian Internet Forum. One of the panel speakers was Michael Geist who spoke about how the other "Internet forum" was happening in parliament with all the Internet regulation bills.

I then left CIRA's forum to head to center block of parliament to observe the Bill C-11 committe.

The minutes from the in-camera meeting held on February 16, 2012, and it contains a list of organizations and individuals that will appear before the Bill C-11 committee. (Update: Notice of meeting 3)

As I look over the list I see many more of the familiar apologists for laws that will legalize and legally protect infringements of IT property rights such as James Gannon from law firm McCarthy Tetrault. What I hope to see are people who will defend against this lack of respect for property rights, with the obvious name that stuck out being law professor Jeremy F. deBeer.

Our community hosts a few petitions to the federal parliament. Our first was the Petition for Users' Rights which we launched in 2004 during a Liberal government, and the second was the Petition to protect Information Technology property rights which was launched in 2006 soon after the Conservative government formed. At the time I thought protecting property rights was a non-brainer for a Conservative government, but it turns out that I was wrong. If we don't focus on our rights and interests as technology owners, this Conservative government will blindly trample our rights without even acknowledging us as legitimate stakeholders.

No visit of the Canadian Prime Minister to China would be complete without western media commenting on China's censorship policy. Western governments also engage in censorship, and are willing to go to extreme lengths to enforce that censorship. Some of that censorship has been called for by the corporations who own the western mainstream media that has been critiquing China.

"He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

Given all the discussion about how the debate on Bill C-19 ended (Examples: Sheila Dabu Nonato for Postmedia News, Kady O'Malley for CBC) I decided to send Mr Larry Miller (MP for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound) an email.

I will let fellow technology owners know if I get a reply.

On February 10, 2012 we had the 9th time when the House of Commons debated Bill C-11 (at Second Reading). The previous debate day was February 8, 2012.

This was the last day of debate before the bill is sent to committee at second reading. In some ways we have returned to the same position we were a little less than a year ago when the government fell in March 2011. In other ways it appears that the general public, who will be greatly impacted by this bill, are far more engaged than they were at that time.

Press release below. See for more details.

For Immediate Release

Canadians rally for day of action against Bill C-11 (Internet Lockdown)

Public Outcry Heats up Against Legislation that threatens Internet Freedom

February 10, 2012 – Today, public outcry will grow to new proportions for what many are calling “the Internet Lockdown”. People across Canada plan to come together online and offline to rally against Bill C-11, known as the Copyright Modernization Act.

The Canadian public outcry comes in the wake of the fervor surrounding SOPA—a hotly contested copyright bill that millions of Americans and make websites like Wikipedia and reddit successfully came together to defeat.