Digital Copyright Canada

I wrote the following letter to the editor this morning in reply to an article by Lee Greenberg of The Ottawa Citizen.

I am getting more and more frustrated by how the media is reporting the Ottawa Light Rail issue. In Thursday's paper Lee Greenberg seemed to be suggesting that it was the City council that killed the project, when in reality it was John Baird who killed the project by refusing to sign the contribution agreement.

While Mr. Baird is costing Ottawa taxpayers huge amounts of money in court fees and the delay in modernizing our transportation system, the Conservatives are pumping money into Toronto. If the media was reporting the Ottawa rail issue property, people would realize the hypocrisy of these pre-election photo opportunities.

A personal post, not related to Copyright -- I have decided that since this is the BLOG I most often publish to that I will use this BLOG even when what I have to say isn't technology law/policy related.

I live in Ottawa South, the riding of the Liberal's newly appointed Environment critic David McGuinty. My city Councillor is Clive Doucet. I don't have a drivers license for largely political reasons, and am a fan of publicly subsidized public transit (and an opponent to publicly subsidized private transit).

An article in The Tyee by Laura Drake discusses the politics behind the Light Rail plan, and its recent failure. While the Charelli plan wasn't my favourite of the options available, I am embarrassed that Ottawa is the Nations capital and yet we don't have efficient (economically and environmentally) public transit. The bus system is a disaster, and even though I have lived here for more than 19 years I still find it easier to get around in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

(Also on p2pnet)

I am posting a text version of a letter that my MP, Mr. David McGuinty, received from Bev Oda's office in response to a question he forwarded from me. It may look familiar to many people, as it seems nearly identical to replies sent to other people. One example is the Appropriation Art coalition which posted a copy of the letter on their website.

The letter from the Minister of Heritage did not address my question. The issue of technical protection measures is not really an issue of copyright at all, but an issue of property rights of owners of technology. This is why we are collecting signatures for the Petition to protect Information Technology property rights, to draw the attention of parliamentarians to this issue.

I sent the following letter to my MP, David McGuinty, earlier today. My hope is that it will encourage other people to write similar letters to their MP.

Mr McGuinty,

I know you are busy these days, and I have seen your name in the news with the upcoming leadership race.

I would still like to draw your attention to the ongoing policy debates around copyright. While I do not expect that Bill C-60 will return in the new government unchanged, I am told that the Conservatives plan to table a copyright bill soon. There has yet to be inclusive consultations that included more than the legacy industry special interest groups.