Digital Copyright Canada

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.

The first meeting of the C-11 special legislative committee was held on February 14, 2012. This meeting had the regular motions to start a committee, setting the amount of time to meet and other such things. Audio recordings are already available, and minutes and transcripts will come later.

The plan is to meet for 12 hours per week (normally committees only meet 4h/week), with all work ceasing on March 29 at which point the bill will be reported back to the house. There will be witnesses starting Feb 27'th after the break, with clause-by-clause of the bill starting on March 14'th.

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.

On the 21st September, I emailed the minister about C-11. I asked specifically why the government was making it illegal to bypass the region encoding to watch the DVDs I purchased in Europe here in Canada. Here's the response I received today.

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.

On February 8, 2012 we had the 8th time when the House of Commons debated Bill C-11 (at Second Reading). The previous debate day was December 12, 2011.

The debate started with Hon. Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, CPC) moving a time allocation motion:

One of the other participants in the copyright reform debate that uses a chicken little "theft is theft" inflation of the harm to copyright holders from infringement, while continuing to dismiss the legitimate rights and interests of technology owners and others impacted by their promoted policy proposals, is McCarthy Tétrault lawyer (and registered CRIA/MPAA/etc lobbiest) Barry Sookman (Search for Sookman on this blog).

He wrote an article on the Financial Post and his blog claiming that it was people who disagreed with his extreme rhetoric who were the ones who were making outrageous claims. While Michael Geist offered a point-by-point rebuttle of Sookman, I posted some comments to his blog which I will repost here.

I have drafted a new submission to Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada for their ongoing consultation (skip to bottom) on the deceptively named Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). I haven't yet sent it in to the department, but want to generate discussion.

It is available anonymously as a Google Doc as well as a PDF from my webserver.

If you are looking for SOPA/PIPA or C-11 comparisons, please note that ACTA contains beyond-WIPO protection for TPMs and thus includes the harmful effects I discussed in my comparison between Bill C-11 and SOPA/PIPA?.