Digital Copyright Canada

A must-view video from Public Knowledge.

5 Minutes with Harold Feld: ACTA Recommendation: Ditch the Crazy Stuff

The same thing with Bill C-32. Some things which aren't too bad are being held up with what I consider to not only be "Crazy Stuff", but questionably constitutional, and in my opinion unquestionably harmful to Canadian creators.

An article on the CIPPIC website indicates they have endorsed the Urgent ACTA Communique. I have as well, and suggest others who agree with the statements to do so.

For those who will be in Ottawa on Saturday, August 14, 2010, I will be presenting a talk titled Why legal protection for technical measures is controversial at Open Source Technology showcase - SC2010.

Not surprisingly, we will be discussing the USA's National Information Infrastructure (NII) Copyright Protection Act of 1995, the 1996 WIPO Internet treaties, the USA's DMCA in 1998, as well as Canadian bills C-60 (2005), C-61 (2008) and C-32 (2010). If it isn't dead yet, we'll discuss the Orwellian double-speak named Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Yesterday I authored, printed, signed and sent through snail-mail a letter to Peter Van Loan, Minister of International Trade. It was in reply to a reply letter he had written me earlier on ACTA, the Orwellian double-speak named Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. In it I asked him to protect the global intellectual property system from this attack on existing institutions.

This morning I read that the European parliament passed a resolution calling on Canada to support moving ACTA to WIPO.

While a bit out-of-date a day later, I included my letter in an article on IT World Canada's blog.

I added the following as a comment to a blog article by Chris Castle which he titled, "The Consultation of the Mikado Part 2: Geist is running his playbook again ". It is also interesting to ask why the same isn't lobbed against musician and MP Charlie Angus who, along with myself, share many policy views with Michael Geist. Maybe it is seen to be easier to pick on a lawyer than fellow artists?

Jesse Brown interviewed Charlie Angus about his private copying regime private members bill and fair use motion.

From today's Globe and Mail.

“Significant international discussions on Arctic issues should include those who have legitimate interests in the region,” the U.S. Secretary of State said.

Ms. Clinton apparently believed strongly enough, that all parties with vested interests should be included in the discussion, that she did not come to the conference.

I received the following response from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to my submission to the ACTA consultation.

I find it frustrating that they continue to try to misdirect critiques with a suggestion that it is premature to speculate about any specific measure. My critique is primarily based on the lack of disclosure as well as the merging of entirely unrelated areas of policy (Counterfeiting, "piracy"/de-minimus infringement, Internet/etc issues). These problems were only confirmed by the response, something that is definitely not reassuring.

In an article for The Mark I suggest that we shouldn't blame Google when music blogs are shut down, since it’s the major record labels that are to blame.

By now you will have read many articles derived from the statements made by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer at Google about China.

The primary issue that Google was bringing up was a simple and not politically hot one. Companies need to know that the government of countries they are trying to do business in will have laws and enforce them against those who attack the physical or virtual infrastructure of these businesses.

Many of the comments and articles about this incident suggested Google was trying to protect online free speech. I do not buy that argument in this case.

Read full article on IT World Canada's blog ...