Canadian Copyright Consultation Counter-Criticisms

[Ace Gunman]

Canadian Copyright Consultation Counter-Criticisms
O, Canada? They're at it again.

In 2008 GBAtemp and the CCER delivered an urgent message about copyright reform to Canadians. In 2009 your efforts and the efforts of other like-minded Canadian citizens yielded results in the form of public consultations from the government of Canada; which turned out to be the most successful public consultation to date. Today, in 2010, we find certain parties (.doc) attempting to discredit that progress.

In their efforts to quash the accomplishments of the CCER and others, GBAtemp is cited as an example of a consultation contributing website with a primarily non-Canadian user base. They negatively imply that approximately 5% of GBAtemp's membership is Canadian, which somehow makes our contributions suspect to these individuals. To them we give the following statistic: 5% of 234,242 members is nearly twelve thousand people.

They also cite that by discussing the issue on non-Canadian-centric websites we somehow encouraged global participation and invalidated the responses. This couldn't be further from the case. Citizens of Canada were specifically geo-targeted and it was made clear that only Canadian responses would be valid. The only thing we asked of the global community is that they perhaps spread the word and take caution about similar legislation in their locales.

That is an utterly ridiculous claim to make, as the internet is a public forum open to the global community. This is an unavoidable facet of having a world wide web. There are very few websites that allow only a specific regional demographic. One must also consider that the most popular and influential websites that have aided in this process are global social websites such as digg, facebook, and twitter.

The state of digital rights has changed greatly over the past two decades. We are now living in an age in which established bands have released full albums in digital form at no cost via bit torrent sites. Television program ratings sampled from PVR/DVR and other TiVo-like TV recording devices are being considered every bit as valuable as the traditional Nielson ratings. Said programs are also being broadcast via websites like Hulu and TV network sites at no consumer cost. Things have changed.

The CCER welcomes copyright reform, however there is a generational and regional gap at play in this reform process. The copyright reform that has been proposed by government officials and US lobbyists thus far is outdated and doesn't take into consideration the ever-changing and evolving state of copyright. Canada needs copyright reform, but we need modern legislation with the modern day public, consumer, and creator in mind.

 

[Ace Gunman]

For more, and far more detailed information about the so-called legitimate criticisms and some valid counter-points, see the following links:

http://www.ccer.ca/canadian-copyright-refo...n-criticisms-2/

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4971/125/

http://torrentfreak.com/lawyer-claims-torr...mocracy-100420/

And for a similar issue in the UK, see Antoligy and Another World's topic here: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=219763

 

[iFish]

So...... i am kinda confused by this... will this like make me stop pirating and
i don't understand

 

[Panzer Tacticer]

As a Canadian, that has read a lot of the issues at hand, the only thing that usually makes me feel even remotely happy about the whole situation, is at least I don't like in the UK.

Those people REALLY have my sympathies.

 

[tk_saturn]

You have a typo, "we find cartain parties (.doc)" ~ certain.

 

[Ace Gunman]

You have a typo, "we find cartain parties (.doc)" ~ certain.

Thanks for the heads up, fixed.

 

[Gunmaster51]

Politicians definitely need to get on with the times. And not just here in Canada but in a lot of other countries. Laws have to changed to reflect the advances in technology.

 

[Dee]

A lawyer pretending to be a statistician. Intriguing.

 

[PanzerWF]

Interesting, not sure what it means for us, but hope to see where this is headed.

 

[lildeathboy]

would someone be so kind to collaborate on this? its quite confusing.

 

[Shuny]

Well, we had the same problem in France, a law called "HADOPI" which might be even worse than this copyright reform. The problem is that we couldn't do anything to stop this law from being adopted :/

Good luck in your fight, Canadians tempers

 

[DreamTrooper]

Hmmmm, is all i have to say.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Ugh, why can't they just agree with us for once... it's not because they are so rich that they can buy anything they want and don't 'need' to download, that we don't 'need' to download either... I'd love being able to buy all my music/games, but it just costs too much...

BTW, awesome topic number.

 

[DS1]

Summary: For those who don't get what this is about, basically GBATemp helped this electronic rights group direct people to a website where people can send a pre-written letter about electronic rights to government officials. The results had such an impact, that a fancy lawyer from Stikeman Elliott LLP decided to criticize the results in order to make them look worthless (essentially the grownup version of 'wahhh online petitions are for losers!!').

The main criticism against GBATemp is that its user base is not primarily Canadian (though it IS significant, read Ace Gunman's full post for details). But you know what really burns me? The lawyer's paragraph about 'Lack of Representativeness'. It essentially says that the majority of people supporting the electronic rights group (CCER) are young males with poor English (which somehow makes them not Canadian... guess he sort of forgot about Canada's pride in its cultural mosaic)

Anyway don't worry about this folks, I'm sure a CCER member is writing an equally long-winded and pointless response to the old white male corporate shill 'analysis'. I'll bet if you did a statistical analysis of Stikeman Elliott's payroll, you'd find women's salaries are just as disproportionate to men as the CCER membership is.

 

[Ace Gunman]

DS1, that's mostly correct. Except for the bit about GBAtemp offering consultations. Rather, we directed Canadian citizens to the official government of Canada consultation website, and because our user base isn't all Canadian (and what site on the internet is?) they're accusing us of encouraging non-Canadians to fudge the numbers.

That line about the online petition bit is spot on, by the way. Him, and others like him, are essentially accusing the CCER's form of being less than legitimate because it all came from one site. Which is in itself illogical because what was the government consultation website if not a singular site in which people could voice their opinion? Is a petition from a city of 10 thousand less valid because it came from one city instead of three?

Beyond that, however, they're essentially taking the "online petitions are meaningless" stance when the government itself considers the internet a valid avenue for these consultations. Consultations that because of how they were handled became the most successful to date. They've never gotten this kind of response from traditional methods. Plus, the CCER's form was hardly a petition. It was simple a way for a number of people to voice their similar opinion with a pre-written form.

Really, even for them to imply that the online aspects of this issue are secondary is hypocritical. We're talking about the issue of digital rights. Online freedom, downloads, copying things to disc with a burner. Online is the single most important element to this equation, the reason copyright has evolved as I stated before, and to suggest otherwise is exactly the root of the problem.

It's lawyers (traditionally not a young crowd) and forty or fifty-plus year old government officials sitting in century old buildings while discussing matters over paperwork. Beyond simple corruption of lobbyists who I'm sure are being paid handsomely by the RIAA and so on, the crux of the issue is that these policies are being made by people who don't utilize or understand technology in the same way as the target audience.

I chose to focus on only a handful of the issues in this and my post above, but you folks can see more at those sites I linked to in my second post.

 

[DS1]

Oh, my mistake. So I guess they were annoyed that you were helping to teach people about political action? I guess as a defender of corporate interests, they should be scared about people understanding their right to activism, but to write a pseudo-academic paper about why 'netizens' shouldn't have power doesn't seem right.

 

[Cablephish]

If everyone wants to help out, why don't we all change our flags to the Canadian flag, THEN resend the letters?

 

[Deleted_171835]

Absurd. This is the internet. There won't be one site that only people from a certain demographic go to.
I hope this is not taken seriously. I hope this does not invalidate the responses.

Sigh. Soon our situation will get out of hand and will be as bad as the UK's.

 

[bmaster154]

This is absurd, and therefore I hope it's just a simple joke (or will be taken as one). I'm not an ace in political and infringement kind of stuff, but I know it enough to say that you can't base your points on the nationality of a site's user base.

 

[Nekoblade]

This coming from people who are supported by American lobbyists. Oh them.