Cory Doctorow posted on the BoingBoing blog about Cameron McMaster’s very detailed post on how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright.
iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web (these are the same jokers who sell you a “license” to quote 5 words from the AP).
iCopyright offers “licenses” to use taxpayer-funded CBC articles on terms that read like a bizarre joke. You have to pay by the month to include the article on your website (apparently no partial quotation is offered, only the whole thing, which makes traditional Internet commentary very difficult!). And you have to agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author.
As Doctorow points out, the content of the CBC is funded by taxpayers and yet we are expected to pay for the right to quote from that content.
And as McMaster says in his post:
Seriously, this is really screwed up. Our public broadcaster is using an American company that follows American laws of Fair Use (and probably not the most liberal interpretations of it) to control its content and also inciting everyone to turn each other in and for everyone be on the look out for digital rights bounty hunters? It’s a good thing we’re in Canada where we don’t have the DMCA and we have a Supreme Court ruling that stops Big Media from getting information about our IPs from ISPs.
Because even if you share the story, even if you print it, you could be tracked down and fined.
Bullshit.
That would mean I couldn’t quote Martin Morrow’s appreciation of the recently departed J. D. Salinger where he said:
The word “rebel” is so overused and misused in our culture that it seems pat and tired to apply it to J.D. Salinger. Yet, I can think of few prominent contemporary arts figures who actually deserve that label as much as he did.
Nor would I be able to include this portion from Charlene Sadlers piece on the use of iPhone apps by toddlers, where she said:
When Alexandra Samuel’s two-year-old first sat down to play a video game on her iPhone, the Vancouver mom was more worried about his impact on the device than the effect it could have on him.
Samuel was surprised by what happened next.
And Bob MacDonald’s commentary on the moth-balling of NASA’s shuttle program, where he says:
Back in the 70s, they were promised to be the cheap way to space, but after two of them exploded in flight, taking 14 lives, and after countless retrofits and rebuilds, every flight of the shuttle now costs about $1.5 billion. Granted, they are the most complex machines to ever fly and have accomplished amazing feats in space, but they demonstrate how NASA has turned into a cumbersome organization that spends a lot of money to go nowhere. No private transportation company could ever operate that way.
- could not be referenced without permission - and payment. No partial quotes are allowed, no excerpts - the entire article has to be paid for - by the month.
I include these quotes for the purpose of showing just how absurd and insulting is this most recent clusterfuck of CBC policy.
The pinheads at CBC responsible for this decision must have thought themselves to be extraordinarily clever when in fact they have shown themselves to be pitifully ignorant not only of the workings of the web, the basics of fair-dealing and fair-use and the differences between U.S. and Canadian copyright law - but also the very nature of the public trust which they are charged with managing on behalf of the citizens of Canada.
More from McMaster’s blog:
Thanks CBC! You serve your public well by outsourcing your DRM enforcement to an American company, which allows for money that could be invested in a Canadian company to be spent abroad. This company creates an atmosphere of self-censorship and fear. Because most Canadians don’t know the difference between Canadian copyright law and American, the users of your website, mainly Canadians, will be afraid to do anything – the digital rights bounty police will come after them. This company that limits non digital uses of your information and also disables the sharing of information, and most likely, subject your website viewers to all sorts of DRM tracking devices. Way to foster a public sphere!
Hey, CBC pinheads! Fuck you. How much is iCopyright going to charge me for the quotes in this blog? How much will I be asked to pay for quoting a video or audio snippet?
McMaster included a few page samples from the CBC website where they explain how (and for how much) you can license the right to use the content your tax dollars have already for. Here’s one:
You think I’m going to pay the CBC for the right to include the quotes above in this blog post? No. Duh. What do you think my response is going to be when any request for payment is made? Yeah - you got it. Fuck you.
By the way - iCopyright offers a reward of $1,000,000 for reported piracy. You want to report me? Fuck you too.
I don’t know what makes me more furious, the idiotic attempts of old media carpetbagger shysters selling their bullshit schemes to attach a meter to every friggin’ slice of information we use in conversation - or the dirt stupid idiots at the CBC who actually thought this was a good idea. I really hope more people make noise about this to not just embarrass the CBC but to also continue to insist that publicly funded works belong to the public.
Want to add your voice?
Join the Canadians against CBC’s iCopyright DRM Facebook group.
You can also go to the CBC Contact page and tell ‘em what you think.
The CBC would do well to take a lesson from the National Film Board who have been putting their works online - for free - for everyone to access.
As it sez in the CBC article on the subject:
The online screening room was created as part of a $1.3-million project to digitize the NFB’s collection of historic films.
“This is part of our ongoing response to the digital revolution,” NFB chair Tom Perlmutter said in an online news conference on Wednesday.
The NFB, which restructured its film programs over the past 18 months to free up resources for the digital project, plans to put 10 new films a month online.
That’s how it should be. Instead the CBC is acting in a crass penny-ante manner by signing up with a U.S. based group of extortionists, attempting to charge people a fee for the right to quote from articles. It is an ill-advised and ignorant scheme which reeks of U.S. copyright policy snake-oil that CBC pinheads have bought and swallowed. You dumb fucks.
CBC - fuck off.
Cheers.
P. S. Cameron McMaster is far more level-headed than I and he has posted a very cogent response to the groundswell of outrage about all this. You can read his post here and follow his thoughtful advice on what else we can do.
And whilst I do just that I shall also continue to tell the CBC to fuck off.
Cameron McMaster has responded in the comments and suggested a post by The Torontoist which includes a response from the CBC. Good reading.
They held a public copyright consultation that garnered a lot of attention and a lot of input - which they have promptly ignored.
I’d like to add the words of 
