I present this as an example of the power of the mash-up to comment, contrast, parody, satirize and otherwise take the piss out of anyone or anything which affects us all.
Removing the power of the people to speak back through culture only serves to give power to assholes like this funky jerk with a great set of pipes. Support fair copyright reform, like Net Neutrality it is a vital component of Free Speech.
Best-selling, award-winning, Canadian author Cory Doctorow has challenged Heritage Minister James Moore’s publicly expressed view that those who oppose proposed DMCA style digital locks (as part of Bill C-32 the Copyright Reform Bill) are nothing more than “radical extremists”.
Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing and ardent copyfighter writes:
Here’s what that means for creators: if Apple, or Microsoft, or Google, or TiVo, or any other tech company happens to sell my works with a digital lock, only they can give you permission to take the digital lock off. The person who created the work and the company that published it have no say in the matter.
So if you buy $1,000 worth of digitally locked books for your Kindle or iPad, the author and the publisher can’t give you the right to move those to another device. That means that not only are you locked into the Kindle — so is the copyright holder. Authors and publishers who decide to stop selling via a digitally locked platform have to take the risk that their readers will abandon their investment in proprietary books in order to follow them to the next device.
So that’s Minister Moore’s version of “author’s rights” — any tech company that happens to load my books on their device or in their software ends up usurping my copyrights. I may have written the book, sweated over it, poured my heart into it — but all my rights are as nothing alongside the rights that Apple, Microsoft, Sony and the other DRM tech-giants get merely by assembling some electronics in a Chinese sweatshop.
That’s the “creativity” that the new Canadian copyright law rewards: writing an ebook reader, designing a tablet, building a phone. Those “creators” get more say in the destiny of Canadian artists’ copyrights than the artists themselves.
You should read Doctorow’s complete post and then submit your own response to James Moore to let him know just how many “radical extremists” there are in this country.
Doctorow concludes his post asking Moore for both and apology and an explanation. I think we all deserve one.
My opinion? James Moore should wipe off that brown lipstick he wears to impress the U.S. media lobby and go fuck himself.
Cheers.
UPDATE:Michael Geist posted further reactions to James Moore’s douchebag comments, including Moore’s efforts to deny that he even said them despite the online presence of video footage which proves him to be not only deliberately misleading about Bill C-32 but also an outright fucking liar. What a dick.
I found this great video over Michael Geist’s blog who also links to a post by Sarah Bannerman. Created at the Vancouver Film School it’s an excellent primer about the impact of DRM on electronic books.
The Harper government is, once again, marching in lock-step with the US media lobby and will attempt to pass a copyright reform bill that echoes the worst parts of the failed US DMCA.
They held a public copyright consultation that garnered a lot of attention and a lot of input - which they have promptly ignored.
The consultations were obviously nothing more than an attempt at pacifying an obviously outraged public who howled in reaction to Harper’s blatant kowtowing to US big media lobby lies and deceit.
Combined with the ongoing ACTA negotiations this bill will put Canada on a path of locked down information and corporate controls over your free speech rights. It’s a fucking drag to have to go through all this again but I hope the anger that will erupt from this becomes an election triggering issue that finally provides the shot in those tiny Harper nads that sends him squealing from any position of public influence.
PMO Issues The Order: Canadian DMCA Within Six Weeks
Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister’s Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill. The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to reach consensus on the broad framework of a new bill. As I reported last week, Moore has argued for a virtual repeat of Bill C-61, with strong digital locks provisions similar to those found in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a rejection of a flexible fair dealing approach. Consistent with earlier comments on the need for a forward-looking, flexible approach, Clement argued for changes from C-61.
With mounting pressure from the U.S. - there have repeated meetings with senior U.S. officials in recent weeks - the PMO sided squarely with Moore’s vision of a U.S.-style copyright law. The detailed provisions will be negotiated over the coming weeks by the respective departments, but they now have their marching orders of completing a bill that will satisfy the U.S. that comes complete with tough anti-circumvention rules and no flexible fair dealing provision.
The bill is not expected until June, but it will have dramatic repurcussions once introduced. First, the bill represents a stunning reversal from the government’s seeming shift away from C-61 and its commitment to a bill based on the national copyright consultation. Instead, the consultation appears to have been little more than theatre, with the PMO and Moore choosing to dismiss public opinion. Second, after adopting distinctly pro-consumer positions on other issues, Moore has abandoned that approach with support for what may become the most anti-consumer copyright bill in Canadian history. Third, the bill will immediately impact the Canadian position at the ACTA and CETA negotiations, where the bill’s provisions on anti-circumvention and ISP liability will effectively become the Canadian delegation position.
For those wondering what can be done, my only answer is to speak out now. Write a paper letter to your Member of Parliament and send copies to the Prime Minister, Moore, Clement and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. No stamp is required - be sure to include your home address and send it to the House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6. Once that is done, join the Facebook group and the Facebook page and be sure to ask others do the same. You may spoken out before, but your voice is needed yet again.
Time to kick this arrogant dead-eyed fuck and his brown-lipstick cronies out of office.
What a goddamned disaster. The Tories have shown — yet again — their utter contempt for public opinion and Canadian culture and small business when these present an inconvenience to more windfall profits for offshore entertainment giants.
Remember: thousands of us responded to the Tory inquiry on copyright law, and overwhelmingly, we said we did not want a US-style copyright disaster at home. Remember: hundreds of thousands of us wrote and called our MPs. Remember: Canadian artists’ coalitions fought against the imposition of a DMCA in Canada. Remember: America’s copyright war has been an absolute trainwreck, with tens of thousands facing lawsuits, competition and innovation eroded by DRM, free speech challenged by copyright takedowns, and no improvements for creators or creativity.
There’s only one thing stupider than being the first country to enact the DMCA, in spite of its obvious shortcomings: enacting the DMCA after the first country has spent a decade showing how rotten and backwards this approach to copyright is.
Here’s a clever PSA from the folks at Rocketboom that shows exactly how to post your video works that are protected under Fair Use and prevent them from being arbitrarily removed from YouTube by ignorant dickhead ill-informed legal counsel of Big Media.
The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies explains how YouTube makes it easy to dispute a wrongful copyright claim.
For more information on the YouTube takedown process, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://meme.ly/DisputeYoutube
As reported earlier by the Open Video Alliance, the German film company Constantin Films AG has mis-used the DMCA provision of Notice & Takedown and YouTube’s ContentID system to have YouTube remove a huge number of parody videos that made use of a scene from the film Der Untergang(Downfall) featuring Hitler ranting in his bunker. The official website for the film is here.
The parodies all made use of sub-titles to put words in Hitler’s mouth allowing him to vent on everything from LOLCats to Michael Jackson and anything else imaginable. It was always great fun whenever a new one would crop up and some of them were piss your pants hilarious. It was perfect use of digital media to craft parody and satire. Be sure to read Alex Leavitt’s post on the whole Hitler Video Meme - it’s fascinating stuff.
Unfortunately Constantin Films used YouTube’s ContentID system which commits wholesale removal of materials identitified by the copyright holder without properly checking to see if copyright has indeed been violated. Under the dumbass rules of the DMCA, if a violation of copyright had been committed, YouTube would be obliged to act and remove the videos in question - unless, of course, they were clearly examples of Fair Use. While it is true Constantin Films controls the rights to the original film there are provisions in the DMCA that are supposed to protect Fair Use (also known as Fair Dealing here in Canada and India) which allows for the creation of works of parody and satire - but that rarely happens as large media companies continue to throw their weight around and just fuck everything up.
But why listen to me kvetch? Let Hitler explain it all for you.
Since YouTube has turned off embedding it’s no longer viewable through them except by going to their own pages here. But, since YouTube might take it down entirely - and since I see this as being a true case of Fair Use I fixed it so you can just watch it here:
Hitler Reacts To The Hitler Parodies Being Removed From YouTube
Constantin Films AG should really watch this one before they pull this or any others offline. And if you are interested in seeing the original film you can buy it here - and you do that you might also want to send Constantin Films an email telling them you did just that.
Cheers.
P.S. These video responses to Constantin Films on YouTube are also good:
UPDATE: Doctorow posted on BoingBoing on hw Google has responded to the outrage over the ContentID instant takedowns by highlighting the Fair Use button. Click the button and your video goes back up and the folks who submitted the takedown then have to take you to court to get the video off.
Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch’s “When Copyright Goes Bad” (from Consumers International) is a great, 15-minute mini-documentary on what copyright can do, what it is doing, and what it needs to stop doing. Appearances by Fred Von Lohmann - Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist - University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock - Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee - Co-founder of Public Enemy.
It starts out kinda kitschy but then gets into the meat of the discussion and interviews. Definitely worth watching and sharing.
Cheers.
P.S. I am still recovering from yesterday’s 420 celebrations. I must be getting old.
Talk given at SNW 2010 about three areas of policy — broadband, cybersecurity, and copyright, and about the corruption of the process of policy making affecting each. A mix of my old concerns with one section of the new concerns.
It’s a very good primer on where the U.S. (and consequently Canada and other countries) stands in regards to how the internet is being mishandled. The other talks are equally informative and engaging.
Lessig is to U.S. issues on the internet, copyright law and government corruption as Michael Geist is for Canada. Every time either of them speak out on points of law with respect to how our governments and corporations interact with the extension of our nervous systems (ie. the internet) we should pay heed.
Michael Geist has posted the final tally of numbers based on the responses to the infamous Bill C-61, which was intended as copyright reform but which was so obviously an attempt to cram US-style DMCA laws on Canada.
The copyright consultation concluded last fall and it seems worth reminding Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement what Canadians had to say when they asked for their opinion on copyright reform. It has taken some time to calculate the final numbers as the government conducted a review to ensure that all were properly posted. There were ultimately more than 8,300 submissions - more than any government consultation in recent memory - with the overwhelming majority rejecting Bill C-61 (6138 submissions against, 54 in support), while thousands called for flexible fair dealing and a link between copyright infringement and anti-circumvention rules.
Go read the full post to see how the numbers break down across the full range of concerns raised from the massive number of submissions.
As the UK goes full bat shit crazy with it’s incredibly undemocratic Digital Economy Bill it’s good to see we in Canada have at least a veneer of public input into a process that has been, and continues to be, corrupted by the media industries. As for anyone in the government paying attention to this input I don’t trust those fuckers to ever do the right thing and they should continue to be watched closely and lead by a firm grip on their nuts to ensure they do pay attention to what the citizens of Canada want in any copyright law.
Like Jimmy Guterman who posted this on BoingBoing I am always inspired by Lessig’s take on culture, copyright and the need to bring back some sanity to the process of protecting our creative works and our social worlds and finally find an ending to the crazed legal and cutlural wars that have been waged throughout this past decade.
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 
