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.
From Michael Geist’s blog:
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.
Make a noise. Tell your friends. Shut them down.
UPDATE:
I’d like to add the words of Cory Doctorow about this news from his BoingBoing post:
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.
Amen to that.
Time to get loud and nasty, folks.
Cheers.
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
For more on Fair Use in Online Video see the Center for Social Media at http://meme.ly/KnowFairUse
To read more about the Hitler Finds Out meme, see the meme entry at knowyourmeme.com
Protect your works. Protect the interwebs. Tell Big Media to fuck off.
Cheers.
Cory Doctorow posted today on BoingBoing about the latest Hitler parody in response to YouTube’s removal of prior Hitler parodies. —See Update Below—
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:
And you can download your own copy here: Hitler_Parody.MP4
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:
How Constantin Films effects young Downfall Parody Makers in Berlin
Hitler Finds Out Constantin Films Blocks Downfall Meme
Hitler, as “Downfall” producer, orders a DMCA takedown
Hitler phones Constantin Films AG
This one is not only funny it’s also educational – srsly:
Hitler and Jodl show you HOW TO UNBLOCK COPYRIGHTED DOWNFALL PARODIES!!!!
And this one is great:
Hitler and Fegelein Join Forces To Take On Constantin Films
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.
Found this over on BoingBoing where Cory Doctorow sez:
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.
One of a series of four talks just posted by Lawrence Lessig. Here’s how he describes this one:
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.
Cheers.
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.
Nifty little info comic courtesy of the InfoAnarchy Wiki. Just cick on the image to see it full size.
Pass it on.
And while you’re at it – go sign the Public Domain Manifesto. As blogged on BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow:
The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception. Since copyright protection is granted only with respect to original forms of expression, the vast majority of data, information and ideas produced worldwide at any given time belongs to the Public Domain. In addition to information that is not eligible for protection, the Public Domain is enlarged every year by works whose term of protection expires. The combined application of the requirements for protection and the limited duration of the copyright protection contribute to the wealth of the Public Domain so as to ensure access to our shared culture and knowledge.
Read it. Sign it. Talk about it.
Cheers.
P. S. Thanks for the comic link, Fred!
P. P. S. If you want to get really fucked up squirrely ass mad about all this corporate ownership of the entire fucking world bullshit be sure to drop by Michael Geist’s blog where he looks at the secret ACTA negotiations that start today in Mexico where this agreement is being designed to extend far beyond counterfeiting and how it will reshape domestic law in many countries, including Canada.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.
RSS Feed