Jun 192008
 

There’s been a lot of dis­cus­sion in the papers about the newly-tabled Bill on Cana­dian Copy­right; suf­fice to say there are lots of issues with it and it needs to be sent back and turned into some­thing that meets the needs of the cit­izens and res­id­ents of this coun­try. If you’re liv­ing in Canada, I’d recom­mend you read some of Michael Geist’s blog, par­tic­u­larly the sum­mary of last week, and then email your MP about the issues that con­cern you the most. For me, it’s the poten­tial that play­ing DVDs from a region oth­er than Canada could viol­ate the law. If I’ve bought the DVDs leg­ally, or had them giv­en to me, why should play­ing them viol­ate the law? Why should get­ting a cell phone unlocked viol­ate the law? Why should back­ing up my CDs viol­ate the law? This is one of the few issues I can remem­ber where it seems that every news­pa­per has the same tone to the edit­or­i­al — and it isn’t com­pli­ment­ary to the government.

Mind you, my loc­al MP isn’t exactly known for listen­ing to his con­stitu­ents (there’s still a lot of loc­al anger at his cross­ing the floor after being elec­ted), so who knows how much good my email (a heav­ily edited ver­sion of the one at that used to be found at http://www.copyrightforcanadians.ca/action/firstlook) will do.

Update: it looks like the Min­is­ter sup­posedly in charge, isn’t — Cana­dian Industry Min­is­ter lies about his Cana­dian DMCA on nation­al radio, then hangs up — Boing Boing.

/* ]]> */