Canadian DMCA Bill Within Six Weeks

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5008/125/

by rpledge • 16 years ago

63 18 16 years ago

For anyone planning to write to their MP and up, you should watch this short TED talk on writing to public officials. It'll help you get heard.

http://www.ted.com/talks/omar_ahmad_political_change_with_pe...

mmastrac2• 16 years ago

This is a frustrating issue because it keeps coming up over and over again. The lobbyists have a lot more energy than we do. Why does it have to take the people 1000x the effort to get a bill killed as it does to lobby it into existence?

I wrote my MP last time (C-61). I guess I'll drag out the letter again and update it.

sunir2• 16 years ago

If I could ask a favour please, could you share your letter here so it is easier for others like myself to draft our own?

mmastrac2• 16 years ago

Here you go. The letters are too long to include here without screwing up the thread, so I've moved them to a Google doc:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWzXPiQen09oZGRoeno4Z2pfMz...

kjhgfdghjk2• 16 years ago

>Why does it have to take the people 1000x the effort to get a bill killed as it does to lobby it into existence?

Because 1000 x $0.32 stamps < 1 x $$$$ donation to the MP's party

The_Fox• 16 years ago

You're being funny, I know. But just FYI, you do not need to put a stamp on letters to Members of Parliament.

9oliYQjP• 16 years ago

When I was 19 just over a decade ago and the music industry was just catching onto CD burning and MP3s, I wrote directly to some Canadian lobbyists. At the time they were pushing for levies on recordable CDs. Considering CDs ran almost a $1 per disc and I was a university student, this hit home. I told them that they just didn't understand the situation, that the Internet changed everything, and that they wouldn't be growing their revenues with this CD levy because distribution would move away from physical media anyhow. I also called shenanigans on how they would actually distribute the proceeds to Canadian artists seeing as how most of the pirated material was from non-Canadian artists. The organization appeared to be a one man show for the most part, and that gentleman wrote back to me, disagreed, and suggested that I could meet him in Ottawa because they were going to lobby until they got their way.

Lobbying is frustrating because it works. A lot of legislation is essentially drafted behind closed doors by special interests, then revised within a particular ministry before getting a seal of approval vote by the legislature. In fact, that's probably how just about everything short of a private members' bill is done these days.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. There are businesses and individuals that have interests which will be harmed by these laws. What this group needs to do is hire its own lobbying group. Otherwise, the debate is being framed in terms of "Canadians are pirates" and "Canada needs to get with the program and adopt laws that other countries have". Michael Geist has probably single-handedly done more to thwart these laws than anyone else. But I'm sure that the other side has full time consultants on hand. The lobbyists have a lot more energy only because the opposition has not figured out that if they band together under an umbrella, their focussed energy is much greater.

jacquesm• 16 years ago

Because they only need to pass it once.

The same happened here in the Netherlands with the EU charter, we got to vote on it, voted no, they kept repeating it until not enough people showed up and rammed it down our throats under a different name.

mcantelon2• 16 years ago

The copyleft lobby actually has more energy, but in this case the public consultation was ignored. What the intellectual property lobby has is more dear to the hearts of politicians: money and connections.

anon114• 16 years ago

Remember: You do not need postage to write your MP or the PMO a paper letter! It's free!

mcantelon2• 16 years ago

The intellectual property lobby can channel campaign money to the politicians and likely offer them connections for further contributions or future career opportunities. The copyleft lobby can't compete with that. This is why democracy isn't representing the will of the electorate on this and many other issues.

strebler• 16 years ago

Actually, it's not quite that simple in Canada.

Corporate contributions to political parties have been effectively cut off by the current Prime Minister (Harper), you can only do personal donations and only up to $1100 per person.

Harper had a lot of grassroots conservative support and the liberals had a lot of corporate support. The liberals were basically financially devastated and have had to build up from scratch (doing better now).

Still, the US has a strong pull with Harper, he looooves capitalism.

3pt14159• 16 years ago

I'm sick of American government officials screwing around with our domestic policy. I'm not saying I don't see why it happens, but "senior officials" from Washington should be saving their political clout for legitimate international issues.

chc• 16 years ago

Seriously, our zeal to push the DMCA into every other country on the planet is bordering on creepy. Whether or not you think it would be good if that happened, it is not worth the amount of effort it's getting. Is the media industry really that powerful here?

anamax• 16 years ago

> but "senior officials" from Washington should be saving their political clout for legitimate international issues.

How about not?

Think of it as taking one for the team. The time that they spend screwing up Canada is time that they can't spend screwing up something else.

Canadian DMCA Bill Within Six Weeks

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