HOWTO Fight Canada's coming DMCA copyright law

Canadian copyfightin' law prof Michael Geist has revisited his list of "30 things you can do to stop the Canadian DMCA" -- first posted the last time the Canadian government tried to bring down a US-style copyright law. The US's approach to enforcing copyright in the digital age has resulted in 20,000 lawsuits against music fans, technology companies being sued out of existence for making new multi-purpose tools, and has not put one penny into the pocket of an artist or reduced downloading one bit. The USA stepped into uncharted territory in 1998 with the DMCA and fell off a cliff -- that was reckless, but following them off the cliff is insane.

The Canadian minority Tory government is planning to do just that, first thing in the New Year, with a full-court press for a Canadian DMCA that goes way beyond the US counterpart, making it one of the worst copyright laws in the developed world, with extra-strong anti-circumvention rules that prohibit making and using tools that open up locked digital files, even when those files belong to you.

The last two Canadian Members of Parliament who championed a Canadian DMCA lost their jobs. Good things come in threes.

# Write to your local Member of Parliament. Nothing is more obvious or more important. Letters (which are better than email) from just a handful of constituents is enough to get the attention of your local MP. It is often a good idea to ask the MP to forward your letter to the relevant Ministers. Contact information for all MPs is available here. Online Rights Canada also provides an easy way to write to your local MP.
# Write to the Prime Minister of Canada. Contact information here.
# Write to Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry. Minister Prentice is responsible for the Copyright Act in Canada. Despite the fact that Minister Prentice trumpeted his pro-consumer approach on the spectrum auction issue, the rumour mill suggests that he supports DMCA-style reforms and has little interest in advocating for consumer concerns. Minister Prentice's contact information is here.
# Write to Josee Verner, the Minister of Canadian Heritage. Minister Verner is one of the two ministers responsible for copyright policy in Canada. Prior Canadian Heritage Ministers have been perceived to be close to U.S. copyright lobby groups and copyright collectives. Ministry contact information here. Minister Verner's contact information is here....

Link (Thanks, Ryan!)

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Brian Damage

You can contact the Prime Minister at pm@pm.gc.ca
Deb

Thank you so much Cory, and Michael, and the others who are helping us average Canadians get ideas on how to complain against this. We really do have to mobilize ourselves. I know I feel a lot like “why even bother?” But we can’t do that. I’ve joined the Facebook group “Fair Copyright”. Please, come join us! :)
Alys

I have doubts that my MP will even get off his butt to do anything (I am unfortunate enough to live in Rob Anders’ riding!) but I will definitely be sending letters to Jim Prentice, Anders, and the lot. Does Mr Geist have a form letter of some sort that I could alter to my tastes?
realyst

@Alys,

I believe he links to this:

http://www.onlinerights.ca/

They have a stock letter you can modify that emails all of the above and sends you a copy to print and post out.
GregP

I contacted the Liberals about this and the ball for this one is going to be in Scott Brison’s court (his office was very responsive on the issue – I was quite pleased). He is the Liberal MP in charge of Industry and Technology.

If you are of the NDP persuasion, that the correct MP to contact would be Bill Sasky (Culture and Heritage).

Finally, if you drink heavily or have some kind of brain damage, and thus vote Conservative, then Jim Prentice is your man.

Greg
hubbledeej

I am Canadian public servant for whom boingboing.net has been recently made inaccessible as part of a new departmental policy of blocking potentially inappropriate websites. I am not certain if many other Canadian public servants have also lost access to bb – but just for the record, our department classified your site as blocked, due to “nudity.” Brilliant. (Is the flying spaghetti monster not wearing pants?)

Having said that, I just wanted to applaud boingboing for keeping us updated on this important issue, as it directly relates to how I do my work and serve clients.
jenzed

Should you decide to write to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, please note that her first name is spelled “JosÃ©e” not “Josee”. A quibble…
dirtfarmer

it not surprising that there are pushing it again as 2 Minister are get heavy money from music label for there election– can not bite the hand that feed them, and here the Tory allwas said there where going to be different from the liberal– to me it look like there are worst
RyanH

Well, in defense of their decision to filter BB, most of last week was devoted to variations on the 2 Girls 1 Cup thing. the fact that it is mixed in with political commentary and other useful stuff is kind of beside the point. If I was worried about potentially NSFW sites, I’d filter BB too.
andrewroth

Does anyone know who those two members of parliament were who lost their jobs trying to bring the DMCA to Canada? I have been trying to research that but have come up empty.
RyanH

Thanks to our current minority government and (supposed) looming spring election, there will never be a better time to fight this. If enough noise can be made a difference can be made. I’ve already followed through on a few of the 30 points and I urge any other Canadian out there to do the same.
madjo

If they tried and failed two times already, why do they keep trying? They sure are persistent, but don’t they see that what they are doing is harming them? Or are these politicians only seeing dollar signs from the music and film industry associations?