Canadian students speak out against the Canadian DMCA

Noah from the Canadian Federation of Students sez, "The video was released today to draw attention to the issue and build momentum for the campaign prior to the tabling of new copyright legislation next week."

This is great work.

The Fight for Fair Copyright (Thanks, Noah!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Totally awesome video! Thanks for posting this boingboing.
Anonymous

amazing to see the work of the CFS on boingboing. this video is a rallying call to everybody who believes we have a right to learn, share, create and (re)create freely.
Rose

Love this video. It does a great job of explaining how copyright affects students in their everyday lives. And breaks down a fairly confusing issue.
Anonymous

ok, so if it’s “fair”, how do the creators get paid? What exactly is”fair” copyright? If you are battling against rights holders (read “owners of the copyright”) making money from copyrighted materials, how would those rights holders get paid? Honestly, most musicians nowadays own their own copyrights, especially in the the post-major label world.
This video is cool, but it seems to be building some image that “corporations” are THE MAN and he’s trying to keep you down, but realistically, a lot of rights holders royalties go back to the writers..

In the US there are also performance rights for the performers of music, these royalties are collected by an NGO called SoundExchange (though they seem to take a big cut.)
Internet radio is obligated to pay Performance Royalties, terrestrial isn’t yet. Is this happening in Canada?
Anonymous

Cool animation, and I have no doubt it’s effective in “drawing attention to the issue”. What it doesn’t do is to explain or give any clear argument about what is wrong with C-61, other than to say that it’s the work of those evil, greedy, profit-grabbing corporations, and therefore obviously BAAAD for the rest of us. I don’t know enough about the issue to take a stand … all I’m saying is that, if there’s a good argument against C-61, it isn’t in this video.
Anonymous

I have to agree with k-boozle, the CFS is not exactly the model of transparency, nor is representing students one of their strong suits.
RevEng

Great job on the video! I’ve heard a lot of explanations of what Bill C-61 would do and why copyright matters, but this one is by far the most relevant, succinct, and accessible. Best of all, it’s done from the point of view of artists and consumers, not the “pirates” that the labels claim to be fighting against.
k-boozle

As glad as I am that people are talking about this, it’s a little much to see that it comes from the Canadian Federation of Students. I hope that we will be able to convince our government to reconsider this course, and to negotiate a fair and reasonable copyright policy, but if the CFS is leading our campaign for transparency in government? Forget about it. The fact that Boing Boing is trumpeting anything produced by the CFS leads me to believe that Cory Doctorow must not be familiar with recent Canadian university news…
redesigned

Canadians can sign a letter of support here:
http://www.cfs-fcee.ca/html/english/campaigns/copyright_letter.php