Copyright lobbyists secretly engineering clawback of Canadian user rights

Michael Geist sez,

More than ten years of contentious debate over Canadian copyright law appeared to come to a conclusion in late June when Bill C-11 passed its final legislative hurdle and received royal assent. Yet despite characterizing the bill as a "vital building block", the copyright lobby that pressured the government to impose restrictive rules on digital locks and tougher penalties for copyright infringement is already demanding further reforms that include rolling back many key aspects of the original bill.

Unlike the last round of copyright reform that featured national consultations and open committee hearings, this time the lobby groups are hoping to use secretive trade negotiations to forge legislative change. Later today, the International Intellectual Property Alliance, an umbrella organization that represents movie, music, and software associations, will urge the U.S. government to pressure Canada to enact further reforms as part of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. The group wants Canada to drop the notice-and-notice approach for ISPs in favor of an Internet termination scheme, to drop recent changes to copyright statutory damages, and to extend the term of copyright.

Copyright Lobby Demands Rollback of Recent Canadian Reforms in Secretive Trade Deal (Thanks, Michael!)

• [Brad Bell]

  Is this rent seeking going to go on forever? Call me a technological determinist, but these mass media corporations need to adapt to the digital world and innovate. Choosing to corrupt our government to legislate economic significance is not just wrong, it will prevent these corporations from creating real economic significance. As a result, the people will sidestep them and find ways to create value without them, ie. they will become so redundant we will eventually stop paying the rent. 

  Cyberspace is an important concept to get across the idea that the idea that an ‘internet termination scheme’ is a weapon of mass destruction. For many families, the internet is more critical to survival than roads.

  • [B E Pratt]

     ”Is this rent seeking going to go on forever?” Of course not, silly! It will quit as soon as the overlords get absolutely everything they want.

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      But what they want is an eternal rent steam.

• [JProffitt71]

  I’d like to say “that’s it, no more movies and no more music unless I can buy it directly from the artist”, but the truth is I already don’t buy movies and I only listen to music generated by various online communities. I hope that is the growing trend and that we may see this corruption starve at the base and die the death it couldn’t possibly deserve more, but I feel like there should be some way we can really kick these guys in the balls right now.

• [Shawn H Corey]

  Time to get rid of copyrights. Despise their name, copyright is a privilege, not a right. If it’s going to be abuse, it’s time to get rid of it.