All Your Content Are Belong to Us

Michael Geist links to a Canwest article suggesting that consumers may lose digital content they have already paid for under provision in the new copyright bill. It's truly disturbing to see how deep in the pocket of special interests Jim Prentice really is. This bill appears set to give them everything they want.

I know the Liberals are backing away from voting down bills these days, I guess reckoning that they can just reverse things when they get into power again, but damn it, they better stop this one!

Making Music Suck

This post from Saskboy didn't exactly warm my heart. $500/download? Isn't the legit cost of a song ~$1? What's the logic here? That I've made 500 copies and hidden them somewhere, that I've let at least 500 other people download it? On what basis is such an assumption made?

I think someone ought to start asking every MP that supports this kind of legislation about their own iPods and hard drives. Is everything on there legit? Can you prove it? What about your kids, what are they listening to, and more importantly, where did they get it?

Making the Internet Suck

Michael Geist has a column in the Star today about attempts to "lock" the internet down. Since the people who want this kind of thing are media content providers, you don't tend to hear a great deal about this in the media content that they provide. It's being considered quite seriously elsewhere in the world, Geist points to the continent:

"More recently, French President Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled a plan that would mandate country-wide ISP filtering of copyright infringing content. Although a similar pan-European proposal was defeated earlier this month, few believe the issue is dead, particularly given the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's claim last Thursday that 2008 will be the year of greater ISP responsibility."

This is an alarming, statist solution to concerns over intellectual property rights. Once we start filtering for copyright, the state will have an incredible apparatus with which it may monitor internet content. The temptation to block all manner of other content will be immense. The implications for our freedom of expression from this are surely greater than anything that can be mustered by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. I'm not sure why I haven't seen libertarian-oriented conservatives aren't screaming about this issue. (If you are a libertarian conservative and you have been, tell me and I'll link to it.)

Best Buy: Defender of Fair Use

Wait... what? Michael Geist points out an op-ed piece in which consumer electronics giant Best Buy lays out some very sensible provisions for any new copyright law:

1. No private copying levy
2. No multiple payments to collectives for the same transaction
3. Protection from DRM rather than protection for DRM
4. Flexible fair dealing
5. No lawsuits for private, non-commercial activities

I'm starting to become cautiously optimistic that the country has woken up sufficiently to the possibility of a really terrible new copyright law. That being the case, I hope that it will be a great deal more difficult for Jim Prentice to sneak by some kind of truly terrible law without people noticing. Certainly if Best Buy perceives this as a threat to their business they have the capacity to make a great deal of noise about this.