Saturday, January 28, 2012

Canada - Sopa’s Evil Little Brother. Politely.

Sopa’s Evil Little Brother. Politely.

Posted: January 26, 2012 in Culture, Media, Politics
Tags: , , , , , ,
Image
I’m a Canadian.
We’re a quiet bunch; prone to enjoying hockey, drinking stronger beer than our friends south of the border, and lovers of fries smothered in cheese curds and gravy.
We also, apparently, have an inferiority complex when it comes to being evil dirt bags, because we’ve decided to pass our very own version of SOPA up here.
Only better*
Meet Bill-C11. Formerly Bill C-32. (I think they thought if they made the number lower people would care less about it?)
Or as we call it up here; Her Royal Majesty V, Zzzzzzz
We like our politics dry up here.
But, as innocuous as it sounds, C-11 does a whole lot that SOPA did with a few extra twists you might not find in the Wikipedia write-up.
Like your PVR? You can’t keep it under C-11.
Like ripping CDs to your iPod? Say bye-bye.
Hey, do you want to be able to unlock your $500 smartphone and take it to a provider less dedicated to violating your wallet? That won’t be allowed either.
Did you get accused of internet piracy but no evidence has been presented and a trial date hasn’t even been set? Under C-11 your ISP will now be forced to terminate your internet access.
And people say that governments can’t be bought.
We’re not going to get Google or Wikipedia to go dark up here. We don’t have as robust a tech industry to act as a public counterbalance to entertainment industry interests. We have a Prime Minister (that’s  French for Dear Leader under the current regime) who doesn’t give a suckling goat what the people think about his policies.
But we do have a lot more recourse in our political system to make politicians pay than our Yankee brethren do. (Yes I know I just insulted everyone south of the Mason Dixon line. I’m sorry. You trying caring about foreign geographical terminology when every person you’ve ever met from a particular country still thinks it’s the height of hilarity to ask if you live in an igloo.) We have things like votes of no confidence that can really bugger up a sitting House member’s day.
So, if you’re Canadian, or you’re friends with a Canadian, or you just really like bacon, click the link at the bottom of this article and share it with as many people as you can.
We can’t afford to lose on this one, Canada.
Besides…
Winners Go Home And Fuck The Prom Queen
-Sean Connery
And he would know.
*And by better, I mean shockingly, horrifyingly worse.
http://www.ccer.ca/canadian-copyright-reform/canadian-copyright-reform-back-with-vengeance/
There are only 14 days left people. Get active.
Updated 10:10 PM Mountain Time
For those who are complaining that C-11 as written isn’t SOPA-like enough to warrant this comparison, please read http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6257/125/ before commenting. Things have changed drastically with respect to this bill in the last week; the really ugly stuff (which has been publicly discussed by members of the C-11 committee.) is in the unpublished modifications in the wake of SOPA’s defeat stateside.
More herehere and here.
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Comments
  1. Angela says:
    As an American (yes, yes, boo hiss), I commend you on your early action and keeping people informed. I have many Canadian friends and support your desire to keep these shitty bills from passing.
    As a Texan, I find your igloo statement hilarious as I have never even seen a ranch and I don’t own a horse. Stereotypes are fun, eh? ;)
  2. Dumb says:
    “Like your PVR? You can’t keep it under C-11.”
    Yes, so, Shaw, Rogers, Telus, Bell, and Cocego to name a few would love to see their business crippled. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
    • The Walrus says:
      Under C-11 content creators (networks)) would be able to demand that their content be digitally locked and not PVR-able. You’d get to keep your machine but it would become more and more useless.
  3. zeb dalgalaxy says:
    why are you writing this as if you’re talking to an american? …”We’re not going to get Google or Wikipedia to go dark up here.” and why use so many stupid stereotypes? (also as if youre talking to an american)
  4. yep says:
    Unless an officer come to my house with a loaded gun i’m going to do whatever the fuck i want on the internet. EAT SHIT STEVE!
  5. For anyone reading this that keeps saying who cares and wonders why people are getting so up in arms over this go the this link read it come back and then make an intelligent comment about what you wrote. If you still believe after reading it that there is nothing to worry about tell us why you think so defend your point of view otherwise you just look like a complete douche.
    Just to let you know the link below is the actual bill on the Parliament of Canada website detailing the entire bill.
    http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=5144516
  6. Angie says:
    Where is this petition? While I think that you did a fine job writing a decent commentary, I have to apologise for all the assholes that dont have something better to do than deter attention from the most important facts here: our government is trying to find more and more ways to infringe on our human rights and find more ways to control where our money goes. Its amazing that they think people will not be spending the next few weeks pirating everything they can in preparation for the passing of the bill…
    But I digress, where we can go to sign the petition should be mentioned or highlighted somewhere… Please? :-)
  7. Jenner says:
    What does apposing C-11 matter if Canada has already signed ACTA? We are already screwed…
  8. REG" the choosen one" says:
    its all for nothing anyways,the solar storm in dec 2012 is gonna wipe out all electronic gadgets and then we as people can get back to reality
  9. Thomas says:
    Who fucking cares. Worry about something that matters….
  10. Cunt says:
    Can’t do anything about it so shut the fuck up and eat you cereal
  11. Anonymous says:
    Who the fuck cares
  12. Anonymous says:
    i like bacon.
  13. Katie says:
    If you look up Bill C – 11 on the government of Canada website, it’s a bill to prevent the spread of human pathogens. Nothing to do with the internet?
  14. barb.raw says:
    Thank you for posting and writing this – regardless of the shitty comments posted above, we’re reading and the point you make is excellent. I wish trolls would hold our print media and government so accountable :) Keep writing!
  15. Michael Faubert says:
    Yowzers, and i thought this was just an American problem.
  16. Strange comment threads here. While I oppose the bill, I don’t agree with your stance on Harper. In any case your ‘creative writing’ is a bit uninspired.
  17. Saint Anger says:
    They can kiss my ass. The thing about ripping cds to mp3 player…i would love to see them try and stop that. I already added this shit up…going with the $150.000 fine for each copyright on my computer i would owe them over $4.5 BILLION. I cant even afford a fucking coffee right now (FUCKING THANKS TO THE GOVERNMENT – “EI”) So please, waste your time and money trying to get that $4.5 billion from me!
  18. Mark says:
    Less trying to come off as a witty writer and more to the point please.
    (Because most people care less about you or your writing and more about what the hell is going on with Bill C11.)
    Bonus: If you’re going to upload a couple of documents of your “creative writing” (quotations in this case can be interpreted however you’d like them to be), you might actually get people interested in it if you publish it on a nicer looking/less-generic website. But probably not ;)
  19. [...] This article is in reference to the post made here [...]
  20. Anonymous says:
    PISS CUNT FUCK
  21. Donny says:
    C-11 is nothing like SOPA. If you’re going to write on a subject, you should really be at least somewhat knowledgable on that subject and it’s quite clear that you aren’t.
    • The Walrus says:
      Donny, the more severe limitations are all ones that have been proposed in the past week. See:
      http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6257/125/
      Specifically:
      “For example, the industry wants language to similar to that found in SOPA on blocking access to websites, demanding new provisions that would “permit a court to make an order blocking a pirate site such as The Pirate Bay to protect the Canadian marketplace from foreign pirate sites.” Section 102 of SOPA also envisioned blocking of websites:
      A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.
      The music industry also wants Internet providers to be required to adopt a termination policy for subscribers that are alleged to be repeat infringers. According to the industry document:
      To incent service providers to cooperate in stemming piracy by requiring them to adopt and reasonably implement a policy to prevent the use of their services by repeat infringers and by conditioning the availability of service provider exceptions on this being done.”
      Things change sir, and before impugning someone’s knowledge on a subject, you might want to try doing a bit of research first.
      • Mark says:
        And in the future you might want to save embarassing yourself by leaving holes of important information in your post that will be called out by readers who don’t even need to have knowledge of the subject to spot shitty writing. Unless you intended this to be a joy blog for yourself, in which case please disregard my comment as it was aimed for those who actually come to the internet to get informed.
      • Donny says:
        “Groups are pushing for” is not the same as “about to pass”. The bill hasn’t even finished second reading yet.
        Groups push for all kinds of things, this is not the same as them actually being included in the bill and it’s definitely not the same as them being about to pass.
        Leave the writing to Michael Geist, he understands how our political system works and you clearly don’t.
        • Anonymous says:
          The point of the matter is, is that if they’re pushing for it, they WANT it to pass. Jumping on the “Oh no you don’t bill C-11″ band wagon now insures that it won’t get close to passing in any right. Less complaining, more action.
  22. Anonymous says:
    Did you read the bill? It specifically allows reproduction for private purposes, with very loose limitations. It specifically allows backup copies to be kept as long as the media was obtained legally and the copy is not given away, with very loose limitations.
    eg. You may rip a CD you buy and put it on your iPod, put it on another CD, copy it to a hard drive, etc., as long as you do not sell it or give a copy away.
    eg. You may record a performance (TV Show, Movie, etc.) in any way you please, as long as you receive the show legally. You may even keep the recording as long a time as is “convenient” to watch it at another time.
    This bill is only for preventing serious copyright infringement and it should absolutely pass.
  23. Mike says:
    Sorry, but you’re wrong – Bill C-11 is nothing like SOPA. Rather, it is pretty much a replica of the DMCA, which is the *other* evil U.S. copyright law that they’ve already had for several years. Here in Canada we not only do everything politely, we do it exactly the same as the U.S., just a few years behind.
    • The Walrus says:
      Mike and Anonymous, see above reply to Donny re http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6257/125/
      Things have changed drastically in last week with C-11 and it’s the unpublished changes that cause the most concern.
      • Mike says:
        Well… shit. Thank-you for pointing this out, Walrus!
        • The Walrus says:
          That sir, is how I roll. Never write something that can’t be backed up…that way you don’t wind up fellating bad guys in the slammer. :D
          • Mark says:
            I’m pretty sure the bad taste of this website can’t be backed up, lol. That’s how I roll, sir!
            • The Walrus says:
              Like a troll? Exactly which part of C-11 do you like? Look, this is a 400 word, written at midnight, vent about an issue that concerns me. It’s not in any sense authoritative and was written as reaction to a string of much more authoritative articles sharing the same conclusion. What it has done is get a few thousand extra people to sign a petition to stop a bill that (unless you have a differing opinion) absolutely should not be passed.
              Are you really so impotent and attention starved that you feel the need to flail around wildly at anyone who has an opinion?
              Gotta love the internet.
              • VicountBastion says:
                They sound less like trolls and more like plants for Harper trying to do damage control. “My personal rights might be at risk, so I am going to complain about creative writing and attack the author with petty ad hominem that distracts from the issue!” Eh-huh. Occam’s Razor says “PLANT”.
  24. Reblogged this on One Odd Duck and commented:
    Please read.
  25. tashtoo says:
    Reblogged this on thebleedingpen and commented:
    Read this…share this….stop this… Calling upon the New World Creative
  26. tashtoo says:
    I don’t care who you insulted Fellow citizen under Emperor Harper…we need to shout this loud!
  27. Anonymous says:
    Actually you insulted everyone south of the 49th parallel… the Mason/Dixon line separates the southern states form teh northern states…. just saying

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