My MP is James Rajotte.  He is from the same party as Minister Prentice, but I’m sincerely hoping that he is more inclined to keep the party’s promise to openly discuss and debate matters like Bill C-61.  Mr. Rajotte “…currently serves as the Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Industry Science and Technology.  Since being elected Chair, the Committee has conducted studies and produced reports on the Counterfeiting and Piracy of Intellectual Property;”.  I hope this means that he is not ignorant of the potential impact of the new copyright bill on his constituents (like myself), and I really hope that he is of a higher ethical standard than Minister Prentice seems to represent.

Here’s what the letter from Copyright For Canadians looks like. It’s going in the mailbox right now.

June 13, 2008

Mr. James Rajotte
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

Subject: Please Stand Against the New Copyright Bill

Dear Mr. Rajotte,

I’m a constituent who has been following recent developments in Canadian copyright law. I’m concerned that the Copyright bill presented by the government on June 12th goes too far in outlawing the lawful use of copyrighted material, and does not take into account the needs of consumers and Canada’s creative community who are exploiting the potential of digital technology. I’m disappointed that this bill adopts an American approach to digital copyright laws, instead of crafting a Canadian approach.

Canada’s copyright laws need to advance Canada’s interests. This means copyright laws that respect ordinary consumer practices, such as unlocking cell phones and copying the contents of purchased DVDs for use in video iPods. The current bill outlaws these practices. This means copyright that facilitates the work of Canadian creators, such as documentary filmmakers, who instead find that this bill outlaws the use DVDs as source materials for their films. This means we find made-in-Canada solutions to the challenges of file-sharing, such as consideration of the P2P proposal of the Songwriters Association of Canada. Instead, this bill paves the road to importing the consumer file-sharing lawsuit strategy that has failed so spectacularly in the United States. Canada deserves better.

Please ensure that this bill really is made for Canadians by allowing all Canadian stakeholders a say in its final contents. That means meaningful consultation in the coming months, and opening up Canada’s copyright policy to more than just the special interests that lobbied behind the scenes for this law. As my MP, I urge you to represent my interests in the copyright debate.

Sincerely,

Michael Lawton

Tags: Canada, Copyright, Law, Politics

I know it seems like I’m bitching a lot about this copyright stuff… but GAH!  You have no idea just how bad this is and how much it will affect you.  Directly.  We can’t wait until everyone’s getting sued and we’ve lost so many of the things we used to enjoy.

Here’s your 5-minute civic duty:

Copyright For Canadians has a very simple tool that makes it easy to email your MP about Bill C-61.  After you send the email, print it out, put it in an envelope and send a physical copy (tends to get a lot more notice).  It doesn’t even cost you postage.  Here’s the address:

Last December Minister Prentice tried to sneak this garbage through, and we managed to stop him.  Fortunately, he made the classic mistake of the corrupt puppet politician: he severely underestimated the intelligence and will of an educated public.  Now he’s hoping to force this through while everyone’s “checked out” for the summer.  A massive public outcry is our only chance of stopping this and saving the rights and money of millions of Canadians.

By Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing:

Canadians: write to your MPs about Canada’s disastrous new copyright bill

If you’re a Canadian and you care about the future of culture, art, free speech and the Internet, you need to do something about the Canadian version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced yesterday. This bill was prepared without any consultation with Canadian stakeholders: there was no input from industry, libraries, education, artists’ groups, Canadian record labels, technology developers or citizens’ groups. Instead, the bill was written to specs handed down by the US trade rep and ambassador (who kept on telling the press about the “assurances” they’d had from the Minister on the bill’s features).

The bill makes it flatly illegal to break any kind of digital lock, or to violate terms in one of those absurd end-user license agreements that make you promise to agree to let the record industry kick your teeth in and drink all your beer, just for the dubious privilege of paying for a song at iTunes or watching a video on Viacom’s website. This amounts to private law: under Prentice’s plan, Parliament would get out of the business of making copyright law, simply enforcing whatever copyright law the entertainment industry itself dreamed up.

This is even worse than the approach the US DMCA took ten years ago, and look where that’s got them. Tens of thousands of Americans have been sued, key innovative technology companies have been destroyed, computer scientists have been jailed, and what did it get them? Certainly not an end to infringement — file-sharing is up in every country in the world. And for all the money the record industry has harvested from tech startups and music fans, not one dime has been paid to an artist.

Tags: Canada, Copyright, Law, Politics