Lots of industry pressure to lock up 15 year olds for their music sharing and movie downloading.
The Gov't is greedily licking its lips as it contemplates an internet that is finally controlled, so they can silence the remaining independent voices without anyone knowing.
Here are my answers to the bullshit questionnaire:
1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
I'm poor, like many Canadians, and everyone I know is poor. Fining and jailing people for downloading music is evil, especially when the entertainment industry is gouging people for $30+ for DVD's that cost them pennies. Many films critical of governments and industries will be unavailable if people can't download them. Canadian artists benefit from mp3 downloading, no one would ever have heard the barenaked ladies outside of Canada if people hadn't passed mp3s around. Canadian business rely on cracked versions of software and they make money, yet they won't seem to be targeted by this. 50%+ of Canadian businesses are using some version of a cracked software. Are you going to fine every one of them? There should only be repercussions if money is made off of the infringement. This is gov't backing of a large scale media monopoly by 3 major cartels.2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time
Canadian artists are regularly ripped off of their ideas by unscrupulous wealthy people, mostly americans. If someone with some shared mp3's will get a fine, then I want to see intellectual property theft of canadian artists, writers and inventors backed up by criminal police investigations. These rich producers know a Canadian artist doesn't have the money to get a lawyer to help them sue for their share of ripped of ideas.
3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
Allow people to keep their personal downloading. Focus on making Intellectual property theft of ideas worth over $500,000 a criminal RCMP investigation and case. Put rich thieving producers in jail and allow the RCMP to use extra tools such as lie detectors and phone surveillance on foreign producers in Canada. There are so many creative Canadians, but the media created in Canada is all owned by americans, most of whom rip the content of from impoverished creators right here.
4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?
Leave the personal downloading laws as they are, make Canadian content rules tougher so that projects in Canada have to have Canadian origins, and give the RCMP and CSIS the jurisdiction and tools to investigate large scale IP theft in Canada. Fining a single mom for her childs file sharing is sick when a Canadian writer can be ripped off for a film idea that ends up being worth a couple of million dollars and no police officer will ever even look at it, in fact they'll laugh.
5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?
Make sure that Canadian artists get gov't tax breaks, not big American media.
Allow people to download programs and media files for personal use.
Canad is full of technically oriented people now because canadians download software they can't afford and learn how to use it.
Lock up that access and we become a new nation of emasculated idiots.Everybody keep in mind: 50% of Canadian businesses are using some kind of stolen/cracked software in a mission critical purpose. Confiscate all that software at once and the country goes tits up. Try calling the RCMP to report a company using $100k of software they haven't paid for. They don't even have a detective assigned to that!!!
But kids with ipods and downloaded buffy episodes? Get the fucking swat team out there...
