We’ve been blocking the front door to Parliament, so the Conservatives and the copyright lobby are attempting to get in the back door through the Department of International Trade. In secret, and revealed by a leaked document, the government is looking at having border guards act as copyright police — searching your iPods and digital devices when you cross from the States (or elsewhere) back into Canada. You’d then be fined, and/or have your device confiscated if they deem material to be of an infringing nature.
The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.
The agreement proposes any content that may have been copied from a DVD or digital video recorder would be open for scrutiny by officials - even if the content was copied legally.
Police state!
–
Hat tip to Troy
==
I watched “Invincible” [7/10] this evening. It was alright, but I certainly wouldn’t cross the border with it, it’s not that good.
@hotmail.com
![[EFC Blue Ribbon - Free Speech Online]](http://www.efc.ca/images/efcfreet.gif)
Louise | 28-May-08 at 1:40 pm | Permalink
I agree with you, Saskboy. This is very disturbing. I just have one bitty concern about the article. There is a statement that doesn’t make any sense at all, namely:
“The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal..”.
Surely they mean, information that violates copyright law, not just plain old “information”. Copyright law is already pretty draconian, and the whole world of digital creation and transfer of information globally with no respect for borders has made it’s enforcement extremely difficult. We witnessed that with the availability of music on the internet downloadable without the copyright holders permission. Blogs, especially commentors, are notorious for copying a pasting huge sections of online documents, without permission of the copyright holders. This is an issue that goes way beyond the proclivities of one political party, as the article states. It’s a issue the G8 countries are grappling with. It’s been ongoing for more than a decade now and seems to be something that cannot be contained.
Saskboy | 28-May-08 at 5:25 pm | Permalink
“Surely they mean, information that violates copyright law, not just plain old “information”.”
Yeah, but you’re still subjecting people to an unreasonable search and seizure of what may look like infringing information, and isn’t really. It’s setting us up for a police state. And to think this is all coming about because of civil servants, CEOs, and lobby groups, not MPs voting on bills!
“It’s been ongoing for more than a decade now and seems to be something that cannot be contained.”
It can’t be contained — information, that is. Even former Minister Bernier couldn’t contain SECRET information (hehehe), although he did a really poor job of trying. In this country we even have a Freedom of INFORMATION Act. It’s interesting that the people who try hardest to have government restrict the flow of commercial information, are often the same people who became wealthy because of the FREE market. When a resource (information) is so plentiful and easy to copy that it’s next to free, they should find another resource to make money from, not beg for government intervention to protect their monopolies.
Louise | 28-May-08 at 5:56 pm | Permalink
Are you saying the creators of information have no rights? IMHO the struggle is to find an appropriate balance between the rights of authors to earn a reasonable living from their words, and ensure that no one else can use their words to make money without their permission, on the one hand, and the rights of citizens in the free world to have access to information. If you write a book and someone else in some other country copies it word for word and sells it as if it was their own, you do have a right to be mighty pissed off, and should have legal recourse. As it is now, the author retains the rights to his works until he’s been dead for 50 years, believe it or not. The global network is putting long standing legal conventions about creative works and their ownership in jeopardy.
Saskboy | 28-May-08 at 6:06 pm | Permalink
“the struggle is to find an appropriate balance between the rights of authors to earn a reasonable living from their words, and ensure that no one else can use their words to make money without their permission, on the one hand, and the rights of citizens in the free world to have access to information.”
I have no delusions that I’m assured money for the words I write. A select few are able to write (or whatever) well enough to convince people to buy copies of their material. If those copies are digital, well, expect to have some (or a lot of) copies out there that people didn’t pay for. Having that genie out of the bottle is preferable to a country where the border agents poke through your iPod. The artists can now plan to use digital media for marketing of other real-word-tangible products or services that they can base their income from.
Louise | 29-May-08 at 1:10 pm | Permalink
I’m not disagreeing with your main point, Saskboy, that being the draconian power given to border guards should this copyright thing go through. I also agree that existing copyright laws are way to stringent. But there are folks who make a living by writing who are very concerned that their words are not replicated by someone else without properly attributing their source. And besides that, copyright extends to all types of creative works, not just words. Music, art, dance, etc. Pirating is a major problem which is probably never going to be curtailed, especially now that almost everything can be digitized and, consequently, very easy to copy and share.
I don’t think you understand the issue when you say people should just find another way to make money. You’ve be putting publishers of all types of materials out of business. Books, magazines, newspapers, even websites, except maybe personal websites and blogs, are not free to produce. Staff that work at the institutions that produce the material have to be paid, so they should be able to expect that their investment is protected. We’d be destroying the means by which information is produced, if we let anyone just copy willy-nilly.
Saskboy | 29-May-08 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
Ah, but that might not be the result, that’s only a prediction. There would still be ways to transmit and broadcast information, so long as the public maintains the right to broadcast (CBC ahem) and the right to equal opportunity on the net (Net Neutrality). There are very few jobs for blacksmiths I’ve heard. I wonder why.