U.S. Senators Pressure Canada on Canadian DMCA 466
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. copyright lobby brought out some heavy artillery last week as
it continued to pressure Canada to introduce a Canadian DMCA. U.S.
Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins gave a public
talk in which he described Canadian copyright law as the weakest in
the G7, while Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn wrote to
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to urge him to bring in movie piracy
legislation."
Blame Canada (a Canadian's perspective) (Score:4, Interesting)
Canada already has somewhat reasonable laws on copyright (there's room for improvement, but there are countries that are far worse). As I remarked on michaelgeist's website on this matter before, all we really need to do is toughen up on our laws regarding recording copyrighted performances at a theatre or other public venue. Canada has an excellent "personal and private use" exemption to copyright infringement that I would hate to see disappear, but people who falsely represent themselves as qualifying for that exemption only to later go and start distributing the work to other people really need to be nailed. Of course, by the time they've left the theatre, it's too late... enforcement becomes impossible unless you stop them from recording it in the first place, and the theatres really need to have the support of the law on the matter.
Right now all they do when they catch people is delete the recording and then kick the person out. The police won't do anything right now since technically "no law is actually being broken".
C'mon Canada! Toughen up!
Odd that the U.S. senators got it backwards (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm American (Score:5, Interesting)
Canada - please urge your politicians to tell our politicians to go f*** themselves.
Re:David Wilkins.. (Score:5, Interesting)
What we objected to is the US grabbing an innocent Canadian citizen on a stopover in New York and spiriting him away to Syria where he was imprisoned, kept in solitary confinement and tortured.
If we'd done that to a US citizen I'd probably be speaking American right now!
Re:May I be so presumptuous? (Score:3, Interesting)
> $30 Billion per year
> $1000 per Canadian
> Seems a little excessive!
Hmmm, Canadian cable / DSL bandwidth must be a whole lot better than in the US.
Re:May I be so presumptuous? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:May I be so presumptuous? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, isn't it the US public that gives these politicians their undue influence? All they have to do is to vote them out. The public is responsible for its politicians, and should be held in contempt for abdicating that responsibility. Especially in a country where it is so easy to revoke the politicians' authority. There are no innocents. Not amongst the so-called adults anyway.
Re:go home... (Score:3, Interesting)
But I do find it ironic that we steal your best actors and comedians only to send them back up there to shoot the films but that's the way of business. If you can pull off Toronto as Tokyo then you go for it.