Steven Harper and his conservatives attack Canadians over digital rights.
When bill C-61 died on the table of parliament and another election was called we the users and consumers of digital media won a small victory with the death of that bill. Now our Prime Minister and the conservative government are going to rush through Bill C-61 Part II*. This has been expected but what was not expected was the rush to introduce the bill and possible try and pass it in six short weeks. So if the Prime Minister wants to declare war on consumers and Regular Canadians then he better be ready for a fight. Many privacy, security and technology enthusiast need to help spread the word and bring up enough support to force the opposition to bring down the government. This is an election issue if I ever heard one; this will affect every Canadian big and small, young and old. It will change the way you use your iPod, computer, PVR, phone and what ever new technology comes along.The things you need to know about the American DMCA that if we allow will happen here in CanadaMedia and Music Companies will start suing Children and families. The best example of this is the Jamie Thomas case where the record companies won a 1.92 million award against a mother of four for pirating 24 songs (which are available for around $30.00 on iTunes) - should have been the judgment in my opinionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_v._ThomasAs Canadians we pay a levy on Blank Media that is suppose to go to the music and media industries. The Government probably will not retract this levy if the new copyright law passes so we will be essentially paying the music and media companies for any technology we want to use. If the Government does pass this I will be writing my MP to get my money back from the CD and DVD Levy.It will be technically illegal for you to transfer your "Media Content" from one form to another. What do I mean well technically under the American DMCA and similarly with bill C-61 and I would guess with the new copyright bill it will be illegal for you to take your DVD and put it on your computer, iPod, ipad, phone what ever you want. You will have to pay for each platform you want to put your media on. We have seen this with the release of purchasing movies with "Digital Copies". What most people don't know and what I am going to make extremely clear right now is to convert a DVD to a Video file playable by your computer is extremely easy and fast. You are paying the media companies an Extra 5-10 dollars for about 10 minutes of their time it takes to do the conversion. That is an awesome profit margin. That would be the same as a web master being paid twice to produce a website once in HTML and using Adobe Acrobat to convert it to a pdf file. Fair use you can say goodbye to that. If your child wants to make any movies, parodies (which is technically illegal to do in Canada B.T.W), fan trailers, you better forget about it that would be illegal as well.I know this sounds like it's all gloom and doom but we can stop it. We need to write our MP's, the Opposition MPs, and get everything in order where if the Harper Government doesn't back down from this Bad I would even say EVIL copyright law we can pressure the opposition to bring down then government and make them fight an election over this. This is something we as Canadian's need to fight against. Don't let your digital rights disappear. Write, Call, Blog, twitter facebook and let our government know your not happy with these changes and that we will fight them tooth and nail if they try take away our digital rights.Contact Via Twitter:
Other Sources For Required Reading
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5009/125/
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/05/canadian-prime-minis-2.html
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5008/125/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/canadians-drop-gloves-punch-us-in-face-over-piracy-watchlist.ars
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2010/02/annual-301-parade-ustr-calls-for.html
http://www.pirateparty.ca/forum/read.php?9,10297
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/05/05/copyright-reform-bill.html
