Copyright Expert Uninvited From Canada Policy Forum

earthforce_1 writes "The vested interests of restrictive copyright are stacking the deck in Canada. The Public Policy Forum Symposium on intellectual property reform has bowed to pressure from certain interests and dis-invited noted copyright scholar Howard Knopf. The forum's stated mandate is '...to strive for excellence in government — to serve as a neutral, independent forum for open dialogue on public policy, and to encourage reform in public sector management.' For some reason, the US Ambassador to Canada and the former head of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Association have been invited — apparently they are perceived to have a more neutral view of what Canadian copyright laws should be? More information at Howard Knopf's blog."

They have more than they deserve

They know that they have more 'rights' in their copyrights than they deserve. They've spent a lot of money to make it that way. They know that if things were rendered "fair and balanced" that they'd lose a LOT of money -- not just the money they spent buying laws that favor them, but undeserved income these laws yield.

I can't hold these jackasses completely responsible for their greed. We've all got some greed in us and corruption is a problem of opportunity, not of character. I blame the legislators that make themselves available to the highest bidder and the character flaws that prevent them from correcting the circumstances that enable corruption.

Re:They have more than they deserve

Yeah, MP McTeague is really nuts (nuts enough that he also wants to make it against the law to criticize the political positions of MPs online). He is completely in the pockets of these corporations. Boing Boing has a great article [boingboing.net] on this.

This situation actually makes me a little happy. It means that my country wasn't the only one to have its politicians bought by these corporations. But at the same time, this newfound camaraderie in our mutual pwnage by the music and movie companies is quite disturbing. It reminds me of the laws in one of my favorite adventure games, The Longest Journey: corporate Law. Not laws regulating corporations, laws made by corporations regulating people.

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... corruption is a problem of opportunity, not of character. I blame the ... the character flaws that prevent them from correcting the circumstances that enable corruption.

Lots of consistency there. No, it's pretty simple. Corruption is a problem of c

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corruption is a problem of opportunity, not of character

Corruption most certainly IS a problem of character, and a statement like the one above sounds like it was made by someone trying to rationalize away their own lack thereof (no personal offense, but

Re:They have more than they deserve

This isn't about the "creative artists" and it never has been. Quite the contrary, this is about the exploitation of artists. The 'copyright industry' is controlled and manipulated by a limited number of players. These are the publishers and copyright cartel that have created a system where the marketing of the works they bought completely overshadow the 'independents' such that they never have a chance without their 'help.' These are the same ass-clowns who have lobbied for laws extending copyright to like 99 years after the death of the artist. This is not for the benefit of the artist. How is any time after the death of the artist an 'incentive to create?' It's not. This is meant to serve the big dogs who make it their business to buy and promote the works of others.

Re:They have more than they deserve

The 'copyright industry' is controlled and manipulated by a limited number of players.

Exactly. And its interesting that this coincides so nicely with this story [www.cbc.ca].

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>To be fair, the longer and stronger the copyright, the more the artist can sell it for. What's the point of buying something if you no
>longer own it after the person you bought it from dies?

You have to be willing to share it at some point or the dea

Equal Opportunity Weeps

There's a great deal of difference between spending the last years of your life writing for posterity but knowing you're not going to get paid for it, and writing for posterity and knowing that your grandchildren are going to be able to going to college and never have to worry about medical bills.

Equal opportunity weeps. Perhaps a country that has an interest in keeping resources in the hands of elite families also has an interest in this type of incentive.

Maybe a country that is based on equality of opportunity (Canada / USA) should put less focus on crafting incentives that involve passing family fortunes down.

- John

Re:They have more than they deserve

>Whilst I agree with much of what you wrote, this part is wrong.
>Being able to leave money for your children and grandchildren is
>a great incentive. And at least for authors, this is the time
>where their experience is most valuable.

I suppose they can do like anyone else, leave money they have earned until they die. Why should then in ADDITION be able to leave a copyright to children and in what way does that fullfill the goals of copyright? I have never seen anyone claim copyright has as one of the purposes the possibility to give children a way to make money by restricting others use of a work.

Troll food, but...

Its the reason people believe that 100 years of industrial evolution on this planet can corrupt over 4.5 billion years of naturally occuring weather cycles.

...and during those 100 years we have dug up and burned a significant proportion of the fossil fuel deposits that originally built up over a ~ 100 million year period ~ 300 million years in the past (ballpark figures) - when the climate was considerably

Re:OT

It's a good thing that we have sceptics, on climate change, copyright, or any other debate that isn't about absolute facts for that matter. If we ever reach the point where some prevailing consensus is considered the gospel truth because it suddenly became trendy/lobbyist fodder/a source of research funding, then we're in a lot of trouble. One of my favourite quotations comes from the late anthropologist Margaret Mead, who said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

In this case, I have little doubt now that the effects described by the pro-climate change scientists are real. However, I also have little doubt that some of the arguments made in An Inconvenient Truth were naive at best, as evidenced by the rush to invent credible explanations after criticism in the "inconvenient documentary" that followed, nor that concerns about imminent catastrophic results have been overstated in the rush to be seen to be doing something. There's some truth in there somewhere, and it's for the best that we have at least some people advocating both sides of the debate to help us find it.

Getting back on topic, I think much the same is true of an ethical/political/economic issue like copyright. It's easy on Slashdot, ancestral home of "information wants to be free" groupthink and student economics, to find ways to criticise copyright and claim it reaches too far. It's just as easy, if you work as a professional recording artist, to find an ethical argument that the world doesn't need your particular interpretation of a work for free and that copyright in that recording should last for your entire lifetime. Again, a balance needs to be struck, starting with deciding what copyright is really for (which has multiple sensible answers, not all of which are based on some vague wording in the constitution of one nation, and which are sometimes incompatible).

This is why it is a shame that we are reading this story today. It's not even necessary that the person who's been removed might have argued the way many on Slashdot would like to see the debate go. It is a shame merely because the debate will now be less balanced than it otherwise would have been.

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Whilst those individuals might have been corrupt, mass media proved the be the major facilitator in getting the most corrupt politicians re-elected by burying the truth and launching slander campaigns against honest politicians. With the internet starting

If you can't beat em, don't invite em.

It's pretty simple if you have a good agenda to keep, make sure you don't invite people who oppose said agenda.

Quick reminder

You don't need copyright to make music. And you don't need copyright to write software. The face of the matter is, you don't need copyright to do any of the things copyright covers. These things aren't reliant on the existence of copyright. Copyright does

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If this guy was uninvited based on his views I would suspect its because the other side wanted more balance

Ahh.. you mean the way ABC brought "balance" to its debate by discussing Britney and other 'useful' things.

Or probably you mean the balanced way in which credit card issuers prevented card victims from testifying to Senate to make sure its not one-sided..

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And thus you fall into the trap of assuming that because a noted expert's objective and factually defensible opinion favours one side of an issue, he must therefore have a "side" and be excluded in the interest of "balance". It is precisely this kind of

Re:Dont assume conspiracy

other side wanted more balance

I agree, it should be more balanced.

We live in a democracy; one person, one vote.

Copyright affects everybody. The population of Canada is 33 million. The industry is only a tiny fraction of the total population. A representative panel should have maybe ten representatives from the general population for every one industry representative.

Note: Industry representatives should get no special treatment simply because they're rich or because they might be excessively affected by changes in copyright law; companies are just groups of people and should have no special privileges compared to the general population.

Yes, it's tyranny of the majority. Problem is, the only thing worse than that is tyranny of a minority.

---

Some people believe with great fervor preposterous things that just happen to coincide with their self-interest.
-- Judge Frank Easterbrook, Coleman v. CIR (7th Cir 1986) 791 F2d 68 at 69 [and quoted in several subsequent court decisions]

Re:Dear RIAA, get your d*ck out of Canada

i have to say, i do support the levy, because it means i can download all i want and never get sued.

but here is the part where the levy is a miserable failure:
independent bands.

many of my friends are in unsigned bands, playing bar shows on a regular basis, and they are actually making a living off of it. not a good living by any means, they are just scraping by, but they are doing it on their own.

But...lets say they want to burn some of their songs and sell them at their shows. every black CD has that nice levy on it, they pay it, but because they are unsigned, they get nothing back for it.

IF any of the money does make it past the labels and into the artists hands, it's going to acts like nickleback.

thats right, supporting independent music helps the big guys, too.

thank you, blank media levy!

Re:Dear RIAA, get your d*ck out of Canada

Here's a little advice for you and your friends

The blank media levy does *NOT* apply to the importers. If your friends are able to purchase blank CD's from outside of the country in bulk (like 1000's) then the levy does not apply to them since they are the importers. Also recording onto the blank media and then selling it ensures that the purchaser does not have to pay the blank media levy as well thereby bypassing the entire corrupt blank media levy system.

Seriously, tell your friends about this. It should help them.

Re:no wonder, hes a troll.

He was merely doing the opposite of what the PPF did, stacking the deck to get answers they wanted. He merely rephrased their questions to get the opposite answer. As a Canadian I'm rather disgusted in this. Luckily I'm in a Conservative riding, and can easily change my vote if they ever try anything stupid.

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People seem to have been brainwashed into believing that copyright is some sort of natural right, even though it's anything but. The only reason it exists is to serve the public interest in having new works created. So temporary, limited monopolies were

Fixing a stupid questionaire != trolling

How can you effectively answer a questionaire that boxes you into giving stupid answers? It's a bit like:

Have you stopped beating your wife: [ ] yes I have stopped [ ] no I still beat her. So how do you answer if you've never beaten her?

All I can see here is that he tried to answer a broken set of questions.

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First Question: Well considering that the record companies were trying to get a jury to basically charge someone $150,000 per copyright violation on 24 songs. [wired.com] it does not seem too unreasonable to pose this question in the blog. That question is DIRECTLY ba

Of course, at is has been

As it has been for at least 800 years, starting with the Guelphs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelphs_and_Ghibellines [wikipedia.org]) if not before.

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Yes, Knopf likes classical music and doesn't like pop, but that's a side issue. He mentions it on his blog, but it has nothing to do with the main issues he discusses concerning copyright. As far as copyright goes, he isn't extreme at all. He doesn't prop