Hey all, I just heard this news on the radio, it's 3 day old news up here, but I just thought I might let everybody know.

Apparently, the Federal Government here in Canada is thinking, along with other governments around the globe including the US and the UK, to revamp the Copyright laws to the point where electronic devices, (Ipods, mp3 players, laptops, probably even desktops) and the files contained therein, will be subject to inspection and investigation as to whether they're legal or not.

That means all those songs that you have on your Ipod that your friend copied onto your computer could wind up with you getting a fat fine, your device taken away, and possibly -destroyed-.

Also contained in that document is a law stating that Internet Service Providers must hand over the information on select customers -without- a court order!

What has the world come to?
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=9ff35127-2d45-4377-a0a5-ee908016f97d

There is the link, read it yourself! Thank god I got my pc over when I did!

What is the world coming to when you can't steal copyrighted material whenever you want? Good question.

That's right - stealing. You can candy coat it as much as you want but it is still stealing when you take songs or movies and don't pay for it.

It is what? 99 cents to download a song from iTunes? Get the legitimate copies and no one will take your stuff away.

It says "joining the United States" but we don't have anything like that to my knowledge. My gut instinct is not to trust articles with obvious bias and to actually read the proposed act. They might be making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Although not living in Canada, I can understand the frustration this might bring. The actual problem is not the part about the police taking actions against criminal acts, but it is how they intend to do it.

They intend to make it legal for them to invade into someone's privacy to look for something as minor as ripped music. It is very similar to being legally allowed to break into someone's house to look for stolen goods.

It is not what they are doing that is wrong, it is how they intend to do it that bothers me.

Now watch as foreign based servers and storage sites skyrocket as everyone under threat of this new law uplaods everything to a country that's outside the jurisdiction of the federal government. (Watch untraceable anyone?)

Well, that's not really the part that bothers me. Sure, if you're stealing album after album off of some file-sharing program like Morpheus or Limewire, where no one gets actually paid, sure I can see that.

But I don't think people should be fined and get their stuff taken/destroyed just because of copyrighted material.

It's not like I condone stealing, (which technically it IS, I know) but losing a $1500 Sony Viao (on top of a fine!) because you have a friend's CD ripped onto it is completely out of context.

If the government is going to pass a law that allows it to peruse Joe Public's computer for illegal software, it will also have to apply to the government entities' own private computers. They can't side-step that because of the firestorm it would cause.

Why do you think the government killed the Clipper Chip proposal?

Yeah, that's literally an unwarranted search, which bull. That's what we call a police state, and it's just wrong.

Secondly, it is NOT stealing to DL copyrighted material. It's not even actually copyright infringement (the infringement is in making it available to others). Understand, if you buy a blank CD, DVD, VHS or other blank medium of data storage, you are already paying the RIAA money, just in case, because it MIGHT be used for piracy. THAT'S stealing, unless you actually do use it for piracy, and it's government-enforced stealing, no less.

Copyright laws are seriously screwed-up in the modern world (you can place a lot of the blame on Disney, sadly enough), and there's really almost nothing you or I can do about it. One of things we can do is to not let people tell us things that are demonstrably untrue on the subject, like calling software piracy "stealing." Like remembering that if you've ever bought blank media, then you HAVE paid for downloads and unauthorized copies. Like writing your representatives and explaining to them repeatedly, and in great detail, how screwed-up it is for copyrights to last over a century, or to "protect" a work long out of publication and completely otherwise unavailable to the public. Like not taking crap off of old-media flipping out because they are failing to adapt to the changing world, and trying to hold back technology and terrorize their customer base rather than face the world as it is becoming.

Rystefn says: Don't be a tool. Support Creative Commons.

It IS kind of strange how they allow blank DVD's and CD's, and Burners/burning software to be so uncontrolled, in a world where someone might get the bright idea to copy an album without paying for it.

But then again, you have to take into account the bands who LIKE their music stolen and spread. Take Nine Inch Nails, for example. At a concert, they left dozens of USB jump-drives with full MP3s of their songs -in the bathrooms!-

Dozens more of bands allow you to download most of their albums straight off their websites!
Seems to me the only people freaking out about "copyright infringement" is the government.

Alacrity - I can't disagree with you more.

The cornerstone of liberty is a right to privacy and due process. Without this right, concepts of justice and fairness dissolve. When the state has the right to investigate you and search your private property - and yes, searching electronic property is still a search - without cause, warrant or court order, it means that every citizen is under suspicion. It means that the government is treating every one of us as a potential criminal rather than the people whom it is here to serve. It means that there is no due process, because we're guilty until proven innocent.

That's what you get when you have a government that has a right to search you, investigate you, etc. without any kind of reason or precedent. A populace that is guilty until proven innocent.

I, personally, do not want to live in a society where I am a potential criminal instead of a citizen, where a Napoleonic Code has decreed me to be guilty - i.e. it has the right to search and investigate me without evidence or reason - until proven innocent.

That's fascism, not democracy.

This issue has nothing to do with stealing - it has to do with unwarranted searches and seizures and infringement of our civil rights.

And by the way, I don't steal music online.

I am relatively a newb here at the RDI but this is one of the age old discussions/battles of the internet so, in that sense, I feel I am a veteran and will chime in.

There are many arguments both for and against copyright "enforcement", but here in the US the constitution originally afforded a copyright "owner" (keep in mind this is the person getting PAID, not the person who necessarily created the copyrighted material) 28 years before it was released to the Public Domain, this was done to promote Science and the Arts (yes all of them, as it was intentionally left vague so that new science and technology would feed new arts that would feed new science that would feed new arts etc....). This was also done so that 1 person (or in our times, corporations) could not controll any bit of knowledge/art forever (this is done by using the language "for limited times" although some creative lobyists have come up with the limited term of "forever less one day" time frame seriously...)

Now most countries have copyright that extends for some period either after creation or after death of the creator(this case actually means the creator not the copyright "owner"), depending on the media (usually 25 - 120 years, and the 120 is in the US only) but one must consider who this actually benefits (and the outcome of that consideration is highly debated).

Just keep in mind, in the US the ORIGINAL use of copyright was LIMITED for the benefit of society as a whole.

Next there is the "stealing is wrong" moniker that alot of people use when denouncing "file sharing". In general, when most mention stealing, it implys that the "item" that is stolen is no longer in the "owners" possession.... you can see where this arguement goes also it is implied that when someone shares media (as in filesharing, or recording songs off the radio, or burn your TIVO rips to DVD and giving them to a friend) that they have stolen revenue (as in lost sales) from the company (that holds the copyright, not the company that necessarily created the content, this is VERY important to keep in mind) although this is impossible to prove.

The bottom line is, even if it is "stealing", Roleplayers, of all people, should know that it dosen't necessarily make the "theif" a bad person.

To use Creative Commons and Copyright in the same comparison is like saying light is the same as dark.

Peruse the copyright laws and note phrases like "may not be reproduced, copied, and/or rebroadcast by, on, or with any medium or method, known or unknown ..." Nearly everything on most every medium is automatically copyrighted, currently for 20 years or until released by the the material's creator. This copyright can be waived, but only in writing, and must be posted whereever the material is available for use.

But I agree that Creative Commons is great! I use and contribute to it regularly for various vendors/providers.

I am not a fan.

USA has that law Bob, I checked.

Damn hard to enforce I imagine, what with unwarranted searching.

By the way...not only do we Americans have that particular law, we also have that glorious organization called the Recording Industry Association of America (hereafter referred to as the RIAA). According to the RIAAs' policy on software and cds' and all, just buying a cd and copying the songs to put on your own mp3 player is a violation of copyright law...which pretty much EVERYBODY does. I won't EVEN get into their litigious nature...

If we're to police the fact that people might hold material that infringes copyright why stop at mp3 players?

There was a time when it was common practice to record songs that appeared on the radio using old cassettes, should we retroactively penalize that activity?

Or better yet, let's slap a fine on someone humming a tune as they make their way to work or school! :-/