Month: September 2014

In reply to Crosbie Fitch.

I think I’ve learned more about copyright and rights in general from you than anyone, so I’m sorry to have to disagree with you on this one, Crosbie. In Canada when people assert their liberty as you suggest we run the risk of breaking the law, which carries increasingly draconian consequences. While it is true that some copyright martyrs may provide good examples that may lead to the abolition of copyright law, I would rather warn people away from such risks and any further loss of liberty that may ensue.

Liberty is indeed the useful concept, but is even more powerful when the modern concept of the “public domain” is employed to usefully demonstrate its loss. It is crucial for people to understand the concept of the public domain as it was before the first copyright monopoly existed, and to further be aware of how and why the ghost of the public domain we are left with is shrinking if we are to understand the issue. Understanding that modern copyright’s incursions into the public domain every time some new “protection” is retroactively helps people see the liberty that is being lost. Here in Canada our new copyright law makes it illegal to circumvent DRM for any reason, even to access public domain works in our possession. In Europe the absurd “sweat of the brow” doctrine has been accepted and is routinely used by Galleries, Libraries, Archive and Museums to assert copyright over works that have been forever in the public domain simply by scanning them.

Every person who says “I can do what I want to, I can circumvent DRM, so it doesn’t affect me” doesn’t care if the law is changed or not — until the law is dropped on their head. Every person who doesn’t vote because the electoral system is unfair ensures that bad laws — benefiting only special interests at the expense of the public — will continue to be made and enforced.

When the law is an ass, it needs to be changed, or abolished, not flouted.

In reply to Jay Johnson.

Certainly our fashions have been influenced by our near total diet of American culture. But years ago I was told American co-workers that Canadian Football (CFL not soccer) was superior to American football. I’m not one to judge, as it seems to me that today’s televised sports seem more like reality tv than actual sporting competitions. Live sports in which we participate are something else again. Baseball was the big one when i was a kid, but in my little corner of Canada it has been thoroughly supplanted by soccer for my child’s generation.

Mostly Canadians watch American media because we believe (wrongly) that our own is inferior. Canada has long had a rich cultural heritage, once celebrated by the brilliant work of the NFB. Even the CBC has produced good work on the rare occasion it has risen above the politics that normally weighs it down. A case can be made that the North American English Accent prevalent in American media is more Canadian than American.

Like our American friends, the food Canadians eat is based on a mixture of indigenous food and the cuisines brought here by various waves of European settlers, so certainly there is similarity in our diets.

I agree that the idea of CanCon is to keep us “Un-American” (and give Canadians jobs) but I very strongly disagree with your contention that there is no Canadian Culture. Not because so many talented Canadian creators flock to the American culture capitals (although an argument could be made that so many Canadians must certainly be Canadianising American culture) but because Canadian Culture is in fact thriving for the first time in decades thanks to technological advances that make it possible for us to both digitally self publish our own creative works and then distribute them both at home and abroad. This is effectively breaking the stranglehold the handful of multimedia conglomerates (aka “the copyright industry”) have imposed on us for most of the past century. Pretty nearly any Canadian can go out and make a movie, record a song or publish a book. And that’s a good thing.