We interviewed Jake Daynes, a spokesperson for the Pirate Party of Canada recently and we had some interesting responses to our questions.

ZeroPaid: What is the Pirate Party and how has it grown since the launch?

Jake Daynes: The Pirate Party of Canada is the Canadian counterpart of the international Pirate Party movement, which has gained seats in Sweden and Germany. We are fighting for fair copyright, patent reform, net neutrality, and government transparency. Our goals can be found here.

ZeroPaid: We’ve heard about a Pirate Party distribution platform that is being launched. What is the distribution platform exactly? Has it been officially launched? Are there any partners involved in this project?

Jake Daynes: Right now I don’t want to say much, but I can say that it utilizes a very “pirate-y” distribution method. Right now it has been started up, though we have not made it live, and we have several partners in this, such as Musicians United Against Censorship, Electronica Artist/DJ: Frozen Ice Cube [Author's note: The latest music is currently here due to recent technical issues] , and Fading Ways Music.

ZeroPaid:What sort of artists are you looking for? Is it genre specific or location specific or can anyone around the world with any musical style join in? Is it moderated and if so, how long does it take for something to be posted?

Jake Daynes: No, we are not genre specific, we are looking for anybody and everybody! We do have a slight moderation system, which is mainly me going through every track, just to make sure it isn’t a copyright violation, but it shouldn’t take more than 24 hours to get something posted, once the project is live.

ZeroPaid: For artists, what kind of reach does this platform provide (like, how many people are accessing it)? Do you expect this number of people to grow?

Jake Daynes: This platform is access to a global stage, with Pirate Party support in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Sweden, Germany, and the US, we have access to millions of people that are all looking for new music to listen to!

ZeroPaid: I’ve noticed on your home page that you have a sufficient number of members, but you seem to have a second bar for people sending in forms. Are you able to officially register as a political party yet or do you have to have that number of forms handed in before that happens?

Jake Daynes: Right now we are asking everybody to send in their forms, as we need to have a minimum of 250 to register with Elections Canada, though those that sign up are still counted as full members, as membership is free!

ZeroPaid: It’s been talked about plenty of times that the Pirate Bay had a major influence on the success of the Swedish Pirate Party. The only big things like that happening around in Canada seem to have been copyright reform legislation which is already on the back burner because of the copyright consultations. Would you say that the Pirate Party’s growth is attributed to a reaction to major copyright related events or is it more of an ongoing growth for the Canadian Pirate Party?

Jake Daynes: Actually, few people know it, but Canada has it’s own Pirate Bay right here in Richmond, B.C.: isoHUNT, which is run by Gary Fung just south of Vancouver. Copyright is a global issue that is affecting everybody, and even though the copyright consultations are putting reform on the back burner as you put it, the PPoC is continuing to grow, with members and chapters all across the country.

ZeroPaid: There have been a number of countries that have Pirate Parties officially registered, but all these countries seem to be in Europe. Is it the goal of the Pirate Party of Canada to be the first non-European country to be an official political party?

Jake Daynes: Yes, currently the PPoC is looking to become the first non-European party to be officially registered.

ZeroPaid: There are rumours that there could, on a remote chance, be an election in the Fall. If that happens, is there a chance that the Pirate Party could be in that election?

Jake Daynes: Sadly no, because of current election legislation, the PPoC would have to have been a registered party 60 days before the writ of an election, though we will continue to push our issues, and hope that the voice of fair copyright is heard by current parties.

ZeroPaid: There are a number of people out there who might suggest that the party doesn’t stand much of a chance with the First Past the Post system along with the established parties. Having said that though, is it the goal for the party to win seats or is it more about sending a message to government that said Canadians are concerned with certain issues in the copyright, privacy and technology related fields of policy making?

Jake Daynes: Yes, it is in fact very difficult for a new party to break into the First Past the Post system, take, for example, the Green Party, garnering 13% of the popular vote last election and still not gaining a seat. Our goal is indeed to gain seats, though one important point is that our message is heard, because lets face it, we as a party prove that Canadians are concerned, and some even passionate about these issues.

ZeroPaid: Do you have anything further to add?

Jake Daynes: I, Jake Daynes, would just like to add that if anybody is interested in the Party, my personal email is JakeDaynes@PirateParty.ca, and I would be happy to discuss them with you. If you would like to debate the Party’s views, our forums are very lively.

ZeroPaid: Thank you very much for your time.

Jake Daynes: Thank you Drew

We would like to thank Jake Daynes for taking the time out of his busy schedule to talk to us.

The Pirate Party of Canada was started somewhere between the end of June and July 2nd. It’s been seeking membership since the launch and has grown to roughly 500 members in the span of two months. Pirate Party of Canada’s official website home page.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Should an ISP block website because of a complaint by a corporation or an organization of corporations? This could be one question that could draw a line in the sand between the copyright industry and supporters of free speech in Europe.

Earlier this year, the European Union blocked the three strikes law by declaring internet access as a fundamental right. Since then, the copyright industry has been scrambling to find some sort of quick cheap fix to stop all forms of file-sharing on the internet by, among other things, implementing three strikes, censorship, throttling and anything else they can get other people to throw at file-sharing. Since the political way by implementing things like the three strikes law seemed to not be quick enough, the industry went after ISPs. Eircom in Ireland was one of those ISPs.

Starting September 1st, as a part of a settlement between the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) and Eircom, the ISP has agreed to start blocking The Pirate Bay.

Just days afterwards, the Irish Pirate Party issued a statement saying that they are “deeply concerned by news that eircom is to block access from its subscribers to thepiratebay.org.”

“The Party,” the statement continued, “which is opposed to censorship and stands for the protection of individual privacy, finds this action wholly disturbing and believes it should not go ahead.”

“The Pirate Party believes that this block will set a precedent not only for further monitoring of Internet users, censorship and general debilitation of Internet services in Ireland, but also for similar action against other Irish companies providing Internet services, such as BT Ireland, Smart Telecom, Perlico and UPC (two of which have already been similarly threatened), severely damaging competition in this sector and curtailing efficient broadband rollout.”

It should be noted that as of the 20th, other Irish ISPs did vow to keep fighting IRMA which wants to force ISPs to implement three strikes and blocking internet websites such as The Pirate Bay. Given that the Telecoms package had the final say on disconnections by saying that internet access is a fundamental right, it’s not hard to conclude that Irish ISPs disconnecting users is not only bad publicity, but illegal by European law as well. From an observational standpoint, a lawsuit to force an ISP to break European law seems to be some sort of legal twilight zone – one can only imagine what is going on behind the scenes of these ISPs that are still fighting.

The Irish Pirate Party also noted that backup copies of The Pirate Bay have been distributed online as well and questions whether blocking the site would be even remotely effective in the first place.

In addition, the Irish Pirate Party quoted sections of Irish copyright laws IRMA used to go after ISPs and pointed out that “Neither the Pirate Bay, nor Eircom, store any copyrighted materials on any of their servers or within their service infrastructure. Also since the law specifically refers to singular works this section of the law cannot be used against an entire site or service.”

Unfortunately, as it has been proven in past cases, what local laws say hardly matters since the copyright industry tends to interpret copyright laws their way and enforces their interpretation of the laws as they see fit. In the past, this point was particularly prevalent when the copyright industry persuaded Swedish lawmakers to break local Swedish law when the websites server farms were raided by police back in 2006. The move by anti-piracy efforts backed by the US earned lawsuits from local businesses who were taken offline thanks to the server farm raid. Accusations of illegal activity by officials in 2006 during the raid ran fast and furious.

The kind of debate over whether or not ISPs are allowed to enforce their own three strikes policy or are allowed to arbitrarily block websites at the copyright industry bidding doesn’t appear to be exclusive to Ireland given that this kind of debate is already happening in the UK when a key political figure did a “u-turn” on the governments stance on three strikes after spending a short vacation with an American billionaire from the copyright industry and, by extension, in the Netherlands where MiniNova was ordered to remove all links to trackers containing allegedly copyright infringing material.

While it seems that the copyright industry is trying to find every back door they possibly can to try and find ways of defying the will of the European Union, this effort could ultimately backfire as it further legitimizes the stance of the Pirate Party in many European countries. It gives very real relevance to the concerns of the party for potential new voters who have already voted in one to two members of the party into the European Union. If the copyright industry doesn’t see it, surely policymakers should given that it’s their jobs on the line, not the industry’s.

Whether this particular issue between Eircom and IRMA becomes a key political point remains to be seen, but at the very least, it’s shaping up to be another controversial point in the European copyright debate.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Already, one UK minister said that a so-called “three strikes” law is too draconian back in June, but more recently, a UK ISP tried to institute their own three strikes law. That case caused the Open Rights Group to describe the three strikes regime as ““Guilt by accusation, punishment without trial“.

This may really ultimately be the core problem of a so-called three strikes regime – how many civil or criminal cases can see someone punished based on an accusation and without the option of going to court? What a three strikes regime has had a history of is trying to dodge the whole court system and skip right to punishing people based on an accusation essentially.

That’s what makes the latest blog posting on the UK Pirate Party’s website all the more interesting. In it, Andy R. discusses legal aspects of file sharing.

Back in June of 2008, a leaked letter said that the government was setting a goal of reducing file-sharing by 80%. When the Digital Britain report was issued later that month, that target ended up being 70%. By then, many in the file-sharing community were up in arms over the governments plans. Fast forward a year later, the British government wanted more time to reach that goal.

This was brought up as a key point in the UK Pirate Party’s posting. Under the presumption that a fair trial were to be brought up to the accused for each case, Andy R. had this to say:

Justice for those accused of file sharing will naturally require the opportunity for those accused to have an opportunity to see the evidence against them and challenge it in a court of law. To reduce file sharing by 70%, assuming 7 million people sharing 100 files each means dealing with 70% of 700,000,000 files. That’s 490,000,000 fair trials, or if, as has been rumoured there are to be two different offences, one for uploading, another for downloading, nearly 1 billion fair trials.

Her Majesty’s Courts Service say in their annual report that they dealt with 150,000 criminal cases and 2 million civil claims last year. Can they realistically be expected to cope with an additional 1 billion next year, and has their budget of £1,766,222,000 been expanded 500-fold to do so? The answer, quite simply is no.

The inescapable conclusion is that the government are not intending to fund the expensive luxury of justice for those accused of file sharing. We can only afford to have a system without justice, where simply being denounced by a copyright-holder is sufficient for summary punishment to be dealt out, and that summary punishment will be dealt out to 70% of 7 million people.

This is an extremely strong argument using basic math. After all, in the US, ever since Napster was shut down, there has been a rigorous lawsuit campaign against file-sharers by rights holders with, unsurprisingly, an emphasis on deterrent punishments. Andy’s argument is a very good highlight on why the copyright industry simply cannot go after every file-sharer and why there was a strong hope that deterrents would work – which they didn’t. It’s the simple principle many file-sharers have been aware of for years – safety in numbers.

Since the industry cannot scare people back into the music stores, it’s not a surprise that there is the strong push for a three strikes regime these days – to skip the expensive justice system altogether so they don’t litigate themselves into bankruptcy.

The problem of enforcing a three strikes law is that it doesn’t jive with the whole concept of justice in the first place – guilt upon accusation, punishment without trial. In order to enforce such a regime, the industry has the next to impossible task of trying to convince the public that the court system is no longer needed in cases of copyright infringement to justify a three strikes law.

Suddenly, those court rooms with those evil lawyers, corrupt judges and a disgrace of a legal system now becomes the file-sharers safety net. Quite the reversal of thinking in light of the US government siding with the RIAA and urging the judge to ignore arguments that the Jammie Thomas damages of $1.92 million in fines for many file-sharers aware of the political wrangling’s of copyright.

Given that the copyright industry in the UK is pushing – and pushing hard – for a three strikes regime in the UK and that many are realizing that the sought after three strikes regime involves the accused not being able to dispute the accusations in court, it’s not hard to figure out why there is a rise in the Pirate Party’s popularity these days. A political party that many see as impervious to the back room lobbying of the copyright industry to push through draconian copyright laws. As the threats grow for many who might – whether warranted or not – have their culture of the internet cut off, those people discover the real threat of human progress being pulled back by close to 25 years and all the benefits that came with the internet revolution.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

It seems that the movement of the pirate party keeps sailing on. Less than a week ago, we reported on the Pirate Party becoming an officially registered party in the UK. Now, it seems that the Finnish Pirate Party has accomplished the same goal of becoming an officially recognized party.

According to the Finnish Pirate Party website, the Finnish Pirate Party managed to get the necessary 5000 signatures to become an official political party (Google translated)

More from the posting:

The party can now participate in the Finnish parliamentary and municipal as well as European parliamentary elections. Its current primary objective is to get representatives in the Finnish parliament in the 2011 election. Its current primary objective is to get representatives in the Finnish parliament in the 2011 election. Piraattipuolue is the 8th officially registered pirate party internationally. The Pirate Party is the 8th officially registered pirate party internationally.

The party seeks to strengthen the protection of privacy and freedom of speech, to reform the current copyright legislation by legalizing non-commercial file-sharing and drastically cutting the duration of copyright, and to abolish pharmaceutical and software patents. The party seeks to strengthen the protection of privacy and freedom of speech, to reform the current copyright legislation by legalizing non-commercial file-sharing and drastically cutting the duration of copyright, and to abolish pharmaceutical and software patents.

This is great news for the Pirate Party movement. With two more countries now having their own pirate party in less than a week, the momentum seems to be in party’s favour. The question is, how many more countries can the pirate party movement become officially registered?

Pirate Party Finland home page (Finnish)

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

A member of the Pirate Party of Canada has written in to inform us that the Canadian Pirate Party has recently undergone a makeover of the original website. It even has a brand new domain at PirateParty.ca.

Already, back on July 2nd, just a little over a month ago, we reported on the formation of the party as it looked for members to help spread the word of the party. Just days later, after getting major recognition online, it caught the attention of the Green Party of Canada who commented that the Pirate Party of Canada was not necessary given that Canada has the Green Party. Members of the Pirate Party responded saying that, among other things, this is an excellent sign for the Pirate Party for getting such recognition.

The new website is a far cry from the old website as it no longer has just a row of links and a logo on the home page. There’s a blog, a more integrated navigation bar and, interestingly enough, a picture of a pirate ship that seems to resemble the former logo of ThePirateBay.

The Canadian Pirate Party is still seeking more membership. Their goal is to become the first Pirate Party outside of Europe to have a formally registered political party. As of this writing, the membership is currently just shy of 30% of the needed signatures to become a formally registered party. It will be interesting how well the party spreads its word online as well as how membership will rise now that a Fall session of classes are coming up in the coming weeks in Canada given that the traditional age group for people voting for the Pirate Party has been around the 18-30 years of age. There’s plenty of opportunity for growth given that the Canadian mainstream parties seem to have still been trying to grasp the full potential of the internet to garner support in Canada.

What also bodes well for the user rights movement in general is that there’s the additional momentum of the Pirate Party. If, after the Copyright consultation, the government somehow decides, against the will of Canada, to table another Bill C-61 with three strikes and a restriction of Fair Dealings, for example, there’ll be increased motivation to vote for the Pirate Party.

Certainly interesting times for the party. It further highlights the growing movement of the party given that just yesterday, the UK Pirate Party, became formally registered as a political party.

Pirate Party homepage
Pirate Party member signup page

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The appeals process takes time. That’s why we haven’t heard much from the Jammie Thomas case in a few months now. Back then, many Americans saw the award of $1.92 million as shocking and another reason to see the copyright laws as a departure from reality. The verdict even made waves during the Canadian copyright consultation as major reason to not go down the lawsuit road while considering new copyright laws.

That’s what, for many, makes this latest development all the more shocking.

According to a legal brief filed by the Department of Justice, the Department of Justice is arguing, “If it is necessary to reach the constitutional question to resolve defendant’s motion, then defendant’s motion should be rejected because Conress’ carefully crafted statute satisfies the Due Process Claus.”

They further argue, “The current damages range provides compensation for copyright owners because, inter alia, there exist situations in which actual damages are hard to quantify. Accordingly, the statutory range specified by Congress for a copyright infringement satisfies due process.”

In other words, they argue that because there is little to no evidence that points to actual harm, the damages should be this high in the first place and, therefor, not unconstitutional to fine a young woman $1.92 million for sharing non-commercial copies of 24 songs.

In short, philosophically speaking, the Department of Justice’s argument is this: Actual damages is hard to show. Congress made a copyright law with a given range of damages. Therefor Thomas cannot claim damages are unconstitutional.

There’s probably hundreds of ways to point out why this argument fails. Saying that actual damages are hard to claim is irrelevant to how constitutional the award is. So premise one doesn’t work. Congress have passed copyright laws, but laws can be overruled by the constitution. If congress passed a law that dictated that no more elections shall be had and the current party must stay permanently in power, the constitution would overrule it. Since the constitution has power over lawmaking, premise two is false. Therefor, the DoJ argument fails miserably here.

The bigger concern here is that this is a plain example of a government backing a few particular corporations. Why is the government trying to interfere in this particular case – especially helping the RIAA gang up on someone who has little to no hope in paying off the $1.92 million award in the first place. One wonders why the RIAA needs the whole government backing their case in the first place? Was it getting difficult to fight in the first place and has to resort to the whole government with their unlimited resources to help win the case?

In any event, the government backing the RIAA in a lawsuit may be more disturbing than the fact that the defendant was fined $1.92 million for sharing 24 songs non-commercially.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

If one were to say that internet privacy and concerns for file-sharers rarely, if ever, cross paths, this latest development would only further disprove this myth. While the Australian government says that the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill 2009 – Network Protection is merely about network maintenance, the Electronic Frontier Australia paints a very different and far grimmer picture on what is going on.

EFA’s submission addresses our key concern that the proposed legislation provides a very broad exception to the prohibition on interception of network communications for the purposes of ensuring that a network is ‘appropriately used’. This is a very broad category that means that all network operators in Australia will be able to monitor the substance of communications that pass over their network for compliance with their Acceptable Use Policies – the terms of which could include nearly anything. The AGD suggests that this is necessary to increase security, but have not shown any convincing justification why the contents of communications need to be examined nor why the scheme should extend beyond corporate networks to all Australian networks – including consumer ISPs.

This proposed changed threatens to radically alter the ability of network operators to intercept, store, and disclose information passing over their networks. There are no safeguards to prevent disclosure to law enforcement agencies or third parties. It is entirely possible for these new provisions to be used to examine P2P filesharing data for copyright violations, for example, and to disclose any captured information to copyright owners.

In other words, these amendments could be used to get ISPs to do all the dirty work for the copyright industry.

In a submission during the very short consultation period, the EFA submitted their comments with regards to the proposed amendments, saying that the consultation was far too short for more critical analysis. They further comment with the following:

Section 5(1) effectively provides that ‘network protection duties’ includes monitoring the content of communications in order to ascertain whether the network is being ‘appropriately used’. Because of the broad undefined nature of the term ‘appropriately used’ and the fact that many AUPs may contain restrictions not on protocols or services that internet uses may use but upon the purpose for which those communications are being made, this provision opens the bulk of network communications to potential interception and continuing surveillance.

A common example can be found in AUPs that prohibit the use of peer-to-peer filesharing networks for the purposes of copyright infringement. In order to determine whether “the network is appropriately used”, a network operator would be required to intercept all peer-to-peer traffic and attempt a determination of whether any given traffic streams are being used to communicate copyright material without the licence of the copyright owner. Not only is such a task difficult or impossible due to the inherent complexity of copyright law and need to analyse the scope of any potential licences or fair dealing defences, it seriously imposes on the privacy of network users who are using legitimate file-sharing protocols for non-infringing activity.

EFA opposes the construction of ‘appropriately used’ in s 6AAA of the exposure draft. We submit that the definition in s 6AAA ought to be amended to reflect that operators are only entitled to intercept and monitor communications where those communications pose a threat to the security of the network itself. EFA notes that there are already laws in place which deal with the disclose of sensitive information, and that there are already civil and criminal procedures available to determine the origins and contents of communications that appear to contravene such laws. The proposed amendments have the dangerous effect of reversing the burden of proof for such monitoring, allowing network operators to monitor for compliance, rather than to seek disclosure once a prima facie case or reasonable suspicion of unlawful
activity exists. To the extent that operators of networks require the ability to monitor the activities of their users, there is no justification for allowing substantive examination of the contents of communication as opposed to the envelope information – numbers and types of packets and their destinations.

At best, this law should be a frightening prospect to all internet users, not just file-sharers as this is a huge infringement of personal privacy. While Canada is currently in the midst of mulling lawful access once again, at least the scope was far narrower than this. Even the US, home of the much despised DMCA didn’t go this far. Even the French three strikes law required some action from rights holders. To date, this appears to be the worst ISP law proposal we’ve ever seen followed closely by Austrian newspapers wanting to use data retention to enforce copyright.

Clearly, to the best of our knowledge, Australia is mulling the concept of boldly going where no other country has gone before in terms of mass communication interception. One wonders if the government has any idea what kind of task it would be to force ISPs to patrol their own networks on a packet-by-packet basis. Searching through headers on an entire major ISP is probably full time work for a team of internet specialists. That doesn’t even touch encrypted traffic. ISPs would probably have to pay money to a whole task force to people just to comply with this law which could have been spent on critical infrastructure upgrades, so Australian ISPs have a lot to lose, let alone Australian ISP customers who would have to worry about an ISP specialist covertly spying on every message or packet they send and receive online.

The law proposal will be debated in the Australian parliament in December, so there is still time to oppose this law.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The news comes from IT News Australia where they cite an Exetel company posting which explains the plan.

“We will simply ban P2P traffic in the 12 midnight to 2 am period if the user elects to make that an ‘off peak’ period.” John Linton explains, “The penalty for selecting that period as ‘free’ and then using it for P2P downloads will be the removal of the free period completely for that customer or termination of the service.”

“Unlike every one of our competitors (or at least I assume this is the case) we have never been concerned about making as much money as possible from providing our services – we have always been driven by the objective of providing the best possible value. One way of doing this is to make use of the ‘dead’ bandwidth that exists on virtually very commercial network (though I have known of at least two exceptions) in the early hours of the morning.” Linton also said, explaining why the company is mulling this. He continued, “Typically on an efficiently utilised network such as Exetel’s this costs us (at our current size) well over $A150,000 a month and the bandwidth is completely wasted. Simple solution offer it to your user base at no cost to them – how, over a five year period could you fail to make that work?…..giving away $A150,000 a month worth of services…..not a problem in the world. We couldn’t do it – rather than using the virtually unused 3 am to 7 am period to set a schedule of downloads our user base insisted on starting them at one second past midnight EVERY night and, for over 90% of those users their downloads were completed by 12.30 am EVERY morning. Could they be persuaded to start their downloads after 2 am?……nothing we could do for five plus years could make that happen.”

Perhaps the sad part of all of this is the fact that there was frustration over customers actually using what they paid for. If a company offers a popular service, then suddenly stops it altogether, no doubt there’ll be anger within the customer base.

Many Australian file-sharers make use of schedulers that either download during certain times of the day or certain times of the month to try and maximize their allotted bandwidth caps. In fact, sometimes users resort to an alternative form of file-sharing, blanks and postage, to help bypass the caps while still getting what they want. One wonders, if bandwidth problems haven’t been solved by now, exactly how much investment is being made in the underlying infrastructure in the first place in Australia? In addition, what happened to caching traffic to help save bandwidth for the ISPs anyway?

Linton seems to think that there is only a tiny fraction of p2p users actually using that bandwidth in the first place. He concluded, “One of the unprovable ‘business school myths’ (similar to the “every unhappy customer etc” nonsense) is that EVERY service provider would be better off without 1% – 2% (depending how unlucky they are) of their customers.”

So it seems that they think there’s no problem cutting people off if they try using p2p. Given more businesses use p2p solutions, this could only serve to hurt the overall Australian economy. If a small business such as a vidcaster uses BitTorrent to distribute their shows, sorry, but some ISPs don’t allow it. It doesn’t matter if you are selling the content, making money off of ad revenue, or even if you are legitimate at all. The ISP will have non of it.

It’s unclear if banning p2p traffic on peak hours will actually be implemented, but Exetel has already expressed interest in carrying through with it.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

It’s becoming one of the fastest ways to isolate oneself in the copyright debate. All you have to say is that you are for suing internet users, for a blanket ban on digital lock circumvention and for restricting fair dealings. While one may get a sympathetic ear or two, a vast majority of stakeholders will not share that viewpoint. In fact, there a few stakeholders looking at the US style copyright law and merely looking at fair use as a way of expanding fair dealings (fair use is actually broader than fair dealings currently).

Comments made by the Manitoba Music Industry Association drew particular interest at a recent Saskatchewan copyright round table. The comments are available in MP3 format and can be heard at around the 50 minute mark. While advocating alternative business models and obtaining new streams of revenue, the MMIA argues, “We find ourselves in the Manitoba music industry more aligned with some of the creators coalitions and independent music groups and less aligned with CRIA and the RIAA. Our members are generally speaking are not interested in anti-circumvention laws, they are not interested in suing fans. No one from our membership is going to go out and sue fans because they copied some of their music. What they are interested in is finding ways of monetizing the creative content.” (Hat tip Michael Geist for transcript excerpt)

This isn’t the first time entities in Canadian music have stepped away from the CRIA stance of anti-circumvention laws and suing music fans. In response to the lobbying power of the CRIA which pushed the government to have file-sharing lawsuits be brought into Canada (of which CRIA still suggests that they want to easily file lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers on their Free Music Myths page – 4th myth from the bottom, first paragraph) and to introduce anti-circumvention legislation, Canadian record labels and artists broke away from CRIA. Some of those that broke away formed the Canadian Music Creators Coalition which formed to defy the CRIA stance on file-sharing lawsuits and DRM in 2006. As a result, CRIA lost a vast majority of its credibility as it was since seen as little more than a foreign organization with the word “Canadian” in its name.

That was long before Jamie Thomas was fined $1.92 Million for sharing 24 songs and Joel Tenenbaums $675,000 fine for sharing 30 songs. If anything else, those fines, particularly the Thomas fine, has only served to horrify Canadians and cement the need to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial uses or to flat-out reject file-sharing lawsuits altogether.

Up to now, there’s a long-running theme of disallowing a blanket anti-circumvention legislation, being very cautious around file-sharing lawsuits, finding alternative streams of revenue and pushing for (at this point, it’s a cliche in the consultation) a balanced approach for copyright legislation. The push to tighten copyright laws has primarily come from organizations who are mostly influenced by foreign interests or are organizations that operate on behalf of foreign interests. The push against this viewpoint has come mainly from Canadians, Canadian businesses, Canadian content creators and organizations that are primarily Canadian. In terms of public opinion, the CRIA stance has further disintegrated in the copyright consultation.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The op-ed was written in the National Post recently. While the subheading strangely resembles the Google mafia spam that gets sprinkled on our forums every so often, this op-ed could highlight a change in strategy for the copyright industry trying to lobby Canada’s policy makers.

As many who follow the copyright debate in Canada might recall, when the CMPDA successfully lobbied the government to introduce an anti-cam law, most experts observing the copyright debates saw this as a thin wedge approach prior to the controversy surrounding Bill C-61 (copyright reform legislation which has since died on the order paper). The anti-cam legislation passed with little resistance, though proved to be little more than legislation to criminalize what was already illegal. As a result, some experts criticized the copyright industry for not understanding Canadian law and, since then, the high profile theatre camera piracy busts utilized the so-called “outdated” copyright laws of Canada. The copyright industry argued that prior to the legislation, 90% of all movie piracy was traced back to Canada – a myth that was debunked, re-debunked, and debunked by the MPAA’s own statistics.

Compared to the laundry list of demands made by the copyright industry, the anti-cam legislation seemed like a small request in comparison. Bill C-61, however, looked like the rest of the demands the copyright industry had been wanting – blanket anti-circumvention laws to override fair dealings, criminalizing file-sharers with statutory damages, etc.

The failure to pass C-61 could have served to remind the copyright industry that they can’t have everything all at once. Politicians backing the legislation received a huge amount of public backlash. So did the copyright industry back off and go back to the thin wedge approach? Apparently not.

It’s particularly bizarre considering what is going on with the copyright consultation organized by the government. So far, it seems public opinion has beaten out the copyright industry’s demands by a landslide with hundreds of submissions from people from all walks of life rejecting the industry approach (nearly unanimous).

In this latest op-en, Barry Sookman, when discussing what he’d like to see in the copyright reform legislation, says, “The bill should also include a graduated response process to help stem infringements in peer-to-peer (p2p) networks. Studies show that over 70% of users will stop illegal file sharing when they receive a notice from an ISP about it, particularly when they also know that not stopping could have consequences.”

In other words, he’d like to see a three strikes law, then in the next sentence, basically proved why notice-and-notice is sufficient.

Sookman repeats the myth that Canada is a pirate haven even though Canada on the world stage isn’t even a drop in the bucket in terms of piracy. Not only that, but it’s been repeatedly admitted in Canada that p2p’s growth has, at worst, stalled and at best, on the decline.

“We should ratify the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization Internet Treaties.” Sookman adds, “These treaties represent the overwhelming international consensus on how to protect copyright on the Internet. Canada is alone among its trading partners in not having implemented these treaties. The laws they mandate — including requiring protection for digital locks — have proved useful internationally in stimulating investment in cultural products. The global experience shows they enable more diversified choice and access to digital products for consumers.”

It’s difficult to know where to begin with debunking the logic here. No widely used digital lock has gone uncracked. Digital locks have yet to prove their worth, and as such, many record labels including major record labels have been abandoning DRM’s false promise of preventing copying. Digital locks does nothing to stimulate the creation of cultural goods – as such, anti-circumvention laws does nothing more than harm the cultural industry by creating enemies of their own customers. Digital locks are the very thing that stops choice and access as they prevent users from using legally paid for content in ways they choose. In fact, Amazon’s Kindle proved that digital locks stops customers from owning what they pay for.

Of course, who is Sookman trying to kid anyway? If this push makes any headway in government, it proves that the copyright industry is only interested in fooling politicians into legislating draconian copyright law – now beyond what was so rigorously opposed with the Canadian DMCA. They clearly want it all. It’s politicians that have to deal with the public backlash, not the lobbyists. So if the government sells out a third time on copyright, it’s the politicians that will have protests in their ridings for legally breaking everyone’s equipment. At least if that happens, it would prove ever more obvious who the government ignores.

[Hat tip: Michael Geist]

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