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The order paper for Monday May 14 included C-11 3'rd reading "debate".
There were motions to make amendments in the Order paper: Report Stage of Bills. These were from Mr. Bellavance (Richmond—Arthabaska) of the Bloc and Ms. May (Saanich—Gulf Islands) of the Greens, neither of which had party representatives in the committee studying the bill.
There are many more motions from Ms. May than the earlier list I commented on.
The yearly joke from the USTR of their so-called "Special 301 report" came out yesterday. Not surprisingly, they kept Canada on their Priority Watch List in order to keep up their special interest lobbying efforts.
Does this mean Canada is a "piracy haven"? Not in the slightest.
It only means that the USTR continues to echo the unfounded lobbying rhetoric from the IIPA which isn't as interested in promoting the rights and interests of creators and innovators as they are protecting their members from legitimate competition.
On March 30, 2012, Ms. May (MP for Saanich--Gulf Islands, Leader of the green Party) added a few motions to the Notice Paper, Report Stage of Bills. I will offer my own quick comments on these motions in the hope that they are useful for the ongoing debate.
In a land of myth, and a time of magic, a young technology journalist conducts an interview on digital locks. His name… Jesse Brown.
The person he is interviewing is Financial Post editor Terence Corcoran. Mr. Corcoran, admitting he doesn't understand technology, speaks of magical incantations that can be done over digitally encoded copyrighted works.
While Jesse and I both normally focus on discussing science and technology, I thought it might be interesting to explore what my views would be if I lived in the land of young Merlin or with the magic of Harry Potter.
Last week I had a letter to the Hill Times editor published which discussed the anti-competitive nature of the technological measures aspects of bill C-11.
I received the following question via twitter:
Read your letter in HillTimes. You really think Netflix should have no say how they want their content distributed?
My short twitter-length answer was:
There are infringing and non-infringing ways to do that http://c11.ca/brief - Businesses built on infringement not legit
by Russell McOrmond
I'm just a technical guy. I make my living as a systems administrator, software author and Internet consultant. After watching failures of the legislative process in the USA that lead to them passing laws that attacked the rights of technology owners and the interests of software authors, I decided I must get involved in Canada's political process. I participated in the consultation in the summer of 2001, and have been very active since. This includes sitting in on nearly all of the Bill C-32 and Bill C-11 committee meetings in-person, and being a witness in front of a Bill C-32 committee on March 8, 2011. I have been live tweeting and writing articles for each of these meetings. Now that committee work ended on March 13, the next steps will be a third reading in the House of Commons and then on to the Senate for whatever study they decide to do.
Read full article on OpenMedia.ca >>
The following was sent out to guests of an informal dialog held on March 6, 2012.
I would like to thank all of you for the lively discussion on Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act. Special thanks go to Hon. MP Geoff Regan, Hon. Senator Wilfred Moore, Tamir Israel and David Fewer (unable to attend) from Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and Russell McOrmond from http://c11.ca for accepting our invitation to attend this discussion.
After reading two articles in the Wire Report, I sent a letter to the editor which was published in this week's Hill Times.
My letter started with:
While Netflix may not have the resources to write the software themselves, it is the Conservative Government's Bill C-11 which will disallow any third party from developing their own compatible application.
(Subscribers can read full letter now. I will post full text here later.)
On the evening of March 6, 2012 I attended an informal dialogue about bill C-11 at Oliver’s Pub, Carleton University. It was organized by School of Information Technology Associate Professor Ali Arya, who invited MPs from the C-11 legislative committee, Tamir Israel from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and myself as guests to talk to students and faculty at Carleton. Hon. Geoff Regan, the Liberal MP on the committee, and Liberal Senator Wilfred Moore attended.
The following is the letter I sent today to my MP in Ottawa South. Please send letters to ensure your MPs are aware of your views, given committee moved to clause-by-clause on Monday. This is when we will learn what amendments will be tabled by each party, and the debate on whether bill C-11 will become better or worse will start.
Meera Nair posted a great article about misinformation on fair dealings.
"It is disappointing to read of the continued distortion of fair dealing through the call to action of The Writers’ Union of Canada and Access Copyright. But I am not surprised; it is much easier to provoke fear than to embark upon the longer journey of educating people."
By now many will have heard about the campaign by a group of lawyers to smear the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), making allegations about the process that was used to create a submission to government on Bill C-32 (now C-11).
Since he was directly mentioned as part of the smear campaign, Law professor Michael Geist has responded (National Post, his website). How you interpret these events partly come down to a matter of trust, and I believe we should afford far more trust to Mr. Geist clarity than the misdirection from these specific lawyers. (Update: Andrew Bernstein — Chair, CBA Intellectual Property Section responded)
The participants in this smear campaign are lawyers whose customers are increasingly building business models upon infringing other peoples rights (See my brief to C-11 committee). These lawyers, sometimes registered as lobbiests and sometimes claiming to represent themselves, have been working to legalize and legally protect these infringements.
We should offer these lawyers the same level of respect and trust that they might lawyers or executives at organizations like ISOHunt or the Pirate Bay.
Notes: Howard Knopf has provided links to relevant articles and submissions.
I was interviewed by Jesse Brown for TVO Search Engine on Friday, and the MP3 of that interview is now available.
Note: Apologies for the sound quality at my end. I was at my workplace and we ended up using the microphone built into my tablet, which offered better sound than the external mic I use with my phone. Seems I need to buy a better microphone if I plan use VOIP on this tablet in the future.
Our community hosts a few petitions to the federal parliament. Our first was the Petition for Users' Rights which we launched in 2004 during a Liberal government, and the second was the Petition to protect Information Technology property rights which was launched in 2006 soon after the Conservative government formed. At the time I thought protecting property rights was a non-brainer for a Conservative government, but it turns out that I was wrong. If we don't focus on our rights and interests as technology owners, this Conservative government will blindly trample our rights without even acknowledging us as legitimate stakeholders.
No visit of the Canadian Prime Minister to China would be complete without western media commenting on China's censorship policy. Western governments also engage in censorship, and are willing to go to extreme lengths to enforce that censorship. Some of that censorship has been called for by the corporations who own the western mainstream media that has been critiquing China.
"He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
Given all the discussion about how the debate on Bill C-19 ended (Examples: Sheila Dabu Nonato for Postmedia News, Kady O'Malley for CBC) I decided to send Mr Larry Miller (MP for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound) an email.
I will let fellow technology owners know if I get a reply.
On February 10, 2012 we had the 9th time when the House of Commons debated Bill C-11 (at Second Reading). The previous debate day was February 8, 2012.
This was the last day of debate before the bill is sent to committee at second reading. In some ways we have returned to the same position we were a little less than a year ago when the government fell in March 2011. In other ways it appears that the general public, who will be greatly impacted by this bill, are far more engaged than they were at that time.
On the 21st September, I emailed the minister about C-11. I asked specifically why the government was making it illegal to bypass the region encoding to watch the DVDs I purchased in Europe here in Canada. Here's the response I received today.
Press release below. See for more details.
For Immediate Release
Canadians rally for day of action against Bill C-11 (Internet Lockdown)
Public Outcry Heats up Against Legislation that threatens Internet Freedom
February 10, 2012 – Today, public outcry will grow to new proportions for what many are calling “the Internet Lockdown”. People across Canada plan to come together online and offline to rally against Bill C-11, known as the Copyright Modernization Act.
The Canadian public outcry comes in the wake of the fervor surrounding SOPA—a hotly contested copyright bill that millions of Americans and make websites like Wikipedia and reddit successfully came together to defeat.
On February 8, 2012 we had the 8th time when the House of Commons debated Bill C-11 (at Second Reading). The previous debate day was December 12, 2011.
The debate started with Hon. Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, CPC) moving a time allocation motion:
Last update:
Wed May 16 06:27:55 2012
Bart Trojanowski
Bob Trower
Brenda Butler
CLUE
CREDIL news feed
Dave O'Neill
Digital Copyright Canada
Ian Ward
Jean Richard
Michael P. Soulier
Michael Richardson
Ottawa Android
Pythian
Rick Leir
Rob Echlin