Bill C-61: Crappy AND Unpopular
Michael Geist writes (my emphasis):
Angus Reid has just released a new poll of Canadian views on the new copyright bill. The survey finds that 39 percent of Canadians want their MP to vote against the bill, 32 percent in favour, and 29 percent are not sure. By province the numbers are even more revealing: 45 percent against in BC (25 percent in favour), 39 percent against in Alberta (36 percent in favour), 51 percent against in Saskatchewan and Manitoba (23 percent in favour), and 43 percent against in Ontario (23 in favour). The only provinces that favour are Quebec (43 - 31 in favour) and Atlantic Canada (50 - 30 in favour).
To all my friends in the Maritimes, and especially those who have a connection to La Belle Provence (you know who you are)… what the hell, people?
Frankly, I think a lot of people are under the misapprehension that the bill somehow targets those horrible “Internet hackers”, when in reality it will do very little to affect serious, organized copyright infringement. It will, however, make it ridiculously easy to come afoul of the law through activities we do on a daily basis.
For me, the silliest part is the “format shifting” provision, which allows you to digitize your old videotapes, but won’t let you backup a legally-purchased DVD. When you have young kids, those little laser-etched platters require a good backup plan.
June 24th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I love polls that ask for opinions from people who clearly have no idea what it’s about.
However, some Quebeckers love to have Big Brother looking over their shoulder, so maybe the poll result is legit. Youneverknow.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
If by “some Quebeckers” you mean people in Montreal, I totally agree. Frankly, given my knowledge of the political climate outside Montreal, I don’t understand why the Reform Party never made any breakthrough in the rural region around Quebec City.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I ran across a blog where somebody had posted a response on C-61 from his or her Bloc MP. The translation was a bit dicey (and my French is dicier by an order of magnitude), but I was disappointed in the response nonetheless. The gist of it was, “Canada needs to do something right away to comply with existing copyright treaties, so the Bloc is planning to vote in favour of C-61 in principle, with the intention of fixing its problems in committee afterward.”
I do hope the translation was screwed up, ‘cuz that’s a damn shitty response.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Oh, and the Bloc response also gave the impression that the bill pandered too much to industry — not the entertainment industry, bizarrely, but to ISPs. ISPs make all this money on illegal downloads, you see, and the bill doesn’t do enough to beat them up over it.