Minister Prentice - Sliced and Diced...

Via Canadian Cynic:

Charlie Angus rips into Minister Prentice over "Can-DMCA".

I agree with Prentice on one thing - the current system of copyrights and patents has been rendered obsolete by today's technology. I've started to muse aloud about this whole conundrum back here. Fundamentally, what we cannot, and should not do is implement anything modelled even remotely on the now notorious US legislation entitled Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The consequences of that act in the US have been topics like the recording industry suing its own customers, and apparent bans on a common (and valid practice) known as reverse engineering of technologies.

For Canada to ape the US on this would be disastrous on numerous levels. The fact that the Con$ have not been consulting with Canadians boiled over in a protest crashing Prentice's Christmas Party at his constituency office. Whether Canada signed onto the WIPO treaty is academic today - that treaty came along in the 1990s, and the last decade has contained a plethora of technology changes that it does not address adequately.

The Con$ claim to be a more democratic, grassroots party. Let them show that in doing some real consultations with more than just whatever industry lobbyists currently have their ear on this subject.