Fight the Candadian DMCA

For years our poor American brethren to the South have been subject to a horrid beast, tearing the heads off of file-sharing youth and breathing fire on fair-use. This beast has been known as the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While the name sounds great, is misses the point. Big media realized that technology had changed such that they no longer had control over the media. So rather than change their business plan to take advantage of this new era of technology, they lobbied to create the DMCA.

And now, its coming to Canada. With more restrictions on consumers. Who is this law for? We're the citizens... why are corporate ties dictating what laws should be? This law is worse... FAR worse for the consumer than what we have now. It limits what you can do with what you own. It limits what you can try to do with things that you own but are supposed to be "locked" (like cellphones and out-of-region DVDs). This all benefits the media corporations.

Here is my point... why are we making laws that benefit corporate citizens? Mostly AMERICAN corporate citizens. We are the actual citizens of Canada... fuck them. We want to copy stuff. We want to be able to use our technology. We want a world without these restrictions imposed for the benefit of corporate profit. Big media needs to realize that technology has changed... the ability to create media is at the hands of almost all of us. They're not going to make as much money as they used to....

Who will? People who have figured it out. Like Jamendo.com, for example. Free music, from the artists. Pay a donation, or go see them live. The big media method of spending millions on marketing to get us to think that we actually like band X isn't going to work anymore. Big media requires so much money to pay for the marketing and the execs in the middle. When you pay for music by traditional methods you don't pay very much to the artist, after all.

Anyway, read this criticism on the bill, and contact your MP. Luckily we're in a minority government, so there is a chance that it won't pass.

Cheers