New copyright laws? This is bad news, and it's important.

This is bad news, and it's important.

Harper's Conservative government is getting ready to whack Canadians with changes to the Copyright Act-- changes that can lock out competition, limit free expression, take money from your pockets and put it in the hands of industry lobby groups, and co-opt your ISP to spy on your Internet connection.

Nearly 10 years ago, the United States got a similar new copyright law that tried to legislate copy-proof bits. It didn't work then, and it doesn't work now, and in between, programmers were jailed, academics silenced, consumers ripped off, and competitors locked out of fair competition in markets from music players to garage door openers.

Computers and the Internet are really great at copying bits of information and sending them anywhere, fast and cheap. Every copyright law that tries to stop all that copying and sending makes computers and the Internet less useful and less valuable. It puts a lock on innovation and creativity, instead propping up the current way of doing things at the expense of people with new ideas, new technologies and new ways of making music, movies, and money.

Right now, Canadians have ‘fair dealing’ rights, which means they are allowed to copy all sorts of things -without any permission- for all sorts of reasons, like reporting the news, for example. This help keeps speech free, encourages technical and innovation, and helps disrupt the monopolies that copyright creates.

There are a lot of people out there, however, that would like to charge you every time you listen to a song, even if you already bought the CD. They would like to make it so you can't play your new DVD on any computer except the ones they say you can. They would REALLY like to make it so Internet providers are forced to act like their own private police, to spy on their subscribers to see if any copying is happening unless these people say so, even if Canadian copyright law already gives you the right to make that copy. This is not an idle threat: they have been pushing for this for years, and have spent millions of dollars lobbying governments, buying off politicians, and getting their spin into the media.

If you like what Wireless Nomad is doing, and you want to keep your Internet provider and your Internet connection from the clutches of the American recording industry, and don't want to have your rights as a citizen and Internet user taken away, let your elected representative or local newspaper editor know! If you feel even more ambitious, and have a few bucks to spare, join
Online Rights Canada(onlinerights.ca), the organization created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Ottawa to fight for free electronic speech and fair electronic copyright.

The fight for control of our Internet is far from over, and this is a battle we can win. If we all sit by and just watch it happen, though, it's a battle we can easily lose.


LINK to BoingBoing story and other links