Digital Copyright Canada

Copyright is to creativity like water is to humans: too little and you dehydrate and die, too much and you drown and die. At this current point in the evolution of copyright law, some of the worse problems we are observing -- in my mind including the massive amount of online infringement of multimedia -- is as a result of "too much" copyright, not "too little".

And in response to this dynamic, the Conservative Party had this to say in their Speech from the Throne earlier today:

Our Government will proceed with legislation to modernize Canada’s copyright laws and ensure stronger protection for intellectual property.

Techdirt has a useful article about how useful software patents actually are.

He points out that :
- companies will usually only patent stuff that would get disclosed anyway, relying on trade secret protection for the rest;
- Microsoft tells their employees to "never search, view, or speculate about patents", partly due to the worries over "willful infringement" and partly because you wouldn't learn anything from them anyway.

An Article on the Globe's web site by WOJCIECH GRYC AND JESSE HELMER seems to be calling for a balanced approch to copyright. It also is sugesting that folks contact their MP.

article

A trailer for the upcoming documentary was posted to Michael Geist's YouTube channel.

Read full press release from the Competition Bureau:

Yahoo! Inc. and Google Inc. have confirmed that they are abandoning a proposed search advertising agreement in Canada, resolving any potential Competition Bureau concerns about the impact of this proposed deal on Internet search advertising in Canada.

I need to comment on this historical time, with the USA electing President Barack Hussein Obama II. I believe it marks an important point in the USA's history in particular, but also in the world. The relationship between the US and the world community has been strained, and I think that President Obama has some unique qualities to try to improve that relationship.

An article by Pauline Tam in todays Ottawa Citizen seems to be pressing for a general relaxation of the requirments for search warrant.

The article having the title of "Fake IDs used to defraud health system" discusses the efforts made to locate folks who use Canada's Health care system, ththough they are not entitled to benifits from the system. However the article seems to also attempt to persuade the reader that Canada's Privacy Laws are so strong, that they hamstring attempts by Law enforcement to investigate this sort of case.

A blog article by Dana Blankenhorn provides some links, including to Groklaw. I'm curious what other people have been reading, and whether they think this could be the beginning of the end of information/mental process patents?

Question: If software is distributed unbundled with any specific hardware (ie: "not tied to any machine"), then are the methods it implements patentable? I have no problem with a patent regime that applies to those shipping hardware/software bundles, but not to those simply shipping/sharing software. This would in my mind largely solve the incompatibility between software patents and FLOSS.

I was emailed this morning about an article by Jessica Merritt listing 100 different resources for learning about FLOSS.

Some people may have heard the French Senate voted overwhelmingly in favour of a three-strikes law (BBC article). Most people recognize that with the excessive amounts of statutory dammages available in countries like Canada and the USA, it is really a one-strike law given after being bankrupted you can't afford ISP services.

The difference seems to be in the evidence required. Like a DMCA take-down notice these are "accusations" of infringing activity, which is why it is often called "Claim and Censor". Even misinformed US presidential candidates who promoted the problem are being hit with this flaw. I don't know the details of the French law, but I suspect that it is "three unfounded accusations" and not three cases of actual proven infringement.