Wikileaks cables reveal US pressuring Canada on IP enforcement | Hacker News Reader

Wikileaks cables reveal US pressuring Canada on IP enforcement

arstechnica.com

126 pointslotusleaf198723 comments

This is one of many reasons that the majority of Canadians fear a Conservative majority. Stephen Harper would likely push through a Canadian equivalent of the DCMA.

This is one of the many reason why I will not be voting for conservatives tomorrow

While "many" is very vague, I think the vast majority of Canadians don't have a clue about IP, anti-circumvention, DRM or the DMCA (I mostly know this as I've talked about these topics with non-technical people).

However it is a component of the general feeling that the conservatives are essentially Republicans-lite, basically using the Republican's "southern strategy" of media manipulation and fear, anti-crime propaganda, subtle racism and fear of the "other" to pander to a particular class of voters.

In my opinion (Canadian currently in the US).

In the US it has traditionally been the Democrats who have had stronger ties to Hollywood and the recording industry. The DCMA, for example was both signed and supported by Clinton. At this point, unfortunately, their support is pretty widespread on both sides of the aisle.

As a side note, Harper is a former libertarian (which obviously deviated from his principles). http://www.quebecoislibre.org/06/060129-2.htm

I'd be voting against the Conservatives in this election if it weren't for the fact that my right to vote has been taken away from me since I haven't resided in Canada for longer than 5 years. So much for "citizenship". http://www.letcanadiansvote.com

Edit: Someone seems to have assumed I'm not Canadian. I am. I've got Loyalists and Quebecois for ancestors. My family's been in Canada since before there was a country called Canada. Nor do I have dual citizenship (although my children do).

I haven't lived in Canada for the past five years, should I get to vote in Canadian elections too?

If you are a citizen, then yes. Of fucking course you should.

If you're still citizen of the country, then you have a stake in what happens there.

It's funny that people think voting changes things like this, especially when the issue in question is something that was drafted up by a room full of lawyers and lobbyists.

It should change, and surprisingly it's possible: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2484677

The roomful of lawyers and lobbyists aren't the ones who get to pass the law. If you're Canadian then you likely know that a Harper/Conservative majority would love to ram this stuff through, whereas the other parties aren't so inclined. Given that we've had minority governments (a foreign concept to Americans) for the last three elections, a few votes can actually sway things quite a bit in this election.

We have a lot of these issues here in Australia thanks to the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) [1] — though to be fair, that's not the only cause.

Thankfully, due to the way statutory damages are legislated here, we haven't seen the MPAA/RIAA vs. Joe Bloggs cases in our court system. Roadshow Films (and friends) did try and sue a major ISP, however (and lost) [2].

[1]: http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2004/08/03/austral... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadshow_Films_v_iiNet

Doesn't surprise me they're pressuring. What does surprise me is that we didn't capitulate the moment they asked. Now that's change I can believe in while it lasts.

Another obvious conclusion brought to us by Wikileaks. Have any of the leaks brought us anything productive? It's apparent that they are using information as a weapon and are only using it to attack the US Government.

Jullian Assange is "obsessed with power"[1] and is using the information leaking selectively and with very purposeful timing. I'm not surprised that those in the government are calling for his assassination. What I don't understand is why the IT press is still painting a neutral to positive picture of the organization and not demanding that he leak all the information that he has. What ever happened to the proposed bank leak, presumably about Citibank?

[1] http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/02/09/wikileaks-f...

"Have any of the leaks brought us anything productive?"

How about all the democratic uprisings in the middle east?

All the leaks are pure facts. The truth is always worth being told. Would you rather live in a dream world that really doesn't exist?

Thanks for demonstrating a black-or-white fallacy and ignoring all my points. It's apparent that Wikileaks has a agenda and the truth is not it.

You implied that Wikileaks had not done anything useful. He gave the recent Middle-Eastern uprisings as a counter-example. It looks to me like he answered your point. It also looks from your previous contributions like you are a troll.

Giving Wikileaks any credit for those uprisings is a troll.

The truth is always worth being told.

I count this as a point against Wikileaks as an organization. Would you not agree they've engaged in a considerable amount of spin? At the very least don't you think that "Collateral Murder" was not simply a matter of "pure facts"?

Collateral Murder was one big unedited video sandwhiched between some editorializing. There was spin, but the pure facts were not obscured or omitted.

Interesting, I had read (although I can't find the link offhand) that the Collateral Murder video was, in fact, edited by Wikileaks.

I agree that Collateral Murder was definitely spun into propaganda, but I think it's important to mention that they also released the unedited version. The Collateral Murder edited version is a clear case of spin and an agenda, but it is mitigated by the fact that they also gave the complete version.

As for their strategy of slowly releasing the leaks, that's more gray to me. I can understand the rationale that it is so all of the leaks get the attention they deserve, but I also wonder how biased their decisions on what to release first are.

That said, I think they've done far more for revealing the truth than they have for spinning or concealing it.

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