Canada Proposes New Regime to Block and Deindex Pirate Sites
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26821388 - April 2021 (90 comments)
Actually it's rather unclear whether there's even a proposal.
I'm increasingly uncomfortable keeping my head down about this. It needs to be addressed, this concern needs to be signal-boosted somehow among the majority of people who just don't fucking give a shit. People shouldn't be okay with this. Most people are completely oblivious to the second and third order effects that are hurting them as a result of the INSANE IP laws that are on the books now. Is there any hope for real change? I'm ready to start donating some double digit percentage of my income for a start. My time too.
If you're opposed to switching party affiliation, the EFF is probably what you're looking for.
I guess I'm saying I'm increasingly sure that this is the hill I want to die on. I want to do more than just donate. I want to get something done. I am ready to let this issue live constantly in my head as more than something that makes me mad. I want to fix it. This needs to change. The narrative needs to change.
P.S. Louis Rossman's campaign for the Right to Repair is probably a good place to toss some money.
P.P.S. To be clear I don't think we should abolish IP law entirely, just turn down the volume like 70%.
Other options, scream at the void, or get rich enough to try and force Supreme Court cases.
Late P.S. This[1] demonstrates my point on backing such campaigns. The major parties applauded the Right to Repair's arguments, and then voted down the law as there were "too many questions." A campaign alone won't be enough to sway them.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx8w7b/colorado-denied-its-c...
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/elizabeth-mays-so-cal...
I've also noticed Andrew Coyne of the Globe pointing out the crazy in recent federal internet proposals.
Our best bet is to create technology they cannot block. Make it impossible for them to enforce their ridiculous laws. Decentralized, anonymous networks that everyone can use to communicate. If we can send arbitrary data to each other freely and without fear of consequences, their little data monopolies and regulations won't matter.
The idea is to increase the government tyranny necessary to enforce laws we don't agree with. We'll eventually find their limits.
Yes, develop technology that is censorship resistant, but we ALSO need to fight for more sane copyright rules.
> we ALSO need to fight for more sane copyright rules
I don't think there will ever be "sane" copyright rules. Copyright itself is insane. It was sane before computers existed. Back then you had to be a major industry player in order to infringe copyright at scale. You had to own things like printing presses. Now copying data is trivial. All software has access to a memcpy function. All you need to do to copy files is hold down Ctrl + V until your hard drive is completely filled with copies. It's trivial to send these copies to anyone over the internet or sneakernet.
Copyright is insane and utterly incompatible with the era of information and computers. I hope it's abolished within my lifetime.
> and if the tech can't be stopped without outlawing general purpose computing, they might outlaw general purpose computing before they admit defeat
This is a given in my opinion. The copyright battle is really a battle for computing freedom. It's our computers, if we want to copy data it's our choice and nobody cares about some made up copyright monopoly. The computer obeys us. The only way they can possibly enforce copyright is by making it so computers obey them instead. This will destroy free software and free computing as we know it today. I'd rather the entire copyright industry goes bankrupt than lose that.
It's not just copyright either. Governments the world over have an obvious interest in controlling computers because of cryptography. It used to be a military tool and because of computers it became democratized, widely available and used by every citizen. Cryptography can defeat governments, militaries, judges... It's subversive technology. They think it's too powerful for mere citizens to have access to.
However, on the point of copyrights opposition of free software, even though I agree with you, you will find the most surprising of people disagreeing. I, holding the opinion that all copyright is obsolete, once foolishly tried to debate RMS at a conference. For some free software advocates, copyright is essential to the existence of copyleft and copyleft is essential for free software.
Like all copyrighted works, free software suffers from the exact same infringement problems. People violate licenses every day. Nobody is gonna go to court over it. The best people can hope for is for some organization dedicated to GPL enforcement to do it for them. Resources are scarce so they're only gonna enforce the GPL strategically for important projects and against important violators.
I don't agree with Stallman on this subject. He depends on copyright but at the same time condemns the hardware features designed by the copyright industry to enforce copyright. I feel like I can't believe in both at the same time.
There's a difference between the legal construct of copyright and the technical enforcement measures foisted on buyers or computing hardware. Wanting to rely on the legal construct while avoiding the later strikes me as excessively idealistic... but we're talking about RMS here.
It's not exactly analogous, but it seems somewhat similar to supporting enforceable stop signs and being against using a camera to do so.
If I purchase a digital good and agree not to redistribute it, I should be liable for breach of contract. If someone already distributed something and I download it I have no agreement with the manufacturer and I'm free to do whatever you want.
You can see it like this: if you sell so many copies of your product that you can't keep track of who's breaching your redistribution contract, that's a market "tax" for selling passively so well.
I don't see why, as a society, we should automate this legal process for big corporations selling products and leave it for small businesses that have a client who is not paying.
This is happening uniquely because they can use a part of their profits for lawmaking.
Well, technically, stop paying for movies and music. You have to be okay with big-budget productions not existing any more, though.
We already have forms of doing this right now of course, but the old, centralized, man-in-the-middle-who-steal-all-the-value, pyramidal, egotistical way are still coexisting with the new ways.
What needs to die is a way of life that is in the end burning and eating all of our planet resources like there's no tomorrow.
The internet revolution is here to stay and it can change our way of life for the better or for the worse, if we just let them impose their monopoly in a insane global level. If this happens instead, it will be pretty hard to get out of it as this new class of rulers will have power never seen before.
That won't do anything about the second and third order effects like DRM, not being able to choose your TV or game console's OS, etc.
What we really need is for the proletariat to stop putting up with this shit and take some power back from the borgois monopolists.
I think we need a political campaign to remove power from the hands of the government and putting it back on the market.
Email me matt@engn.com if interested in discussing larger plans. Forgive if I take awhile to respond, I have to deal with severe chronic pain, so that slows me down quite a lot - a few solutions on the horizon though, so hopefully at some point I won't have that burden slowing me down.
Re: from another comment if yours, " guess I'm saying I'm increasingly sure that this is the hill I want to die on. I want to do more than just donate. I want to get something done. I am ready to let this issue live constantly in my head as more than something that makes me mad. I want to fix it. This needs to change. The narrative needs to change." -
Maybe you can be helpful just in giving me a sounding board to give feedback as to what's not clear enough, etc. There's a whole ecosystem I want to develop, its different layers, along with educating about government policy to propose.
If you scroll down to the conclusion [2] there is an email address that you can email your comments to. Be aware that these comments will be made public.
Now, I’m not so sure. Content blocking on YouTube and the occasional DMCA takedown notice on a Google web search tend to be the only hints you get of piracy online.
Most people used to pirate all kinds of media, now we’ve Spotify and YouTube and Netflix and Disney+, etc. It’s never been easier to skip the physical disc and listen or watch media for free.
That said, I could see unintended consequences. For example, this might be intended for piracy but we should keep in mind that our ISPs are often the ones owning significant media properties in Canada.
Imagine Bell Canada getting the green light to block piracy services and deciding that any service which lets you watch content internationally, such as a VPN service, should be blocked in Canada and the content along with it?
At what point would ISPs interpret this as a way to protect their IP-based business models?
And at what point might the system open up to DMCA or YouTube style content strikes vs proper determination of copyright infringement. I’d be furious if GitHub repos started disappearing when tools, especially for education, are distinct from copyrighted materials being shared.
I could even imagine a future where adblockers are considered copyright infringement because they modify the page or stream that the rights holder intended to serve. Once you allow ISPs to meddle with traffic on their own, they might not know where to stop, given a few decades.
They are overall incredibly biased against illegal content online and have a huge stake in that. I don't think it makes sense for the same company who produces content and controls a lot of the media to also be the ones blocking "pirate" content.
I wonder how this works with the ISP's that buy internet access wholesale from Bell and Rogers. For example my ISP is pretty small and I don't even think they forward those intimidating letters from production studios nor do I think they would care to enforce random IPs/sites to block. They are just too small of an operation to care/worry about this and wasting money on it. So will Bell and Rogers end up just blocking it on their end and not even giving these wholesale buyers a chance to manage the network?
Overall I really do not trust Bell or Rogers and I do not trust them with blocking things. I really do not want to have to end up using a VPN connected to another country all the time simply to avoid blockades all over the web.
Overall I feel like this just opens the box to further blocking of things not specifically piracy related. You give the government/ISP's a CM and they are going to ask for a meter later.
Such services are not free apart from YT but even YT charges you if you want to wztch movies.
I do agree though, the digital divide these days is not whether you have Internet but rather how many services you have and how expensive your monthly bills are compared to food and rent, etc.
But it's a lot less frequent. I can't imagine as many people would use BitTorrent to download MP3s now that YouTube and Spotify can stream songs for free, for example. Even back in the era of P2P downloading, I would often listen to free streaming online radio stations because it was easier than having to make a playlist. Playlist quality, for example, can win out over piracy for folks who've tried AI recommendations from Spotify.
I do agree though, the UX of pirated material can sometimes be much higher. For example, some services force ads even after you pay them (Hulu, cable TV) and other ads are completely un-skippable (Blu-Ray trailers).
But I'd maintain that "the exact same thing for free" often isn't entirely free, and that at scale, industry can offer services that are higher quality than that of piracy at a competitive price and with less risk. They could, they just often don't.
And I'd point out there's a minimum age and computer-awareness to use piracy services. Someone has to help you set it up, for example, help you understand what's good or not. Perhaps even filter content for you.
By comparison, I can pay $X per year to Disney+ and know that whatever the kids watch is quality content and they know how to navigate the interface. It works roughly as well on cheap Android tablets and TV sticks as it does in a more expensive computer browser.
That said, even piracy can be paid, rather than free. People pay for VPNs, they pay for Usenet servers, or sometimes cloud bittorrent services, or faster downloads on file hosting sites. People even pay for piracy with their time, waiting or finding or setting up their content to download.
I can easily imagine that in the right climate, pirate services spring up to make it easier to watch content without caring about where it came from. You see this today with alternative app stores for example. Even legitimate paid services like Crunchyroll and YouTube were started at first by uploads of pirated content with better UX on top.
Commerce is everywhere, ultimately people pay what they want to pay and pick and choose the experience they prefer, I think... as long as DRM and device lockdowns and -- as we're talking about here, internet firewalls -- allow for such innovation, of course.
Apparently your comment may be made public, FYI.
I encourage everyone to make your voice heard, we’ve all had our interactions with pirated media. I learned graphic design after pirating my first copy of Photoshop, now Adobe has a customer for life. Think about how you can demonstrate the tangible (and intangible) value of piracy on the economy and society as a whole. The value is obvious for us, but clearly less obvious to lawmakers.
Also worth noting that the most effective piracy measures have come from market forces: competition with the actual process of piracy. Netflix has effectively eliminated the need for movie piracy and did so simply by providing a simpler option. They use industry developed DRM. Who needs government enforcement of IP?
On Reddit there was a community for cannabis delivery that is geobanned in Canada once legalization happened to crush the illicit competition.
https://www.mpa-apac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Australi...
It seems unreasonable to have websites openly flouting copyright law. Additionally, for software like games, the files are usually full of malware.
I don't mind, of course, but it goes to show that the whole thing is bogus and a different set of laws apply depending on how much money you have.
Does this mean the courts would permanently terminate someone’s access to the Internet? If so, why stop there? “You used this electricity to power your computer and this water supply to stay hydrated during your criminal activities, so we are banning access to both for life”.
It’s also chilling to see deindexing from search engines proposed. Canada has free speech problems already, for example recently with a parent being prevented from speaking to the public about his situation (https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/24/father-gagged-found-gui...), where he wants to stop his daughter (a minor) from receiving life altering procedures without his consent. That suppression of speech is authoritarian enough, but in the future I could see this proposed anti-piracy law setting a precedent for deindexing news, opinions, studies, and other content that run afoul of their ever-expanding definitions of “hate speech”.
There are reasons why criminals under 18 are often treated much differently in the legal system and why that criminal history before 18 often doesn't extend past 18. We know kids do dumb shit and that's why there are legal protections in place for it.
So it's insane to me how the government has tried to silence a parent for speaking out and has basically forced him to allow a child to do something like this and he gets no say. It's insane both how he is being silenced and how this is even happening in the first place. So I agree with this case being extremely relevant to the topic of website blocking. Because who is to say once a law like this in in place it doesn't start to get extended to infringing on other kinds of free speech and things the government doesn't like?
From my understanding our free speech laws already are not as strong as America and I think we should all be opposed to anything that starts to breech what we do have, like these new laws.
> mitigate regret, remorse.
There are any number of studies [0] of trans "Desistance" all of which overwhelmingly show the number one reason people regret transitioning is societal, familial, or workplace treatment. The remorse comes from things like, for instance, a father refusing to use the correct pronouns or refer to his child by their chosen name. This remorse rarely comes from an actual rejection of the gender identity the individual transitioned to.
0: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/dispelling-myths-...
I don't think consent is the issue. The problem is two-fold from my point of view:
- Kids being subjected to hormone therapy and puberty blockers (while they can't even get a tattoo), which is pure child abuse
- The silencing of opposing viewpoints
Sounds like they’re fine with his transphobia. He just can’t talk about it.
Still, wow. Is this really how we want to do things?
>“It is only how he expresses those views privately to [Maxine] and publically to third parties that is affected.”
This does not compute.