Leaks show U.S. swayed Canada on copyright bill | Hacker News Reader

Leaks show U.S. swayed Canada on copyright bill

thestar.com

50 pointscomatose_kid7 comments

The leaks supposedly show Canada bending over backwards to satisfy the US desire for harsher copyright laws... but I think the US was very neatly played. The Canadian government said basically "please write our copyright bill for us and we'll introduce it into parliament" -- and then watched as that bill never went anywhere, because no sane politician supported it. Then Canadian diplomats went back to their US counterparts and said "gee, sorry, we couldn't get that bill passed... you know what it's like when opposition parties control the parliament".

Net outcome? Canada gets brownie points for cooperating with the US, even though they didn't do anything.

So now the US comes back and says "you have a majority government. Try again."

I disagree. The only reason the bill didn't pass is because the Conservatives had a minority government. Every time the bill was introduced, the government was forced into an election. That meant the bill died. It's been re-introduced over and over again in various forms. The Conservatives now have a majority government for up to 5 years. They can introduce any bill they want and force it through. Copyright is not big enough of a topic for enough people to get worked up over at elections for it to matter.

I wish our politicians were that conniving. They're not. The Harper government really does want to appease the U.S. government.

Yeah. New copyright bills have been put on the table a bunch of times in the last few years (C-60 in 06, C-61 in 08, and C-32 last year). Every single one of them just got pushed aside as governments dissolves/elections declared or whatever. They've never been put up for a vote, and frankly, I'm scared of what would happen if they ever did go up for votes.

These bills keep coming back like zombies and they will until the political climate is right. We're already paying taxes on CD-Rs as if anyone in the world burns music to them

As a Canadian, this is disappointing, but not entirely surprising.

And although I can't say that I agree with "Wikileaks the brand" and how they've gone about dealing with actors, issues and accomplices, it's a service that they've obtained and released information like this. Thanks to them, I can peel a layer off my tinfoil hat.

And Australia (AFACT vs iiNET)

And New Zealand (new Copyright Bill)

And probably many other countries.

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