“While the court referral has attracted the lion share of attention, my weekly technology law column reports that there is an alternate secret strategy in which Canada plays a key role. According to recently leaked documents, the EU plans to use the Canada – EU Trade Agreement, which is nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions. The CETA IP chapter has already attracted attention due to EU pharmaceutical patent demands that could add billions to provincial health care costs, but the bigger story may be that the same chapter features a near word-for-word replica of ACTA.” Democracy? Bah humbug!
Sickening. I am not a happy Canadian ATM. However the following picture does at least make me smile;
https://twitter.com/Proud_Libtard/status/221735786121408512/photo/1/…
Ahh, so that is why the prime place for putting (littering with) election posters seems to be on low barriers between sidewalks and roads / grass / tram tracks… (like the barriers visible on few pictures here http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Combino_trams_in_PoznaÅ„ …though, OTOH, usings the barriers between the tracks – which also happens on a massive scale – might be also a form of defence)
CETA IP: a whale of a scam…
The leaked document is from February so obviously it doesn’t take last week’s vote into account: http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/10/alarm-over-ceta-appears-premature/ .
The Commission does tend to ignore votes in the Parliament and run rough-shod over the democratic process.
Any organisation who can include Peter Mandelson as a former member shows just shows its pedegree.
Secret deal. Martians, anal probing. Who knows?
I hope the generally honest people of Canada find the copy protected material is part of being civilized.
As we say in Canada, “WTF, eh?”
The only real differences between the Canadian and American copyright regimes are:
1) The “copyright collective”/media levy system. Basically the idea is that some degree of small-scale infringement is always going to occur no matter what, so a remedy is built into the system: a small levy is added to the cost of things like blank CDs, hard drives, MP3 players, etc. The funds go to an organization called (IIRC) Access Copyright, who then distributes it to professional writers, musicians, etc.
2) Partly as a result of the above, “private copying” is not generally something you can be prosecuted for in Canada – with “private copying” essentially meaning small-scale infringement that’s not done for profit. The idea being that the system already has a built-in/preemptive remedy for small-scale infringement, so that we don’t have to waste the resources of the court system for such trivial offenses.
So what part of that is uncivilized?
Making a home copy as you say on already taxed media is not the case Thom presents. He is against the concept of protecting copy protected works. He feels that any rogue nation should be able to simply disagree with intentional laws. He thinks that he should be able to steal any product from anywhere.
I am pretty sure Canada would be inclined to want protections. Many films and shows are being produced in Canada.
But, shows like Ice Pilots and Ice Road Truckers make me wonder how smart the Canadians are. Crazy lack of safety controls by the government.
So you have a grudge against Thom, got it. Not sure what that has to do with the story in particular or Canada in general, though…
Considering that there already ARE protections, I’d say that’s a fairly safe assumption to make.
Personally, I tend not to judge the intelligence of 35 million or so people, based solely on a dumb reality TV show filmed in the most remote part of the country… but maybe that’s just me.
Sooo…on which Canadian TV shows (or films) would you judge it? :> (judging not just the intelligence, but the whole “body of work”)
The “most Canadian” cinematographic motifs instilled in my mind seem to be La Femme Nikita, eXistenZ, Screamers, Canadian redshirt in Chicago, the old hippie from That ’70s Show, Cube, and the Canadians in various Stargate shows …though those might be not entirely representative, I guess?
(and yet, still, I sometimes wonder if Canada could be a nice place to live out your days – hm, now I wonder if that agreement will make population movements easier)
Overall, what’s with the “nearing its final stages of negotiation” – Oceania (if in a slightly different form, including parts of Eurasia and mostly excluding Latin America) has always been at war with Eastasia!
PS. Recently I was reminded about one (~”teen adventure”?) TV series, probably Canadian considering the ~fjord (or fjord-like lake), ~northern, forested environment, the overall progressiveness of the depicted ~family, and that, IIRC, they had a de Havilland Canada Beaver or Otter with floats at their disposal (also a mini-sub that was sabotaged and almost couldn’t surface, in one ep). Does that sound familiar / any idea what it was?
I don’t know that any TV series (or popular entertainment in general) would be a good basis for that judgement… but if I were to pick something that was truly a Canadian production (as opposed to a US production that was just filmed here for cost reasons), and was fairly popular in Canada, it would probably have to be something like Corner Gas, or Little Mosque on the Prairie, or Trailer Park Boys. Not that I’m really a fan of any of those series (though TPB had its moments).
Most of those, AFAIK, are technically US productions that happen to be shot in Canada for cost reasons – or co-productions, where a Canadian production company handles the on-location work for an American film studio/filmmaker. That seems to be the case for most film production in Canada, at least in English the only prominent Canadian filmmaker I can think of would be Atom Egoyan.
I’d say it depends on the part of Canada, it’s a big country (in terms of area, IIRC Canada is about the same size as all of Europe). I’m personally a fan of low population density, so I’d recommend just about any place east of Quebec City.
It’s a possibility… my understanding is that it’s generally easier to immigrate to Canada than to the US, and I know several people who lived & worked here for decades without having to apply for Canadian citizenship.
Hmmm… from the 80s? That sounds a bit like Danger Bay ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_bay ). IIRC, the guy who starred in that (played the father) also played the cranky, chain-smoking doctor in Battlestar Galatica.
Thank you very much, that is the series I had in mind!
(it also has a PL Wiki art there, among the very few, so maybe I’m not the only one feeling nostalgic – mostly for early 90s in my case, IIRC …but you know, to me then, the world depicted in the series still seemed a bit like from the future, I think ;/ )
Weird thing that, while remembering the father from Danger Bay, I didn’t connect him with BSG doc. Perhaps just how the time isn’t kind on us, wasn’t kind on him.
Thanks for those 3 suggestions, I might check them out ;p …and I also stumbled on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_Canadian_television_series and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Canada#Notable_films – that might keep me busy.
And overall, I do think that places are partly reflected in the media they produce. Of course that’s certainly not the case with all the titles I mentioned – with 70s it was just about the hippy (which I know was played by a Canadian …though, Wisconsin isn’t that far geographically, perhaps it blends over both ways? ;p), similar with Stargates (even if they sometimes alluded to the connection), or the redshirt in Chicago (just that, nothing more – BTW, IIRC, it had a hilarious twist with how it was usually produced in Toronto except for the episodes with action in… Toronto – those were filmed in… Chicago
)
But… the Nikita series from a decade+ ago seemed quite distinct from the usual US-made (or ~ordered) series – and it definitely differs from the present Nikita series, which seems “very US” indeed (even if it’s also being shot in Canada, I think…). eXistenZ and Cube, also seem outside the usual US influence (not sure about Screamers – but, Roy Dupuis made it “very Canadian” either way ;p )
Or North of the populated ~belt near US border? (seems we’re getting back to northern truckers after all)
And you know, many would prefer Canada…
Edited 2012-07-18 00:19 UTC