After last night’s copyright town hall in Toronto, the press (Search Engine’s Jesse Brown, the Globe and Mail, and I) had a chance to scrum Industry Minister Tony Clement.
(My apologies for the quality of the video. It was my first attempt at recording radio and video, while trying to adjust levels, look at my notebook and ask questions at the same time! I had to drop the video a couple of times in order to do it all. Clearly, I need to find a better way to do this.)
The government is in the middle of cross country consultations as it prepares a new copyright bill. Most of these are invite-only roundtable discussions, but the event last night was open to the first 300 or so people who registered online.
As several people have pointed out, including Jesse Brown, the music industry was quick to get to the registration list. Here’s what the University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist says:
My own view is that it was so over-the-top that their message was lost in light of such an obvious orchestrated attempt to stack the deck. This was not a real townhall that brought together differing views, but rather an all-out effort by the industry to scoop up the available seats, guarantee themselves a dominant voice, and exclude many alternative voices in the process.
You can watch the town hall for yourself by checking out this wmv file.
Were you there at the town hall, or did you watch it online? What do you think of Clement’s comments in the video? Let us know by posting a comment below.
I couldn't believe the Minister's crack about the industry types "having the night off". Looked to me like they were all on duty!
I didn't watch the town hall but I had the privilege of following @JesseBrown's tweets, and that was almost as good.
Good video, Interesting to get the Ministers perspective of things. I know it is a tough balancing act and just hope that it tips slightly in favour of consumers not corporations. I too was following @Jessebrown's tweets and the #copycon tag as well. Wish they had a roundtable in Victoria, guess i need to get off my butt and submit one online.
These are very general statements made by the minister, and people's voice aren't heard by the ministry.
Like one of the reporter asked, no one in toronto neighbourhood even know this meeting exists.
As a long time active participant in this area of policy I was sent a special non-invitation to Thursday's town hall http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/7057 . I watched online, and couldn't participate as the client didn't seem to work on Linux for submitting comments/etc. I am glad I didn't spend the hundreds of dollars it would have taken to head to Toronto given it was obvious that the old-economy labels far out-spent those who are trying to protect future creators.
The assault by a few industry associations and other special interest groups of rightsholders was extreme. Yes, the recording industry talks about artists, but the policy changes they promote are largely aimed at protecting their historical business models from artists. They dug at emotions, talking about friends loosing jobs — and seek to put the entire blame on the economic transition they are feeling on "copyright infringement" and allegedly weak Canadian law. The reality is that Canadian law is stronger than US laws in many ways.
There are many reasons for the decline in the importance of the recording industry in our economy, and most of these reasons are good news for the most important parts of the music industry (composers and performers) and other copyright dependant industries.
The cost of the production and distribution of music and other creativity has reduced such that these specialised banks (AKA: record labels) are no longer required for many creators who are able to skip these intermediaries and make a higher percentage of the money that music fans are paying. And music fans are paying, despite the fact the major labels are rudely throwing this money on the floor by trying to dictate not only where music fans can access music, but down to the brands of allied technology vendors they are "allowed" to access it with. Graham Henderson doesn't even acknowledge the existance of eMusic which is what I subscribe to, largely because his foreign-label bosses refuse to make "their" music available there for legal purchase. Why do they oppose eMusic, the 2'nd largest online music retailer? Because eMusic works on any brand of audio device, and in my case even comes with a custom download tool that works on Linux (Note: Not required — you can purchase music from eMusic with any standard browser and access the music on any standard audio equipment — from any vendor!)
The largest market for music has always been youth, and only someone who believes in perpetual motion machines and a flat earth wouldn't look at the rise in money spent by this market on cell phones (and related fees, including ringtones) and video games and recognise that there won't be much left for old-style music distribution.
The reality is that eve if there wasn't a *SINGLE* copyright infringement in Canada we would see a similar (and I suspect worse) decline in the recording industry. Their claim that changing copyright in a way that attacks a majority of Canadian rightsholders will save them is simply wrong!
I posted what I would have tried to say if I were there at http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/5043 . I suspect after the direct attacks on Canadian rightsholders by the extremists in the room (and I lump the recording industry executives with the "proud pirate") would have made what I said come out far more angry. Even a few days later just thinking about these attacks on rightsholders have me fuming.
This is a neo-Con Convention meeting with the big Corporate Media companies that is very biased. Hardly any end-user consumers were allowed to speak out publicly in this practically unknown so-called "Townhall Meeting"!
Shame on Clement and his neo-Con cronies!
In the context of CBC's new copyright policy, what are my rights to the text that I have submitted here? I very much have enjoyed @jessebrown's comments to the CBC. Want to know who owns the IP of this post.
This is a question that is answered by Intense Debate as they host the comments, not the CBC.
http://intensedebate.com/tos
"hereby do and shall grant IntenseDebate a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license to use, edit, modify, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, perform, and otherwise fully exploit the User Submissions in connection with the Site, the Service and IntenseDebate's (and its successors and assigns') business …" blah, blah, blah.
Summary: You own the copyright to your own submissions, but by submitting you have granted Intense Debate an extremely liberal license.
In my case I log in using my IntenseDebate account, and all my comments would still be available viahttp://intensedebate.com/people/russellmcormond even if CBC decided to close this site down.