yo!
please don't vote liberal. i beg you.
sam bulte, your liberal candidate, is quite adamant in her views on intellectual property rights. and while you probably don't give two shits about this, it might interest you if your right to download and store music on your ipod was drastically restricted. or if your right to copy quotations from an e-book for use in an academic essay or blog entry was taken away. these are the types of things you can expect from Bill C-60, canada's attempt to copy the US' oppressive copyright act, the DMCA. sam bulte is for digital rights management that takes away fair dealing rights. for example, she is for technology that limits you from playing a DVD you bought in germany in your canadian DVD player. she supports companies whose CDs install malicious software and spyware on consumers' computers (the sony rootkit PR fiasco). sony denied the problem and then even when they offered an uninstall (which did nothing but infect PCs with more crap), they refused to acknowledge that what they did left computers vulnerable to viruses. they are now being sued by numerous organizations. sam bulte would not only be for legislation that allows this type of thing to happen, but for legislation that prevents you from removing the technology from your computer. and currently in the US, it is law. we don't need that here. we don't need to repeat the same mistakes that allow innocent people to be sued by the RIAA for millions of dollars they clearly cannot afford.
to make it worse, sam bulte is hosting a circle jerk fundraiser on jan. 19, only a few convenient days short of the election. i call it a circle jerk because it costs $250 a person for the dinner, and the attendees are mostly copyright lobbyists. this is a dirty way to get money, and certainly doesn't help the liberals' "corrupt" image.
to top it all off, she ironically declares she is for artist rights, when she is nothing of the sort. as indie-record store owner john bowker sez, "[t]his is like saying Wal-Mart employees support low wages and cheap imported goods."
she is frightened of michael geist, (a law professor at my university who is also the canadian research chair in internet and e-commerce law) and EFF-supporters (like me), whom she called "pro-user zealots." geist smartly responded on his blog:
"I suspect that Ms. Bulte thinks she is talking about little more than a few file sharers who want access to music that, depending on your perspective, is either free or paid for by the private copying levy. This is where she is simply wrong. I obviously don't think those concerned with balanced copyright are zealots, but I know that when she uses this characterization, she is calling the nine justices of the Supreme Court of Canada zealots. She is calling Canadian artists such as Jane Siberry, Matthew Good, Barenaked Ladies, Bob Wiseman (formerly of Blue Rodeo), Charlie Angus, and Neil Leyton zealots. She is calling the provincial ministers of education zealots. She is calling publishers such as Irwin Law and the 19 professors who contributed to In the Public Interest zealots. She is calling historians such as Jack Granatstein a zealot. She is calling the thousands of Canadians who have contributed to Creative Commons Canada zealots. She is calling the hundreds of bloggers and thousands of Internet users who have become engaged on this issue zealots. Indeed, judging by the video, she is calling many of her constituents zealots."
if bulte won, she is likely to push Bill C-60, given her position as parliamentary secretary for the heritage minister. this is bad.
in the last election, the NDP candidate, peggy nash, lost by only 3,000 votes. this is good.
we can get her out. if the next candidate was only three thousand votes away, you know we can oust her, and save canada.
doctorow sums it all up | ndp candidate peggy nash website | orc's coverage plus a copyright pledge | why bill c-60 sucks
