And Now Your Latest Outrage

LET'S RECAP. The dark scourge of the unitary executive and Darth Cheney finally is on the wane. So now Canada has a government that's behind the times, playing by the Karl Rove handbook six years later.

Okay.

And hey, you know, the music industry, so forward looking that despite years of grumbling from its consumers, decided that the only possible response to the digital environment was to sue people ---

--and then get angry when Steve Jobs came up with another way...

Well, sure, buttercup. That's keen. Let's get ourselves a new copyright act!

But...

Let's make sure it's the same bullshit, crippled, fucked up bill that Canadians overwhelmingly rejected months ago! Why not! Hey, kids, this isn't a shit sandwich! It's a shit baguette!

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians will be allowed to copy legally acquired music to their iPods and computers but would be banned from getting around any digital locks that companies might apply, under new legislation introduced in Parliament on Thursday.

The bill, introduced by Industry Minister Jim Prentice, would continue to exempt Internet service providers from liability for copyright violations by their subscribers, requiring them only to pass on notices of violations rather than to take down offending material as required in the United States.

It would also allow consumers to record television and radio programs for playing back at a later time, a practice known as time-shifting, but would prohibit people from keeping them indefinitely in a personal library of recordings.

In drafting the new legislation, the government said it faced the delicate task of balancing the rights of content creators with the realities and needs of everyday life in a digital world, and also realizing the difficulty of policing possible personal infringements.

Prentice said of the issue: "It touches each and every one of us, and it is no surprise to find so many different points of view with respect to copyright."

One online group, Fair Copyright for Canada, was set up on Facebook in advance of the new bill to protest against the government's copyright plans and has 40,000 members.

Its creator, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, focused on provisions under which it would be illegal to break digital locks.

"Prentice hands consumers a series of attention-grabbing new 'private rights' but then proceeds to take them away in the digital environment," he wrote. "All these rights force consumers to read the fine print -- you can shift a song or a television show, but once it's locked down, your rights disappear and your potential liability skyrockets."

Geist is the only guy you should be reading on this. Geist, Geist, Geist.

You want some forward-thinking, you know, 21st fucking century perspective? How about this:

In his book "The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism," British author Matt Mason points out the allegations of piracy are as old as technology itself, adding it's actually a sign of innovation, not thievery.

"Some of America's greatest innovators were thought of as pirates," he writes. "When Thomas Edison invented the phonographic record player, musicians branded him a pirate out to steal their work and destroy the live music business, until a system was established so everyone could be paid royalties."

Edison, he points out, went on to invent filmmaking and demanded licensing fees from anyone making movies with his technology. This led to the creation of a band of filmmaking pirates, including William Fox - the founder of 20th Century Fox - who headed to the wild frontier of Hollywood in the early 1900s to become the movie moguls of their day.

Piracy is not going away, Saade said, adding that the television industry can adapt to rapidly changing viewing habits if it avoids making the colossal mistakes made by the music industry.

"What you have to do is make sure that you are ahead of the curve - making your content available at any time, at any place, for anyone who wants it, and you don't put so many restrictions in that you go the way of the music industry, which was basically criminalizing its own audience," he said.

Instead, networks and broadcasters have to give technologically savvy viewers what they want.

"So what you do in the digital space is ensure that if you want to see one of our shows, we're going to give you an extremely high-quality version of that show," he said.

"You may have to sacrifice about 30 seconds of commercials here and there, certainly not the kind of commercials you'd see on broadcast, but if you want to watch it on your iPod, if you want to watch it on your cellphone, your computer - we've got to make it available. That's the only way we can get ahead of pirating."

I swear to God, following the copyright strategy of THE MUSIC INDUSTRY in 2008 reminds me of nothing less than my Grade 9 Business Teacher, who said with great gravity, "no matter what happens, you're always going to need to know punch cards."

Join us. Join us, here in the new, up to date world. It's shiny. Come on!
Jesus, will somebody up there in Ottawa please remove their head from their brown flower? Like, for five seconds?

And for now, gentlemen, ladies, start your letters...