208: Pirates of the Frozen Wastes

[Andy Chalk]

Pirates of the Frozen Wastes

Canada's videogame industry is the third largest in the world, trailing only behind those of the U.S. and Japan. Yet the friendly, soft-spoken nation is under increasing pressure from its southern neighbor to conform to stricter standards of piracy prevention. Andy Chalk examines whether the U.S.'s heated rhetoric is enough to melt through the hardy igloo of Canadian resistance to copyright reform.

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[ShadowKirby]

I don't think anything will change anytime soon. We're probably going in election this autumn... and then spring if neither the Conservatives or Liberals get majority.

 

[Lord_Panzer]

I don't think anything will change anytime soon. We're probably going in election this autumn... and then spring when neither the Conservatives or Liberals get majority.

Fixed that for you.

Yeah, nothing is going to change anytime soon, and from the looks of it, it doesn't really need to. We're doing just fine, aren't we?

 

[Clemenstation]

Yeah, nothing is going to change anytime soon, and from the looks of it, it doesn't really need to. We're doing just fine, aren't we?

We sure are. Thanks Michael Geist, for watching our backs!

I'm surprised the Canadian telecommunications oligarchy wasn't mentioned though. Wedged between Rogers and Bell, most of the country doesn't even have the option to download content because of bandwidth capping and throttling.

 

[Trevel]

Well, in some parts of the country it's Shaw and Bell instead of Rogers and Bell.

Thankfully, the Government seems to be catching on that Canada is a third-rate nation, telecomwise. Don't know if they'll do anything good about it, mind, but it's a nice thought.

 

[Leifur]

Not canadian myself, but i hugely support that it's not so strict with piracy.

 

[Sparkky]

excellent article.
and I was surprised as well when they didn't mention that rogers and bell make Canada their ***** when it comes to internet
I know Shaw has infrastructure on the west, but they rent from bell in the east, and if any of my packets head that direction.
BAM
shaped and filtered + 20 ping.

 

[Sanaj]

Yeah, I don't think stricter copyright laws will be implemented anytime soon here.

Oh, and the fact that the United States is adding us to their 2009 priority watch list is laughable.

Andy Chalk- "Canada's piracy rate of 32 percent is among the 25 lowest in the world, below countries like France (41 percent),
Spain (42 percent) and Greece (57 percent) and drastically lower than high-piracy countries like Russia (68 percent), Thailand (76 percent) and China (a staggering 80 percent)."

Thanks for the excellent article Andy Chalk.

 

[Jsnoopy]

I believe the U.S.'s position can be summed up in one short video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYSYipouABI
LULZ!

 

[gtez]

EA Sports 4 studios in Canada. EA Burnaby, EA Montreal, BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Montreal.

 

[JustRadek]

Pretty concise and very well-researched article; definitely a good read.

Might want to check "The Needles" link, though, as it gives me a 404.

 

[The Patient Mental]

Very good article! The, dare I say, *Real* canadian opinion about piracy and a decent explanation of "Canada's" attitude towards heavy handed US policy. Piracy, when looked at objectively, is wrong, however, gouging every penny out of consumers at every turn, putting unfair pressure on governments to help you do it, and driving the majority of consumers to establish unhealthy pseudo addictions to entertainment - to the point where if one thinks about it one has to consider the majority of ones life will be spent pursuing said mental occupations - is also very wrong. Bottom line entertainment industry, you brought this on yourself. It was you who forced the craving with multimillion dollar advertising campaigns convincing us that we must play this, see this, hear this - fine, but can we afford it all? No. So perhaps it is more like the child stealing the bread his family can't afford for itself. To a person, all of us could rationalize that situation, we could understand in that case. So, tounge in cheek I ask if popular piracy isn't the only logical outcome is a consumer based society that can't really afford it all anymore?

 

[Weaver]

Well written! It's nice for Canada to get some press time
I think the largest problem with the conservative bill C-61 is that it's not merely enforcing strict IP laws, but allowing large corporations to walk all over anyone who downloads an MP3 and sue them for tens of thousands of dollars.

Furthermore, IPSs can not give out information about their clients unless they are issued a warrant by the government to give the police information on a person. I have no doubts the conservatives would love to change that.

 

[NDBurke]

Well written! It's nice for Canada to get some press time
I think the largest problem with the conservative bill C-61 is that it's not merely enforcing strict IP laws, but allowing large corporations to walk all over anyone who downloads an MP3 and sue them for tens of thousands of dollars.

Furthermore, IPSs can not give out information about their clients unless they are issued a warrant by the government to give the police information on a person. I have no doubts the conservatives would love to change that.

Hence why Jim Prentice (who proposed Bill C-61) was ever so covertly moved from being the Minister of Industry to the Minister of the Environment. And for those of you don't care about Canadian politics (which is roughly 99.999% of all people on earth), being the the Minister of the Environment for the Conservative party is like being the Minister of Human Rights for the Nazi Party.

As a side note, Canada also has kind of a similar thing going on with Marijuana. Although technically illegal, Canada has such a wide spread and otherwise law abiding Cannabis culture that tough enforcement against it would be an economic disaster. I fucking love my country.

 

[Easykill]

Nice article, I must say. I guess the States are a ninja nation then?

 

[DrFausty]

It's worth remembering that a great portion of the "controversy" and "consensus there is a problem" is completely manufactured by the Canadian-flavor media oligarchy lap dogs. Dr. Geist has done an excellent job of showing, in detail, one example of how this spinning of the narrative results in utterly fraudulent "facts" becoming part of the frame of the questions themselves:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4079/125/

Ironically, we've a great many customers for our anti-packetshaping/throttling service ( http://www.torrentfreedom.net ) in 'Canuckistan' - Rogers in particular has made a "business model" out of selling "unlimited" bandwidth and then promptly limiting it. Even though it results in more (happy) customers for our service, I still think it's utter tripe - if a non-lobbyist-protected company engaged in that kind of completely dishonest marketing/delivery of a service they'd be charged under consumer fraud statutes - and convicted. Of course, Rogers has bought a tocque-full of MPs so they don't have to worry about laws and stuff like that. Beh.

Fausty | http://www.cultureghost.org

(ps: Harper will stay in power - next time he loses a vote of confidence, he'll go right past the CG and get a 'note from his mum' - i.e. the Queen herself - saying he's allow to pretend to be 'leader' forever. . . democracy?)

 

[Anarchemitis]

We are not Frozen Wastes.
But I certainly do like the Video Game mash that goes on here

 

[guardian001]

Possibly my favorite part about the politics up here in Canada is that it doesn't actually matter who wins the election, since they'll be a majority government anyway. it helps ensure we don't get any sudden changes. Which is especially good when you consider how far the conservatives want to take things.

I don't think we really need any strict copyright protection laws anyway. Like the article said, we're still one of the lowest on the list of Countries that actually pirates things. Why fix something that doesn't need to be.

 

[Kawaii_Nai]

I think Canada is doing just fine. Plus it has the nicest people on Earth.

In case you're wondering, I live in the U.S.