NDP would of been better, so far I'm agreeing with Angus' opositions on every issues. Our curent system for copyrights is more then perfect, so I can't see the reasoning behind them wanting to change it.http://www.timminspress.com/webapp/sitepag...name=Local+News
By Teviah Moro
Local News - Friday, March 04, 2005 @ 07:00
A Liberal government initiative to protect intellectual property online through amendments to the Copyright Act is wrongheaded, says MP Charlie Angus.
Angus (NDP — Timmins-James Bay) said Heritage Committee recommendations could put up barriers that would see schools pay extended licensing fees for students’ use of online content and even limit rights libraries hold to share Internet resources.
“What’s being proposed could have some very profound implications,” he said.
If acted upon, the recommendations could herald the end of the Internet as a digital intellectual commons, Angus said.
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A spokesperson from the Heritage Ministry wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the committee’s work.
“Right now, there’s nothing on paper,” said Len Westerberg, media relations officer for the ministry.
But reforming the Copyright Act to protect the rights of artists and creators of intellectual property online has caught the attention of at least one critic in Canada.
Laura Murray, an English professor at Queen’s University, said the move to have educational institutions pay licence fees is making a commodity of something that’s currently free.
“To many of us, it seems very disturbing that they should want to re-engineer the Internet.”
Murray said educators who post resources on the web for teachers and students to use don’t expect to be compensated. “So this idea of licensing the Internet seems really strange.”
That idea would see a system in which users are charged for accessing materials on the web with fees flowing back to creators.
Just how that would work in the vast cyber-universe with scores of users and potential intellectual-property holders is lost on Murray, however.
“How they would locate those people is a big problem.”
Another point to ponder is that three per cent of the web is Canadian, which means most of the fees levied would go into the pockets of rights holders around the world with a system that also puts Canada in a class of its own, Murray said.
“No other country in the world licenses the Internet in this way so we would send 97 cents out of every dollar out of Canada and we would get nothing back.”
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