Canadian copyright and some suggestion of political sanity

While we have Don Drummond proposing his evisceration of Ontario's public service, we seem to have a glimmer of good news for once from Harper's cronies.

Apparently, they have come to realize that there is no political hay to be made copying the (hopefully) aborted Stop Online Piracy Act bill in Canada, at least as is.  So, for now, they taking the stance that they will be taking a softer tone on online copyright.

After all, they are publicly wavering a bit on the online snooping bill (now facetiously called Bill C-30 "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act") they want and they could push that as a part of their myopic "law and order" agenda that could work relatively subtly in the background. While I have some misgivings about airing Public Safety Minister Vic Toew's personal dirt in protest of this bill, the fact that his yammering of such childish absolutes as "You either with us or the child pornographers," deserved some kind of answer.  After all, he is implying in that statement that every privacy commission in the country is in support of that kind of crime.

By contrast, there is no way that a copy of SOPA could be overlooked by the Canadian online public if they are suddenly and arbitrarily denied access to YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook because of copyright violation accusations. Furthermore, the business community would be complaining of the telecommunications and technology industries being put at a severe disadvantage for innovation compared to the Americans, which means businesses like Research In Motion could find themselves in even greater difficulty with foreign competitors. Those kind of changes would cut across all the demographics nowadays and alienate everyone while making the Harperites look like whimps for bowing to foreign pressure so blatantly. That is a combination that even a majority government as arrogant as Harper's would fear.

So, while I am still going to be wary with the upcoming copyright reform, at least now there is some basis for some hope that they will not ape the American copyright hysteria and cripple the internet.

Until, check out Openmedia.ca's efforts to keep the pressure on for some online sanity in our country.