U.S. Wants To Make “Illegal” Streaming a Felony, Open to Wiretapping

The U.S. Senate responded to White House request for a law that would explicitly make “Illegal” Streaming of video or audio a felony.

Streaming content has been considered a “public performance” rather than “distribution.” … The (White House) report called on Congress “to ensure that [the Department of Justice] and U.S. law enforcement agencies are able to effectively combat infringement involving new technology” by clarifying that streaming unauthorized audio or video is a felony. (rawstory.com)

Cnet reported about the White House proposal back in March 15. They have also pointed out that Obama appointed a copyright industry lawyer to the Justice Department post, and claim that Biden is a staunch supporter of major copyright holders.

No less than 78 percent of political contributions from Hollywood went to Democrats in 2008, which is broadly consistent with the trend for the last two decades, according to OpenSecrets.org.(Cnet)

Pirate Party of Canada – Internet Civil Rights and More

Pirate Party of Canada have fielded their first candidate in the upcoming Winnipeg North by-election. There’s been several news coverage about their candidate Jeff Coleman. The Pirate Party was borne out of Copyright reform fight in Sweden which lead to the party getting 7% of the popular votes, entitling them to two seats.

Their main platform is copyright reform, NOT promoting “piracy”. The name is a swipe at their opponent who likes to call them Pirate. They believe in privacy, net neutrality, free access to information, open and transparent government.

The government is once again trying to push through Lawful Access Legislation that would allow internet monitoring of everyone and bypass the court consent for wire tapping the internet. The common defense that their supporter use was if you are not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about. Tell that to victims of McCarthyism, opponents of Vietnam wars including John Lennon who have constantly been harassed by government of the day because of their political views. Someone like Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon would have a field day with such legislation that makes spying on innocent citizens legal.

On copyright, the government is pushing legislation that would allow record companies to put digital lock and prevent people who legally bought their CD’s or DVD’s from making backup of their purchase (remember Sony’s digital lock – DRM spyware?). Studios have been whining since radio was invented, then cassette tapes, Betamax, VHS. Now instead of adopting to latest changes in technology, they are lobbying the government to restrict and block new technologies. They also want subsidies put against innocent consumer who buy blank CD’s or media for backing up their data. Instead of making movies and music easier to access and purchase, with cost savings from adopting new technology being passed on to consumer, they stubbornly hang on to CD and DVD medium with high markup.

Another issue at the heart of Pirate Party’s platform is dealing with the glaring problem in our current government’s lack of accountability and their ability to drag their feet from sharing information with voters. Why not put their finances and other issues of concern to voters on the internet?

The party also believe in difference of opinions. For other issues that are not in their core principles, their representative will be consulting their constituency and be free from party whip.

So if you or anyone you know resides in Winnipeg North, make sure to ask them to vote for Pirate Party to sent a message to the major party that politics as usual just is not good enough. Pirate Party could bring to the front issues like consumer rights, privacy rights (including identity theft), relaxing patent earlier to allow people to benefit from new discovery rather than company just hoarding on to technology or keeping it unaffordable long after they’ve made their profits.

Learn about the Pirate Party for yourselves and help spread the message for the next Federal election in your area.

http://www.pirateparty.ca/about