gmane.org.user-groups.canada.cluecan.general

Update on Bill C-11 : the final few weeks...

Russell McOrmond — 2012-02-17T02:03:10

   I'm sending a general note in case anyone in these lists aren't aware 
of the current happenings with Bill C-11: the Copyright + Paracopyright 
(TPM) bill.


   This is the identical bill as C-32, re-tabled on September 29, 2011.

   It passed second reading this Monday, and the new special legislative 
committee had their first meeting on Tuesday where the Conservatives set 
the time allocation for how much longer there would be any witnesses and 
all discussions for clause-by-clause of this massive and still widely 
misunderstood omnibus bill.

   http://c11.ca/com


   The imposed plan is to meet for 12 hours per week (normally 
committees only meet 4h/week), with all work ceasing on March 29 at 
which point the bill will be reported back to the house. There will be 
witnesses starting Feb 27'th after the break, with clause-by-clause of 
the bill starting on March 14'th.

   That's it folks.  The Conservatives, with 3 parliamentary secretaries 
in the committee, seem to be stick handling this one stro

Re: MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Russell McOrmond — 2011-12-24T17:50:15

   A few reasons.

   I don't believe that there needs to be one approach, or that this is 
wasting energy.

   Whether it will be before or after C-11 passes, changes will be 
needed.  We will need to have informed politicians that will make those 
changes, some of which may already have seats in parliament.

   Some of those who will fix these problems may be in the Senate, and 
some of them may even be provincial MPP's.  We don't know who those 
people are that will best help us, so we need to meet with as many 
people as we can.

   Who is opposition today can become government later.


   This is also not a left vs right or partisan issue.  Those who think 
this is a "Harper" thing need to remember that the policies we are 
fighting come from the Clinton/Gore government in the USA, and are 
strongly and aggressively supported by Obama.  The Liberals were largely 
able to table a better bill because the Bush administration wasn't 
breathing down their throats, and thus they stuck to WIPO language 
(limi

Re: MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Hub Figuière — 2011-12-23T19:22:24

Not defeatist. Realistic. That mean a different angle needs to be found.
The conservative caucus that hold a majority in the house of common is
deaf to anything that does not come from the "leader's" office and
talking points.
So why wasting our energy on that approach?



See my previous comment.


Welcome to the faux-majority.
Similarly they are for police power to spy on Canadians, which by itself
is in total opposition with their argument to scrap the LGR.

You have better chances convincing the Harper appointed Senate majority.
They seem to have a more sober approach and you can actually raise the
point that the copyright bill is actually infringing on the constitution
by trampling on the provinces prerogatives.

The other valid approach is via the Supreme Court of Canada that could
be, once the bill received royal assent, used to challenge the
constitutionality of the bill.

BTW, IANAL.


Hub

Re: MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Russell McOrmond — 2011-12-23T15:46:45

  I don't think you will be surprised that I'll disagree with this
defeatist attitude :-)


  When it comes to the Copyright portion of C-11, I believe the
Conservatives made policy choices based on an understanding of the
impacts.  Whether I agree or disagree with those choices doesn't
matter, and I agree that they are unlikely to change those provisions.


  When it comes to the Paracopyright provisions in C-11, few of the
politicians are aware of the impacts and thus it is unlikely they made
deliberate policy choices.  Our job as a technical community is to
focus on educating politicians about these impacts, so that they can
have a policy discussion based on science rather than science fiction.



  I've observed the CPC rhetoric since they formed, and I strongly
believe if they had the same understanding of the technology that I do
that they would be as strongly opposed to the Paracopyright policies
currently in C-11 as I am.  They were so upset about the mere
registration of long-guns, and yet we see a

Whose Software Freedom? A 20-year perspective.

Russell McOrmond — 2011-12-23T15:24:58

  I posted something to the blog this morning
http://www.cluecan.ca/node/1198 which might be interesting to discuss.
 It is one of the constant conversations that I've observed in the
FLOSS community over the last 20 years, with those conversations
sometimes being quite heated.

  Hopefully we can discuss what motivates us to participate in FLOSS
communities.

  While I know what I wrote will be seen as controversial, the
intention is to spark conversation in our community.  Hopefully we can
do so without there being any flame-war.

  Thanks, and best of the season!

Re: MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Hub Figuière — 2011-12-20T16:19:13

Only if your MP is a deceptiCon, because they all vote the ideologicial
party line. And even then it is a lost cause as the all vote like sheeps.
Since when the "Harper majority" accepted an amendment in any of the
bills from the position? Never.

Mark my words: C-11 will go through unamended with unanimous support
from the DeceptiCons.

Hub

MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Russell McOrmond — 2011-12-20T13:54:48

   Last Thursday the House of Commons adjourned, meaning MPs are in 
their respective ridings until the end of January.  As I wrote in 
http://c11.ca/5387 , this is an important time for us to get in touch 
with them.

   For the Canadian FLOSS community, the focus needs to be on 
"technological protection measures".   I've come to believe that 
anything we say about the Copyright parts of the bill will serve as a 
distraction from the Paracopyright parts which represent the greatest 
threat to software choice and thus FLOSS.   I also believe politicians 
are knowingly making policy choices on Copyright, but that they don't 
understand technology enough to understand the impacts of Paracopyright.


   I've sent messages to try to meet my own MP on this issue again, and 
hope that other people will as well.   The more technical people talk to 
MPs about the Paracopyright aspects of C-11, the more chance we have of 
avoiding the harm the passage of the current bill will have to our sector.


   I'm here to he

Re: Test Post

Russell McOrmond — 2011-12-08T01:33:29

Ouch -- September?   As far as I know things are working, but I'm not
involved in the sysadmin side of things.   I just do policy stuff..
On Dec 7, 2011 8:12 PM, "Scott Elcomb" <psema4< at >gmail.com> wrote:

_______________________________________________
discuss mailing list
discuss< at >cluecan.ca
http://www.linux.ca/mailman/listinfo/discuss

Test Post

Scott Elcomb — 2011-12-07T16:49:19

Checking if the list is still alive - I just recieved my monthly
subsciption reminder... for Sept.

Best,

Writing letters to Peter Braid (MP forKitchener-Waterloo) about CarrierIQ

Russell McOrmond — 2011-12-05T17:29:29

Bob, and others.

  While this specific software turned out to not be as bad as
reported, it is still worth writing to Peter Braid (MP for
Kitchener-Waterloo) who will be part of the C-11 special legislative
committee.

  The issue isn't so much whether this specific program was malicious,
but that the interests of the carriers (previous owner of the device?)
and the rights of the current owner may conflict.

  Bill C-11 includes the following:

"30.63 It is not an infringement of copyright for a person to
reproduce a work or other subject-matter for the sole purpose, with
the consent of the owner or administrator of a computer, computer
system or computer network, of assessing the vulnerability of the
computer, system or network or of correcting any security flaws."

  Your guess is as good as mine whether this conflict between owners
and carriers would constitute a "security flaw", or yet another
contractual disagreement where one party is granted far more power
than the other (contract between carrier an

Fwd: [kwlug-disc] Meeting with (not so new) MPs in KWregion.

Russell McOrmond — 2011-05-05T23:55:01

  I am forwarding a letter I wrote for the Kitchener-Waterloo mailing
list post-election that applies to people nationally as well.  It is
in reply to a letter archived at
http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/2011-May/008518.html

Summary:

  a) We need to be busy this summer talking to MPs about copyright.
The more they speak with people from our community, the better.  There
are many misconceptions we can help clear up.

  b) Given we are in a majority government situation, we need to frame
our interactions in a way that will be embraced by that majority
government (currently Conservative).  I give some suggestions in this
email.


Any other ideas?  Discussion?  Proposals for events/meetings/etc?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Russell McOrmond
Date: Thu, May 5, 2011 at 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] Meeting with (not so new) MPs in KW region.
To: KWLUG discussion


On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 4:06 PM, unsolicited wrote:

 A majority government is a majority government, not matter

Looking for electoral district commentary..

Russell McOrmond — 2011-04-02T23:04:57

  Today I paid a visit two the top two candidates in my riding of
Ottawa South, and posted my thoughts at http://BillC32.ca/5309


  I am wondering if people could take the time to do something similar
for their districts?  Pick the top candidates, your favorite
candidates, or whatever you like.  If you *are* a candidate, this is
an open invitation to post election related material to the Canadian
technology community.  I'd love to see a bit of the dynamic in each
district.

  Signing up for http://digital-copyright.ca is easy.  It's a Drupal
site with the OpenID stuff enabled.  Register at
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/user/register , and it will send an
email to verify your account.  Click on the verification URL, and then
you can post comments to any existing article.  After I read comments
which clearly indicate you are a real person, I increase the access
level to be able to post without moderation.  If you want to post
directly (your own blog on that site), send me an email.

  Many people don't like

Fwd: Asking questions of candidates during the election.

Russell McOrmond — 2011-03-30T21:53:38

Forwarding here, with the hope this community can be active during the
election as well.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Russell McOrmond <russellmcormond< at >gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 5:52 PM
Subject: Asking questions of candidates during the election.

(Copying to the Canada-wide DCC and the KWLug discussion forums.  Hope
cross-posting won't cause a problem.)

 A discussion thread started in the Kitchener-Waterloo LUG mailing
list after Bill C-32 died that included discussions about asking
questions of candidates.  There are of course different forums for
this, including asking at all candidates debates, at the door when
candidates come by, or as a survey sent to them in email (Or as I have
done in the past, both email and printouts dropped off at campaign
office).

Quick reminder of past
-----------------------------

 In the 2008 election there was Michael Geist's Copyright Pledge that
many candidates signed onto:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3445/125/

 In 2006

How's my driving? CLUE policy coordinator

Russell McOrmond — 2011-02-18T17:23:02

I sent something similar to the following to a few forums, hoping to
open conversations about the policy summary we have for copyright as
well as getting endorsements for that summary and for the petitions.

If you are a member of a LUG, could you forward this into the general
discussion list?

---cut---


Every once in a while I like to re-introduce myself to fellow
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) developers and users.  I'm
the policy coordinator for CLUE: Canada's association for Open Source
http://cluecan.ca/policy/

The area of policy that I have been most active in is federal
copyright law.  I have been attending almost all of the Bill C-32
committee hearings in person, posting my thoughts about each meeting
to http://billc32.ca/com

I don't know when I will be invited to speak in front of the
committee, but I want to ensure that I am representing FLOSS
developers and users well when I do.

If you haven't seen our copyright policy summary, it is at
http://www.cluecan.ca/policy/copyright

If

Re: Technology policy update + How many people does CLUErepresent?

Russell McOrmond — 2011-02-07T18:53:29

  All agreed, but for the purposes of discussing this with less
technical people, or when it wasn't the focus of the letter, some
shortcuts are needed.   Most people are unaware that there are two
parts of the network, leave alone questions of facilities based vs.
GAS.  They think this is about allowing UBB at all, which is separate.
 I'm not against UBB per-se, just against it being imposed on me by
someone other than my ISP, and in an anti-competitive way.

  You'll likely also know that facilities based only works in some
CO's, and Bell is claiming that they don't have the infrastructure to
allow competing facilities based services everywhere.   They can't
have it both ways, and the push-back against allowing any competitors
at all is a major problem.  They are always looking for loopholes in
the regulation -- recognizing the CRTC doesn't seem equipped to deal
with the issues.


...But back to Copyright and C-32, the focus of my letter.

Any thoughts?  Do you have connections with a local LUG that might

Re: Technology policy update + How many people does CLUErepresent?

Bob Jonkman — 2011-02-07T18:32:54

Hi Russell:  The UBB decision(s) are not about the last mile, but the 
Gateway Access Service.  This is the backhaul channel between the DSLAM 
at the local exchange office and the peering exchange, which Bell was 
mandated to make available to third-party providers.

ISPs that provide their own backhaul (eg. Yak [1] or Eyesurf [2] which 
use Fibretech for the backhaul) are not affected by the UBB tariffs, 
even though they still use the Bell last mile wiring.

The whole thing looks something like this for Bell's backhaul:

You -> DSL Modem -> Bell last mile copper -> DSLAM -> Gateway Access 
Service -> Peering Point -> Independent ISP -> Internet backbone

whereas Yak and Eyesurf's connectivity is like

You -> DSL Modem -> Bell last mile copper -> DSLAM -> Fibretech -> 
Peering Point -> Yak/Eyesurf -> Internet backbone

However, I agree with you that the last mile monopolies by Bell and the 
cablecos are problematic, and that regulation over this will cause 
future grief.

Anon I shall read your material wi

Technology policy update + How many people does CLUErepresent?

Russell McOrmond — 2011-02-06T19:08:18

   Interesting week for telecommunications policy, whether you are 
following Usage Based Billing (#UBB) or wireless competition with the 
WIND/Globalive decision.

   Hopefully the government will quickly table legislation to deal with 
the competition issues behind these two issues.  In the case of UBB my 
problem (and I suspect many CLUE members) is not with UBB per-se, but 
with the government-granted monopoly provider of the "last mile" 
connections to our homes being able to impose a business model on 
competitors.  In the case of the Globalive decision, I suspect the 
technical community can separate the need for appropriate regulation in 
this sector from ownership issues, given it seems antiquated to worry 
about the nationality of executives in this century.

   I wrote about both these issues in more detail at http://BillC32.ca/5281


   My focus as policy coordinator remains with Copyright given Bill C-32 
is currently having hearings, and is a place where there is actual 
legislation to discuss

Russell McOrmond — 2011-01-01T00:32:37

   Earlier this afternoon I posted a blog article 
http://www.cluecan.ca/node/1194 discussing some of the things that have 
happened this year in Copyright that CLUE folks would want to know about.

   There is one section that may be controversial or deserve some 
discussion, so I thought I would copy it here to start that discussion.

-----------

Extension of existing private copying regime to devices

I believe this is a hard one for our community as it forces us to 
recognize priorities.

As a community most of us are opposed opposed to a system which makes 
technology more expensive, and that subsidizes unrelated business 
interests. When the Conservative party held a press conference in 
Ottawa's Rideau Center and then later launched a radio ad, many in our 
community were cheering.

While it seems that the Conservatives are on our side, the policies that 
are in C-32 say something quite different. Each of the reasons party a 
representative gave for opposing a levy on devices applies far more to 
no

Participation in Digital Economy consultation

Russell McOrmond — 2010-07-07T13:57:10

   Friday is the final day to participate in this consultation.

   If you haven't done so, you may want to sign up.  Even if you don't 
have the time to write your own submission or post your own ideas to the 
idea forum, you may want to vote up some of the other ideas.

I've posted a few of my own and others I support here:
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/5185

If you have posted ideas you would like me to highlight in that article, 
please let me now.


Thanks!

Re: Should CLUE sign up to "ACTA belongs to the past"?

Marc Lijour — 2010-07-06T03:55:40

+1

Lots of concerns regarding the respect of human rights and expected processes 
in democratic countries. Closed-door debates are already a bad omen, but when 
it comes to business interests, potential attacks to the principle of net 
neutrality (the nature of the internet, as defended by its creator Tim Berners 
Lee), and big questions regarding privacy and information rights, this kind of 
negotiations should be taken seriously by every citizens. CLUE has certainly a 
role to play as some sort of technical watchdog.

Marc

Re: Should CLUE sign up to "ACTA belongs to the past"?

Scott Elcomb — 2010-07-05T20:01:00

I'm in the Yes camp as well, and have been for some time.  With all
the media attention on ACTA over the last year though, I'm worried
that some of the more disturbing aspects of ACTA will sneak through
(via CETA) even if Canada does not sign on.

gmane.org.user-groups.canada.cluecan.general

Update on Bill C-11 : the final few weeks...

Re: MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Re: MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Re: MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Whose Software Freedom? A 20-year perspective.

Re: MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

MPs in ridings -- can us FLOSS folks get in touch withthem?

Re: Test Post

Test Post

Writing letters to Peter Braid (MP forKitchener-Waterloo) about CarrierIQ

Fwd: [kwlug-disc] Meeting with (not so new) MPs in KWregion.

Looking for electoral district commentary..

Fwd: Asking questions of candidates during the election.

How's my driving? CLUE policy coordinator

Re: Technology policy update + How many people does CLUErepresent?

Re: Technology policy update + How many people does CLUErepresent?

Technology policy update + How many people does CLUErepresent?

Discussing Copyright related policy for 2010

Participation in Digital Economy consultation

Re: Should CLUE sign up to "ACTA belongs to the past"?

Re: Should CLUE sign up to "ACTA belongs to the past"?