[d@DCC] Law as code: Understanding the dilemma around a

[Wallace J.McLean]

>Are You for REAL???

Wrong question. Are they (the members who recommended this) for real?

Yes, unfortunately.

>To me, it is obvious that material posted to the internet is intended to be 
>viewed by an unlimited audience in a variety of locations! 

It's obvious to everyone, except the Heritage Committee, the Department of
Canadian Heritage, and -- this is the important bit -- Access Copyright:

http://www.parl.gc.ca/InfoCom/PubDocument.asp?DocumentID=1329168&Language=E#Int-902697

et ff.

This is a blatant cash-grab and empire-building exercise by Access
Copyright. It will do much to enhance the flow of cash to their staff and
their pre-existing membership; NOTHING to provide payment to "creators"
(who in any event are giving the work in question away for free).

It's the "unlocatable copyright owner" scam redux:

  www.xanga.com/publicdomain

It's also a great way for Access Copyright to build on the money they
propose to milk out of the public school system:

  http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/tariffs/proposed/re24042004-b.pdf

At $12/student/year, that's somewhere beteen $50- and $55-million that
Access Copyright will be getting from the provincial and territorial
governments. Money that would be better spent actually teaching students
to write books and read them, in my opinion, to build a literate and
cultured book-consuming population in the first place.

This is robbing Peter to pay Paul (for stuff that Patricia wrote).

If you have a student in a school in Canada, I'd write to your
provincial/territorial minister of education, and your own MP, about both
the proposed "educational use of the internet" cash-grab before Parliament,
and the educational-reprography actual cash grab before the Copyright
Board. This is nothing more than Access Copyright taking short funds out
of your kid's classroom.



-
For (un)subscription information and posting guidelines please see
http://digital-copyright.ca/forum.shtml