Elizabeth May a "Copyright MP"

By Russell McOrmond on 23 January 2008 - 9:38am

An article by Michael Geist discussing the MPs and ridings that might most be affected by Copyright reform includes Elizabeth's riding.

Or fellow cabinet minister Peter MacKay, already facing a battle in which the Liberals have dropped out of the riding to strengthen Green party leader Elizabeth May, who won his seat by a mere 3,273 votes in the last election and has St. Francis Xavier University in his riding (home to 4200 students).

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Strengthening our hold on Univesity ridings

Submitted by Julien Lamarche on 23 January 2008 - 10:44am.

Yes, the Green Party needs to make a statement loud and clear against the bill Jim Prentice is trying to introduce to get more World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)/US friendly laws in Canada. We'd get even more the attention of students.

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The intent of the statement is ambiguous.

Submitted by Donald Fletcher on 23 January 2008 - 1:23pm.

Lambton Kent Middlesex EDA (SW Ontario)
Did you intend that we understand from your remark that it is Jim Prentice's intent to get more World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)/ friendly laws in Canada.
Or that Green party should position itself as opposing intellectual property rights?

Students of today may be eager to circumvent intellectual property rights of others, but many of them in a short time are likely to become the people who will benefit by having strong intellectual property rights, as they become the source of intellectual property.

Even today our universities and our professors have a strong interest in protecting intellectual property of their own.

If we hope to garner political power from opposition to intellectual property rights, we have to appeal only to those who will never have reason to protect their own.

Lambton Kent Middlesex EDA (SW Ontario)

Copyright in the digital age needs to be reformed

Submitted by Julien Lamarche on 23 January 2008 - 4:29pm.

Thank you Donald for letting me know that my statement was ambiguous.

I don't think the Green Party should oppose all forms of intellectual property. I do think it should call for better deliberation on copyright reform. It should also make a statement against Mr. Prentice's bill because, in the name of protecting "artists" -- which it doesn't -- it legitimizes more corporate control of digital devices that you or I will buy. Mr. Prentice's bill also criminalizes other buisness models (Jamendo.org, Flickr, YouTube) that can rise from using the internet as a way to share and re-create culture, as Mr. Lessig explains so elloquently in the following video:

Larry Lessig: How Creativity is being strangled by the law
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs

The digital age has allowed in the *participation* of culture and its re-creation rather than just being watchers. Students understand that and would feel the GP is listening if it made a statement.

> Students of today may be eager to circumvent intellectual property rights of others, but many of them in a short time are likely to become the people who will benefit by having strong intellectual property rights, as they become the source of intellectual property.

> Even today our universities and our professors have a strong interest in protecting intellectual property of their own.

We are only doom to sink like the US if we do not embrace new efficiencies and buisness model that come from information sharing rather than witholding it.

It is not a question of abolishing copyright & patents completley, it is a question of reforming copyright so that it is compatible with the realities of the digital age.