Conservative dissent (and hypocrisy) on Copyright

Via Saskboy, a interesting guest blog on Small Dead Animals. Looks like lance is hopefully one of many Tories now reconsidering their support for the freedom-hating Conservatives (as NDP candidate Dana Larsen notes, the NDP is definitely the most libertarian of Canada's major parties).

This is good to see. Hopefully, some of those voters will consider looking at the NDP in their ridings, who will no doubt be the party that pushes back hardest on this horrible legislation.

And this all reminded me of a little display of Conservative hypocrisy on this issue I observed this weekend. On the bus back from Kingston, there was a guy in front of me a couple of rows which a black Macbook. I was checking out its beautiful design when I noticed that his background was a picture of Harper and his white male caucus. So I'm assuming this guy is a Conservative staffer of some sort, because who else has a Conservative background for their Mac?

So I can resist, I have to trail my eyes lower to see what programs he has in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. And what do I find, icons for Limewire and Transmission (a Mac bittorrent client)!?!

I suppose I could've asked the guy, but I wonder if he is happy with Prentice trying to turn him into a criminal? Because I doubt he has those programs for sharing materials he owns the copyright for.

NOW the Cons care about meeting international treaty obligations

I just had to pop back in to comment on the new Copyright law, Bill C-61, as I can see myself blogging about it regularly as it grinds its way through the legislative process. Yes, Jim Prentice is right that the new law will bring Canada into compliance with the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) treaty signed by the previous Liberal government over a decade ago.

Can any remember another international treaty, signed by the Liberal government about a decade ago, that the Tories have had no compunctions about breaking or even really trying to meet its goals?

Hint - it has the same name as Stephane Dion's dog.

And I think everyone, on all points of the political spectrum, can agree that climate change is more important an issue than internet piracy.

This C-61 is many things, but it's probably most frustrating as a gross misuse of the time and attention of our legislators, who should be solving, you know, problems that actually negatively impact Canadians, not multinational media conglomerates.