History repeating

Rarely can a single tweet so perfectly sum up the problems with a political party. But according to Michael Geist, the Libs are apparently offering to speed up passage of the Cons' anti-consumer copyright legislation in exchange for...an end to their attack ads on the issue.

So once again, the Libs are eager to trade off substantive policy for only a bare, temporary political gain. And the Cons can respond by launching similarly inaccurate attacks based on their next legislative priority, knowing that they'll serve only to push the Libs to give in once again.

And what's most sad is that as much as it seems that the deal couldn't be any worse for the Libs, you know they'll find some way to accept less.

On feigned helplessness

Michael Geist rightly notes that there's little reason to buy the argument that Canada's current laws don't provide adequate protection against file-sharing sites:

The claims in the isoHunt lawsuit must still be proven in court (as would any case using the new powers contemplated by Bill C-32). But past cases suggest Canadian law is hardly toothless. In 2008, the recording industry filed a lawsuit against QuebecTorrent, a Quebec-based BitTorrent site. Within months, the Superior Court of Quebec handed down a permanent injunction against the site and it discontinued operation. Soon after, the industry targeted other sites with cease-and-desist letters, relying on existing law to demand that they stop operating.

Foreign organizations have also successfully used Canadian copyright law to counter alleged online infringement. Last month, the Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN announced that it had quietly shut down dozens of BitTorrent sites by filing copyright violation complaints with the sites' hosting providers. While BREIN keeps the names of the sites secret, it notes that Canada is one of the countries where it brings legal action.

The reality is that all major countries are home to some BitTorrent sites, including Canada. The question is not whether Canadian law is equipped to deal with these sites — recent history and the latest lawsuit demonstrate that it is — but rather why the industry has opted for a strategy of damaging Canada's reputation by loudly claiming that it is unable to address online infringement using existing law while it quietly files court documents that suggest that the opposite is true.

But that reality shouldn't be used to understate the difference between the status quo and the Cons' plan under C-32 (bolstered by the attempt to paint Canada as lacking the enforcement mechanisms already in place). And indeed, the fact that copyright holders are complaining despite the existence of mechanisms to deal with peer-to-peer sites should offer a compelling signal that it's the peers themselves who are the targets of the Cons' legislation.

On failed consultations

ShamWow Minister Tony Clement tries to reassure one of his Twitter questioners that he'll look into the question of whether his government's copyright legislation effectively outlaws open-source software:

Relax-looking into it RT @abramh @TonyClement_MP refuses to acknowledge that #C32 bans Linux/Android/OpenSource/FreeSoftware

And of course it's completely to be expected that Clement would have absolutely no clue what impact C-32 might have on open-source content. After all, it's not as if the bill was drafted following a consultation process where that exact question was front and centre.