Michael Geist – Liberal MP Dan McTeague Emerges As Unofficial CRIA Spokesperson

by Flick Harrison

Canada’s copyright battles are in a holding pattern while Canada stumbles through 3 successive minority governments in almost 7 years.  It’s a hot potato that won’t be sorted until someone has a safe majority to risk the bruising online guerre-a-outrance that would inevitably ensue.

The Conservatives, now in power, really need their Guy-Fawkes blogaholics firmly-onside, in order to strangle every Liberal social program in its crib, and those people would be very leery of a DMCA-style bill in Canada… but that’s exactly what’s coming, whether the Conservatives or Liberals take power. Neither side can really admit that or even address it directly. The NDP is always wary of staking any new turf that suggests them once again to be bug-eyed communists in the opinion of the corporate press.

Here’s a good article by Michael Geist about the lawsuit against ISOhunt, which I didn’t know was proudly Canadian.  ISOhunt launched a court action to get a ruling that their torrent-search site was operating within Canadian law (!), and the recording industry used the opportunity to launch their own suit for damages against ISOhunt.

Michael Geist – Liberal MP Dan McTeague Emerges As Unofficial CRIA Spokesperson.

“Were this nothing more than an MP getting the law wrong, it would not be particularly noteworthy. More important is that McTeague’s recent comments appear to be coming directly from CRIA. The Toronto Star letter to the editor includes quotes from two old posts on my blog (here and here). The visitor log for my site reveals that only one party accessed both posts in the period between February 14th (when the column first appeared) and February 21st (when the letter to the editor appeared). That party was CRIA, suggesting that the McTeague letter may largely be a cut and paste of materials supplied by CRIA lobbyists.”

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