For next Tuesday, please read the following Slashdot thread and the two articles (from Michael Geist's blog) linked from the summary.
In the Slashdot thread, there are a lot of off-topic remarks. You can use the "Threshold" control to view remarks that readers have moderated up; a setting of 3 is recommended. Still, you'll find a lot of off-topic ranting, which is common in any real-life discussion. There are some good remarks starting about 2/3rds of the way down ("Policy laundering" and its replies).
As you read Michael Geist's blog posts linked from the summary ("EU Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, leaked online" and "updated copy of the draft chapter") keep in mind that they are geared toward people who know intellectual property law and treaties. Nevertheless, try to understand how your rights might be affected. The goals of this reading are to familiarize you with: how IP issues are negotiated between countries, the current status in Canada, Michael Geist's blog, and the realities (good and bad) of online discussions.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/03/30/0241257/EU-Demands-Canada-Gut-Its-Copyright-and-Patent-Laws
Your comments on this post are most welcome. :)
The realities of online discussions? Godwin's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
ReplyDeleteThe quote in the thread (below) reminded me that I've heard more than once said that Canada is USA's (largely uninhabited) hat.
"One final point: Canada is in no way the equal of the EU. The EU has over 500 million people to Canada's 32 million. We tend to anthropomorphize negotiations as though countries were freely contracting equal citizens. They aren't. They are unequal powers."
I definitely agree with the suggestion of the Policy laundering and the hidden parties enforcing this matter. It seems to me as it mentioned in the replies the biggest factor is the differences in the structure of EU and Canada. A very good example of this collision was the case of windows media player and it’s disobedient of EU rules (according to EU): http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/04/382&guiLanguage=en
ReplyDelete