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Terrible how commercial lobbies are now able to hurt populations like that so easily to defend their own interests with very little oversight. It is not like a
by greatgib 3y ago
Terrible how commercial lobbies are now able to hurt populations like that so easily to defend their own interests with very little oversight.
It is not like a decision of the citizens that was debated in an assembly, just we do things because they were decided in secret international meetings or corrupted politicians.
- gwright 3y ago> Mr. Geist also accused the government of burying the change, by putting it near the bottom of a nearly 450-page budget bill last spring. The government didn’t highlight the copyright act changes in any of its documents about that bill. So it looks like it was "debated" in an assembly. I'm using scare quotes because I'm not a big fan of burying potentially controversial changes in giant budget bills. I'm also not a fan of giant budget bills or giant bills at all for that matter.
- boxed 3y agoIt's weird to me that the budget of a government is a bill at all. A budget is a budget, and a law is a law.
- citizenkeen 3y agoWho should decide how things are spent? My wife and I vote on our personal budget all the time.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoI think their point is the budget should be passed seperate from any other laws. You don't say "we'll splurge on this vacation only if we agree to split washing the dishes. It's both or neither."
- afterburner 3y agoWhy do you imagine that non-budget-related issues must be packaged with the budget into the same bill? Parliament may pass as many bills as it has time to.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoSo politicians can say "I didn't want to extend the copyright, but the budget needed to pass." Plus, passing more things at once limits the average person's ability to take in what they are doing.
- jhbadger 3y agoDo you have a child as a tie breaker? Or do you mean more discuss with each other potential purchases rather that literally vote on it, which doesn't work very well with two people.
- throw0101b 3y ago> Do you have a child as a tie breaker? Thunderdome: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max_Beyond_Thunderdome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max_Beyond_Thunderdome
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- retrac 3y agoThe budget is implemented with a law. There's a good reason for that. Parliament passes laws. And the budget is decided by Parliament. So they implement the budget with a law. The mechanism is fundamental to the Canadian (or UK) political system. The government, the executive branch, must have the confidence of the legislative branch, the authority to rule, which means having the support of a majority of Members of Parliament. The budget is a confidence bill; it must be debated, voted on, and pass. If it does not pass, the government has lost confidence, has no right to rule, and an election must be called. It's conceivable Parliament could implement a law that allows taxation and spending to be discretionary within a range, by the executive -- they in fact do that to give departments some emergency room. A large such allocation happened during the COVID crisis budget. But the overall year-to-year tax levels are debated and argued anyway in Parliament, so they might as well just write it directly into a new law.
- throw0101b 3y ago> If it does not pass, the government has lost confidence, has no right to rule, and an election must be called. Generally an election is called, but theoretically the Crown may ask another political party to see they can get enough votes together to pass legislation. If the current governing party has a majority of seats, then there is obviously no way that any other party can. But if (as now) the currently governing party does not have a majority of seats and are part of a coalition/agreement, then another party could try forming a coalition. Minority governments have been relatively rare in Canada, and so the 'proper' actions on what to do during them aren't part of the cultural zeitgeist, which can lead to drama: * https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/king-byng-affair https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/king-byng-... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King–Byng_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King–Byng_affair * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–2009_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–2009_Canadian_parliamenta...
- mst 3y agoHence the existence of "confidence and supply" agreements where a party agrees to a loose coalition whose only pledge is to support the main party therein by voting for budgets (supply) and against no-confidence motions.
- ajb 3y agoThis "budget" isn't a budget in the sense of a limit on spending. In a parliamentary system, the budget is a set of proposals for what to spend money on and how to raise it. So it involves a piece of legislation to adjust the government's taxation powers.
- boxed 3y agoWell.. no? Because the state have other sources of money than the taxes: previous budget surplus, and loans being the most obvious ones. Taxation is one thing, the budget is another.
- ajb 3y agoThis could just be an annoying issue of how a word is used. Words pick up multiple meanings over time. Certainly "budget" can be used in the sense you say, but "The Budget" is a term for a political event, in the UK and probably Canada which includes other things - much as those of us who like cleanly defined terms would prefer it otherwise...
- paganel 3y agoThis actually makes it worse, I think. Had the decision been taken as a result of "secret" meetings set up outside the purview of elected politicians one could have at least used the discourse that the OP uses: "They're taking these acts behind our backs!". But when burying these type of nefarious acts in a 450-page budget bill the people responsible for it all can now get back to us with: "your elected politicians voted it into law, it has all been done by the book, no nefarious act in there". And that's how trust in democracy and in the power of the people, for the people, takes another big hit.
- Xeoncross 3y ago> trust in democracy My favorite part is where the millionaire-billionaire politicians (that do this exact thing themselves) use this opportunity to vilify their opponents and then push for something else they want as the solution. X does something wrong, Y calls it out and raises support and then sneaks in something wrong. So the citizens get fleeced and then become pawns. It seems like this is visible in every. single. bill. that gets passed by either party in the US.
- phpisthebest 3y agoThis is why all bills should be single issue, with a public comment period of 1 day per page of text before a vote is allowed
- hoosieree 3y agoThis will just result in extremely large page sizes and extremely small font sizes.
- clnq 3y agoGood. The public can reject it for obvious manipulation quickly.
- phpisthebest 3y agoIf only we could regulate the size the page and the font in the law / amendment that would create the single subject rule and/or the waiting period law
- dudeofea 3y ago450 pages in one page would surpass printer DPI limits I would hope
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chongli 3y ago
- t0suj4 3y agoI think the only way to change it is for the change to come from within the industry. As the factions that get hurt by this get stronger the more likely they succeed.
- saaaaaam 3y ago[flagged]
- CoolGuySteve 3y agoYou must not have read the article either because it states the extension was buried in the budget bill and got almost no press coverage. That’s fine, we don’t all need to be experts on everything that we read here, but when I’m not at least partially informed I generally avoid making bold statements that are factually incorrect.
- saaaaaam 3y ago[flagged]
- tap-snap-or-nap 3y agoDemocracy is compromised by commercial institutions because they can afford resources that no public or independent organisation can afford.
- fsflover 3y agoThis is why I support NGOs like EFF.
- giantg2 3y agoDoesn't Canada have to ratify international treaties/agreements in an assembly? I assume joining NAFTA was debated, right? Edit: Ah, it looks like it's fully up to the executive branch. https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/200845E#a3-3-1 https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear...
- Majromax 3y agoIn Canada, signing treaties is a matter for the executive. However, the terms of the treaty are not automatically incorporated into Canadian domestic law – the words of a statute win out over a treaty. Sometimes a treaty can be implemented with just regulation, or it provides a statement of principles that helps interpret legal ambiguities. However, on matters such as the copyright term length discussed in this article, the trade treaty required explicit implementation by statute.
- dionidium 3y agoI don't think you need to invoke the power of evil corporations to explain why this gets so little pushback in the public discourse. Matthew Yglesias did a tweet thread a while back arguing that copyright terms should be shorter and the responses were instructive. People -- regular people -- have a pretty deep intuition that if you create something, then it belongs to you -- forever. The Jeffersonian notion that copyright exists only to incentivize new works is to most folks an odd one. His mentions filled up with authors arguing that their great-grandkids should enjoy the fruits of their labor, sentiments that garnered broad support from basically everyone except copyright law nerds (like myself).
- account42 3y agoBut regular people don't own any copyrights worth mentioning. Sure, there are people who have built their livelyhoods on copyright and they will of course try to extend the benefit as much as possible - after all, the benefit is a lot more visible and direct than the costs. These are the authors in your example. But the vast majority of people are not authors. They are not musicians. They are not artists. 99% of people do no create any "IP" worth anything outside of their workplace. So maybe your example is more than anything a reminder that twitter polls are not representative of the population at large.
- WeylandYutani 3y agoMost people receive a salary. They don't own their work. No different from the people who work at Disney studios.
- retrac 3y agoThat has not been my experience; I've brought up copyright a fair bit in conversations over the years (much to the chagrin of my friends, acquaintances and coworkers, I'm sure). I've literally never met anyone who thinks the great-grandchildren of an author should be financially compensated for their great-grandparents' work. That very scenario is usually the example I bring up -- the old "If I built and installed a plumbing fixture, should my great-grandkids be able to collect licence fees on its use?" analogy is persuasive. I do agree people generally think that an intellectual work created is rightfully the property of the creator -- but most don't extend that much past death.
- dehrmann 3y ago> Terrible how commercial lobbies are now able to hurt populations You make this sound like it's about legalizing a dangerous chemical or something. It's extending copyright limits. I don't feel particularly "hurt" by not being able to legally publish Mickey Mouse fan fiction.
- dale_glass 3y agoI do. We should be incentivizing useful economical activity, not people sitting on their asses, earning from the actual work their grandparents did. IMO, the right length for copyright is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years, give or take. If you've proven you can create something useful once, you should have a reason to repeat the feat.