Wild Bill

That's actually a good idea! I'm not sure if under the terms of the new Bill they can keep copyright on some important aspects while opening it up with "piracy" but it's an idea. As far as the rest of your argument, I thought I was old but I see I'm not alone! Let me see if I can repeat myself to help you better understand. The world has already changed. More copyright protection is a waste of time. It's like Prohibition or banning guns from coming into Toronto. Or trying to censor the InterNet when sites are mirrored in other countries outside your jurisdiction. Even China has been having trouble trying to keep on top of censoring the 'Net for its citizens, when they have the unique advantage of funneling the whole thing through one or two servers under their control. Those who believe in this approach are just showing their naive and old-fashioned lack of experience. Younger musicians realized that they would be trying to turn back the tide and so they've developed their own business model. They view their music as promotion for live appearances and "off the stage" sales. Morally you may be right, Ozymandias! The record companies are still trying to use legal means of ensuring a world where they have some control over the media of their product. Meanwhile the market has turned to a system where music no longer appears on a physical media. They also are abandoning the record companies as no longer necessary or even helpful to their careers. My point is that we can have all the Bills passed such as this one you can imagine. Or all the forum debate. It's irrelevant. The kids have long gone. We CAN'T do anything about it!

Interesting link! Thank you! It does seem to refute Mr. J. Still, I appreciate him for challenging that assumption. Nothing bothers me more than some CBC NW talking head spitting out conclusions without any backup. This tactic ALWAYS makes me very suspicious! At least your link gave me some real reason to accept the premise.

I don't know enough to have an opinion on a near future ice age. What attracts me to Jaworowski is that he put an assumption to a test. The idea that air bubbles trapped in polar ice will be hermetically sealed so that the ratio of gases such as CO2 will be forever unchanged is a HUGE assumption, in my books! That would be one of the first things I would have expected would be tested. Obviously, if the amount of CO2 can migrate out of the ice then it changes totally any assumption about differences in CO2 levels over the ages. I have heard others suggest another ice age is coming. I'm curious enough to want to learn more. Right now I'm more interested in finding out if assumptions have been checked in the CO2 argument. If they haven't then I lose confidence in those who made the original predictions. I would have expected them to know better.

Well, there are a number of people with evidence and argument that the ice core data is NOT the most reliable! http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/ http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/ and especially: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1992468/posts Pretty conclusive stuff.

Agreed. John Tory's problem is that despite his name he campaigns like a Liberal! He doesn't seem to stand out as being a true Tory. Any sales or marketing person knows that when trying to compete with an incumbent product people need a clear reason to make a change. Tory looks too much like the incumbent choice. Trudeau, Mulroney and Harris all achieved massive sweeps by looking different from all the others. Tory just can't seem to get into the middle of the road with all of his competitors.

Ah, so that's how they do it! 'Course, you have to be a member of SOCAN but that's a good idea for any Canadian artist anyway. Thank you!

No, I mean by common usage a vehicle not made by the "Big Three". Ford, GM and Chrysler have been producing vehicles in Canada for most of my old life. To a Canadian they are domestics, just as they would be to someone from Missouri. Actually, more and more of us Canadians are becoming "Missouri"-ized, as in "don't tell me, SHOW ME!"

Can you name an artist who received a payment from Sheila's fund? In all these years I've never met or heard of a single one! No artist/customer of mine has been able to tell me of an instance anywhere either. Perhaps you can give me an example. You may get out more than I do...

Well, while you guys argue more and more of us have made up our minds. GM, Ford and Chrysler do not have a product to suit our needs that competes well against the imports. Buying domestic would be a sacrifice, not a benefit. I frankly don't care if my car is union made or foreign built, as long as the quality is there, the features I want, the gas mileage I can afford , etc. I don't care about protecting the job of a guy who has always made far more than I have anyway. So I'll buy an import! Except for Chinese. I do have a problem there. I still keep seeing that brave kid standing in front of the tank in Tiamanen Square.

Perhaps I did not make myself clear. Fred doesn't care if you copy his CDs! He will always make money selling at his concerts, often personally signing his CDs. And his Tshirts and buttons. As for "identity theft", I guess you are not familiar with the music world. It would be impossible for someone to steal one of Fred's songs! He is an established artist with a history of performing his material. Not only would it be an easy legal situation but the fan base would despise someone who ripped off their material. Perhaps you remember what happened to Milli Vanilli? I agree that if someone was copying and selling in bulk he would take offense but we already have legislation to handle such eventualities. I thought the criticism of the Harper Bill was about busting 12 year olds for making a downloaded personal copy. As for people buying music and then transferring it to multiple media, they will anyways! How on earth could the government police this? What crown attorney would ever waste the court's time on charging a kid with no money to pay any fine anyway? Can you cite a single instance of someone in Canada being charged for buying an LP and dubbing it onto a cassette tape for his car or Walkman? Or an extra CD for the car? It never happened 'cuz it would have been a waste of time. Anyhow, as I had said but perhaps did not emphasize enough, artists sell self-produced CDs that they don't care if they're copied. They have enough true fans that buy enough. They make much more money selling digital files from their websites, which again they don't care about copying! They make their living from concerts and tours. The people who really lose are the record companies and they are the ones driving this Bill, not artists. All the talk about protecting artists from ripoffs is as much crap as Sheila Copp's extra .25 tax on cassettes. This was supposedly to establish a fund to repay artists from piracy. I have yet to meet an artist after all these years who ever got a dime from such a fund. The point of my long post is that the record companies are the ones driving a Bill to fight "the last war". The world is changing and their fight is misguided and futile. I remember working with an old guy who had worked for the Canadian Westinghouse vacuum tube factory in Hamilton, ON. He told me of how the union and the company, in a rare spirit of co-operation had together petitioned the feds to pass more duties and tariffs on Japanese vacuum tubes that were being sold cheaper than Westinghouse product. I asked him when this occurred and he told me it was the late 70's. This was over 15 years past the time when transistors had been introduced and put the vacuum tube industry into its death throes. The world had long passed them by, rendering their petition moot. In effect, they were waging political wars on the Titanic after it had already hit the iceberg. The record companies are in exactly the same situation. This Bill addresses a problem that is vanishing anyway, at least as far as music artists. Those that don't understand this are just dating themselves.

Well, as far as music CDs go, naive indeed! Hasn't anyone heard? CD shops have been closing in droves! Look what just happened to Tower Records in the USA. This legislation reminds me of how the French relied on their Maginot Line to protect them from any German invasion after WWI. It was a perfect defense for the previous war. CDs are dead! Big chains of music stores are closing! NOBODY CARES! This legislation has been obselete for some years now. There is an entire generation that has never TOUCHED a CD, let alone bought one! Media is dead, and the business model of the record labels has been entirely based on selling media. Vinyl, CDs, DVDs...all physical media that has been replaced by digital files piped directly into personal computers and players. Music artists have been abandoning the old business model of a recording contract in droves. Virtually none of them under 30 care anymore. The reason is quite simple and the record labels did it to themselves. In the "old" days a record label had a big budget to discover and promote new talent. Fat guys would smoke cigars in bars watching new acts, signing up those that showed potential. In Buddy Holly's day a company would often set up concert tours with busloads of their artists, going from town to town across the continent to promote their talent and boost their record sales. As the 60's moved in and we entered the age of the supergroups an artist hoped for the standard 3 album initial contract. It was always heavily weighted in the record company's favour. They made most of the money. However, they also were fronting all the intial production expenses of producing and making records and large sums for promotion. If the artist(s) became popular enough to sell those first 3 albums they would be well-enough established to have some clout at the bargaining table for the NEXT albums! THAT'S when they began to make their money! Sometime in the 80's with the development of the CD all that began to change. Record companies realized that CDs had destroyed the very idea of a hit single! There was no CD equivalent of the old vinyl 45. You had to buy the entire album or nothing. The price was high as well. I can well remember when a CD on sale for $20 was a bargain! This meant that often you were lucky to get one or two good songs, with the rest just "filler". Budgets for new artist development and discovery got drastically pruned and focused. Everything centred on "pop" music, where they targeted the very young . Young peoples' tastes tend to change rapidly. The life cycle of a pop song might be less than a year. This was perfect for the record labels as it meant that they would be constantly turning over not just products but artists. It became the age of the "one-hit wonder" where few artists ever made it past that 3 album contract to start making any real money. Almost all of the cake was being eaten by the record companies, who with the rise of the "vertical integration" business model now owned the large CD store chains themselves, effectively giving them control from the microphone to the cash register. They chose to put most of their budgets into artists like Madonna and Alanis Morrisette. They also owned the videos, which could promote the fashions sold by clothing stores also owned by the record labels. Fashion also is a quick turnover market, meaning more profits. By the late 80's and early 90's the record labels had achieved the ultimate in business monopolies and conglomerates. They owned and controlled the whole enchilada! Then the Internet became a big factor. The labels were so introverted they ignored it until they were so badly beaten up they couldn't recover. Nobody needed to buy their media. What's more, it wasn't the record companies who developed a way of offering songs from download sites, giving the convenience of getting music while sitting in front of your computer at midnight in your jammies. If they had the market might have been trained early into buying music in a digital fashion. No, the "suits" rarely understood the new digital world. They usually had secretaries to open their email for them! They spent all their time and attention on legal means of trying to stop the tide, trying to sue 12 year old school kids hard enough to scare the millions of others. Meanwhile, artists had begun to question why they were knocking themselves out jumping through all the hoops to get a record company contract! The odds were very slim and even if you won what would the company do for you? Unless you were a 15 year old pole dancer in suggestive clothing they would spend little or no money promoting your career. Nor would they knock themselves out setting up public appearances and concerts for you. Just what would THEY get out of the deal? Live music started to come back with the younger set. Not the teenyboppers but the 18-24 year olds, those old enough to get into bars. Bands made their money selling their teeshirts and self-produced CDs. Anybody with a laptop, $1000 of rack-mount MIDI equipment and a pirated copy of "Pro Tools" studio software could produce a professionally sounding CD. They could produce it for less than $1 and sell it for $10 when they played at a bar or club. When the record label sold a CD for $20 in a store the artist was lucky to make $0.50! The difference in profit is obvious. Bands began to make a living promoting themselves. Some of you may have watched the tv documentary about Eminem, the rap artist. He knocked himself out for years trying to get a record label's attention. Nobody was interested. Labels only wanted to invest in what they considered a "sure thing". He finally had to produce and sell over 60,000 copies of his first album HIMSELF before some suit thought he might be an easy sell for them! Perhaps the turning point was around 2003, when the BareNakedLadies chose not to renew their label contract and went solo. A new business model was struck, one that did NOT include the old record label companies! Today, world famous artists are offering their own music on their websites. One offered his latest album for whatever price the customer was willing to pay! Many chose to take it for free but amazingly, he still made several million dollars! All without a record label contract. One of my customers is an artist called Fred Eaglesmith. Fred is a very talented country/folk artist who literally carved out his own concert route! He would strike deals with venues in large and small towns across the USA and Canada where he would perform at annual events for a modest appearance fee, making his gravy from a gazebo selling all his "promo" material of CDs, tshirts, buttons, fridge magnets or whatever. The idea was to set up as many repeated annual gigs as possible. After a few years he build his circuit and all he had to do was "housekeep" it, looking after new additions and the odd cancellation. It was a lot of initial work but now he deserves our admiration. All without the help of any record company. So now record companies think that their ticket to survival is to recover lost revenues from pirated songs. Those songs are old! Already fewer and fewer people BOTHER to pirate them as younger audiences come on board! New artists are developing new revenue streams to make a living with new channels to deliver their product. The record companies are being shut out for no longer bringing anything to the party. If I ran a record company I would be frantically trying to re-invent myself while I was still rich enough to be able. Companies should be going back to being big promoters, making money from concerts and tours, with new discoveries. As long as they're rich they can offer to do a better job in those areas for an artist than he's likely to have the resources to do for himself. So Harper can enact all such Bills as this as he wants. And many of us can debate it to death. Meanwhile, the music world has already moved on. So who cares?

Or, as Spider Robinson so eloquently put it: "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think!"

Well, I too read Steyn's book and I've noticed that many of his points are being ignored or misquoted in this thread. Steyn seemed quite emphatic that the problem as he saw it was not merely that so many immigrants are Muslim. It was more that they come from countries that practice a fundamentalist form of Islam. Moreover, unlike any other immigrant group in history they have some dramatic cultural conflicts stemming from their faith. They see NO separation of church and state and believe that their religion trumps state law. Moreover, immigrants from these cultures even when non-militant tend to support militant members of their community. So he's not talking about all Muslims and recognises that there are more progressive and tolerant groups within that faith than the fundamentalists. The problem is, it's not the progressive folks we have to fear! We never had to fear all Irishmen but we did have to fear the ones who let off bombs in subways or school buses. Islam in many countries appears to be a faith that has not really changed in centuries. Actually, in those countries their very culture has been as unchanged as their religion. They are ill-equipped for the modern world and often have imams who preach that they should not change to suit modern times but rather should change the rest of the world to fit their more primitive views. You can always find Muslims who are as reasonable and as modern as the rest of us. So what? Mainstream Christianity has to deal with fundamentalist "Jim Jones" elements. We don't try to excuse the Jim Jones type sects because most other Christians are not as whacko. We deal with the whackos! The same is true of any groups of militant Muslims and how they compare to mainstream Islam. We have to deal with them firmly, not pretend they don't exist. We certainly shouldn't consider changing our own society to fit their vision!

Not meaning to defend the oil companies but it's only fair to point out that part of the reason for the lack of new refineries is that our governments slapped fiercely expensive environmental laws on them that ballooned the cost of such plants! No one seemed to consider that these actions would eventually make us uncompetitive with countries that have NO extra anti-pollution costs! That's the situation in many areas we find ourselves in today. I would favour green "tariffs and duties". If a ton of steel costs a Canadian steel mill an extra $20 a ton to be "clean" then a ton from China, Russia or India should face a $20/ton tariff to make a level playing field. Free Trade is not free if it's not fair! What we often see today is just exploitation of loopholes of our own making.

Would there not be a third choice? If a question lies outside your own experience or education why not withhold an opinion? I agree that many things are over my head. I also find that you don't have to be an electrical engineer to understand how a radio works. Sometimes all you need is a working knowledge to make informed or appropriate decisions. I think "blind faith" is referring to accepting the words of others based on personal impressions of their competency. One lab coat is whiter than another man's, if you like. Or deferring to the man with the most initials after his name. Those who've worked in the "initial" world know that a degree is often no guarantee of accuracy or even competency. I worked with civil engineers who used to joke that if you were incompetent you could always get a job with the government! If you don't know enough to decide for yourself how can you be confident in choosing to side with any particular expert? How could you recognize a quack? Or someone who simply isn't looking at all the facts? Especially with something like climate change! We're talking vast sums of money and effort! What if we're wrong? And we find ourselves too broke to try again in a proper fashion? What do we tell our hungry children? "OOPS! Sorry, but the experts sure looked good!" No, before we can support giving not just our own but all of our neighbours' tax monies toward any approach we owe it to ourselves and our children to have an INFORMED opinion! If we are not qualified to make one then we are also not qualified to pick a "champion" either.

While we're talking about distinctions...I was hoping you or someone else would directly address my question. All of your responses revolve around a cop deliberately tainting evidence or procedure. What about a cop making an honest mistake? It seems the law at present treats both situations in the same manner. All that aside, I still haven't seen a clear answer as to why society should be punished for a police infraction. I can understand punishing bad cops. I can understand punishing criminals. I still can't see why our system decides that excluding evidence to let charges be dropped is a fair punishment TO THE COPS! I thought the protection of society would be paramount. Cops could still face reprimands or even charges. If a cop deliberately tainted evidence then throw the cop in jail! To exclude the evidence seems to be punishing society! All your examples were of cops planting evidence. You made no mention of evidence discovered by chance. A random stop of a vehicle without sufficient cause that turns up blood or a severed head, perhaps. Insufficient cause? Then let Jason of Friday XIII drive on his merry way! BAD COP! What is the point? To embarrass the cops? "If you taint evidence then we will punish innocent bystanders! That will fix you!" Shades of Fearless Fosdick. Philosophically, it seems to be a refutation of Aristotle. A is NOT A! Evidence is not part of the truth. I agree that a citizen should have his rights protected but part of doing that is protecting society in general. In practical terms a balance obviously must be struck. With the present system it just doesn't seem clear that society and by extension innocent individuals are being protected. Punishing the cops not just for intentional infractions but for simple errors by allowing continued potential peril from a dangerous perp is VERY hard for a layman to understand! Perhaps you could clarify things from these perspectives...

I watched those votes and they didn't look too "free" to me! Particularly Mulroney's vote. He was flagrantly running behind the curtains telling his MPs that they'd better vote against a return of the death penalty. I wouldn't trust a "free" vote from any party! I'd much rather see the question put on a ballot as a referendum. I've never understood how someone can call themselves a democrat if they're not willing to abide by the majority when it goes against their own personal wishes. Otherwise they're mere elitists, by definition. Which I guess would include me! As one of Robert Heinlein's "rational anarchists".

After reading that letter, yeah! They are full of it! "Costs of manufacturing...varying" What does it matter? They don't manufacture separately in Canada! They likely have them all made in China. Their manufacturing cost will be exactly the same no matter where they sell the product. They quoted irrelevant factors as reasons why they charge more in Canada. That just means they don't want to tell us the truth. Either they have an extra middleman in the loop for Canadian orders, they have extra costs involved in cross-border shipping or they just think they can get away with it! Or a mix of all three.

I think the point was that the Japanese CAN turn on a dime! Or at least re-tool in 6 months. GM, Ford and Chrysler need several years! In effect, by comparison they can't turn on a dinner plate!

Well, I can accept the Tories may be following a policy of incrementalism but as usual things aren't that simple. We can differ on precisely which policies they champion. Furthermore, although we've never actually had referenda on capital punishment or abortion, polls have consistently shown that there never has been a strong majority for the status quo. The only poll I ever saw that purported to show that most Canadians were against capital punishment was one where the question was phrased so that it implied it was almost mandatory for even trivial cases! Even someone as Libertarian as myself has had to accept that perhaps abortion has become too casual and that there's room for a better solution. Or at least that a majority of my fellow citizens might feel that way, if anyone ever bothered to ask them. I'm just saying that you seem to be assuming that Harper's Tories want to incrementally change such laws against the will of the majority of the people. If we had a true referendum for capital punishment as an option in cases "beyond all reasonable doubt" like a Charles Ng or a Paul Bernardo it might carry by majority! Likewise, if abortion was strictly enforced as only available for the 1st trimester or restricted for a woman who repeatedly uses abortion instead of birth control it might not satisfy the bible thumping crowd but it may garner majority support overall. Whatever, even if you're correct in your suspicions I can't see your two examples being first on their agenda for anyone but a Vic Toews. I think a Triple E Senate and a return of provincial powers might be more important to the Tories. Time will tell. It looks like Dion is not likely to knock Harper out in the next election and a Tory majority might be a struggle but far more likely than even a minority for Dion.

Ah, I see your point. It does seem they are going overboard. I agree with them about laying charges if the accusations seem libelous but only in extreme cases and only judiciously. One or two lawsuits where their opponent is clearly in the wrong makes a point. A couple of dozen just seems anal retentive! On this point I believe I agree with you. As for the $1000, it's tempting to take up a collection to shut some MPs up! There were times with Sheila Copps I could have passed a hat for a grand in no time flat!

You have to have reasonable grounds. The Crown or if necessary a judge will decide if your case has merit. Otherwise someone with a tinfoil hat could tie up the court's time. Granted, the bar is very low. Still, I refer to my post mentioning parliamentary privilege. As an MP you can't be sued for something said in the House. It's an indication of how "new" Dion's people were when they mouthed off outside the House.

Do you have any hard evidence for this conspiracy theory? Or is it just an opinion? I vividly remember listening to Harper years ago while speaking to the Reform Party at a Party Platform convention (remember that idea? The members of a party voting on BINDING party policy? Are today's leaders of all parties ever glad that one went down the "memory hole"!). He clearly and emphatically told the party that if they tried in any way to use political power for social engineering over morality issues like birth control, abortion or even Sunday shopping they would see their party LOSE, LOSE AND LOSE! I find it hard to agree with you when it means accepting that Harper would have had a complete and utter turnaround in his opinion. Sometimes I think Michael may be right when he taunts you with "scary, scary, scary". Tell me the present Tory party has a lot of Ned Flanders types and I might agree. Tell me that they haven't shown themselves to be better than the others and I could respect your opinion. Try to tell me that Harper and his gang are just waiting for a majority so they can commit political suicide as social engineers and I have a hard time swallowing your argument.

Excuse me, I'm confused again. I don't recall addressing any post to you personally at all! So how could I have made any assumption against you? If you look at my post I was responding to jdobbin. And what is the basis for your assumption that the Tories are MY party? If so, only by default 'cuz they smell slightly less than the others. ALL of them have grievous faults! As for silencing Opposition in the courts, if you were right then the very concept of parliamentary privilege would be unnecessary! Nobody has muzzled the Opposition in Parliament, except maybe the Liberals themselves for refusing to vote against the government. It's when they speak or act in a libelous fashion OUTSIDE of the House that they can be charged, and rightly so. Why should they be any more special than a private citizen like you or I? Because they are politicians? They have their Privilege so they can yap off within the walls of a Parliament and that's enough for them! The only party I ever championed died when they merged with the Progressive Conservatives and allowed the tail to take over the dog, if I may garble a metaphor.

Being an old hippy I've been around long enough that the support given to computer models by some in this thread strikes me as remarkably similar to the "population explosion/depletion of resources" panic generated by the "Club of Rome" way back in the 70's. This organization was made up of scientists and world political leaders to address the problems of too many people on the planet using up finite resources. Vast sums of money were committed and a LOT of time and attention was wasted. Our own Trudeau was a member of this club. The media treated their reports as gospel, just as they treat the GW crowd today. Of course, the Club's predictions proved totally WRONG! Think about how our world would be different today if we had of used that money and those resources to more positive purposes. The problem was in the computer model. The people who had developed the model were horrified at how others seized on it and ran with it. They were well aware of the flaws in the programming. It treated resources as if all that were known at the time were all there were, with no more ever to be discovered. Similar to promoting the "Peak Oil" theory without considering deep water deposits or methane hydrate fields near Bermuda. They had developed the computer model as a programming exercise to show what could be done with computer modeling. After all, such modeling had never been done before. no one had even invented the IBM PC/XT! They never intended their model to be a reliable tool of prediction. Still, it didn't matter. One meeting in Rome and it was gospel. This is the age old problem of extrapolation. The scifi author Robert Heinlein loved to collect data and plot curves. One curve showing the rate of increase in the speed of human transportation showed we'd be travelling faster than light before the year 2000! Ol' Bob was perfectly aware that his curves were only loosely accurate. They used "what had been" to predict what was going to happen. The real world of course was full of factors that would destroy an extended curve. In the aforementioned example, the speed of light appears to be a finite number that cannot be exceeded. Also, new concepts of physics and the associated technologies cannot be scheduled to be discovered. Inspiration is a flighty thing that cares not a whit for any curve or flow chart. We had a similar issue with the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole which was taken as proof that man and his hair spray chemicals were destroying the planet. The "evidence" was based on brand new NASA satellite photos. NASA herself flatly denied any complicity with those who claimed the ozone hole was anything new or different as a result of modern man. After all, these were the first such photos we had been able to take! How could anyone know what things were like over the pole 50, 100 or centuries before? All I know is that here we've had a long, wet and cool spring. Someone is sure to tell me that a year or two is too short an interval to make the claim that the planet is not getting warmer. Yet many of these same folks will use similar short intervals to claim that it is! Thank heaven for beer!