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Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

canada.ca

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Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#41
post #19

Where does the article mention a website-blocking system? I'm curious as to the technical details. I'm sure it'll work this time. "For Canada to have an innovative and flourishing digital economy, we must protect copyright online" Hrmph. Citation required. Anyway, I'm not sure why businesses are so concerned about copyright still. Maybe this is specific to Canada? But country-specific things aside: * The DMCA already…

I can't wait until competent leadership who actually understand business, who are actual entrepreneurs, get into positions of power - like Andrew Yang with his policies. I keep saying this: I believe piracy is a valid counterweight mechanism to the capitalistic for-profit system that would milk society dry/fleece us year round until we die from the elements: charging us more than is reasonable so we'll so FU and pira…

> they can live off of their general UBI

More like their landlord can live off their general UBI.

Abolish rent!

Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#42

Where does the article mention a website-blocking system? I'm curious as to the technical details. I'm sure it'll work this time. "For Canada to have an innovative and flourishing digital economy, we must protect copyright online" Hrmph. Citation required. Anyway, I'm not sure why businesses are so concerned about copyright still. Maybe this is specific to Canada? But country-specific things aside: * The DMCA already…

The reason things like steam can "best" piracy is because piracy is so crippled by anti-piracy. Between sites disappearing, spotty content, abusive ads, viruses, malware, and risk of prosecution, it's not hard being better. Imagine if that weren't the case and the free experience were seamless.

Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#43
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Steam has already shown how to "best" piracy to the extent that a business can. It's not via copyright laws. Everyone thought rampant piracy would mean Steam won't work in Russia. That aged well. What's ironic to me is that, movie piracy was steadily falling and effectively dead after Netflix launched their streaming-video platform, very similar to how video game piracy started to taper off as Steam gained tracti…

> I agree that the quasi-monopolies of early Netflix or Steam through most of it's history are arguably bad, but the irony is that they're the most consumer-friendly ways to distribute media while effectively curbing piracy. I doubt that would remain the case indefinitely. There would be too much temptation to increase revenues once they were established. Perhaps the question should be: what would the market look lik…

This isn't a case of we need providers to license. The issue is providers thimking of all money not collected as left on the table, leading to the jacking up of prices, for ever diminishing quality of product.

Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#44
post #23

Where does the article mention a website-blocking system? I'm curious as to the technical details. I'm sure it'll work this time. "For Canada to have an innovative and flourishing digital economy, we must protect copyright online" Hrmph. Citation required. Anyway, I'm not sure why businesses are so concerned about copyright still. Maybe this is specific to Canada? But country-specific things aside: * The DMCA already…

> The DMCA already makes it easy enough to keep things like KickAssTorrents offline, which was honestly the closest I've seen to a good tracker going mainstream. The DMCA is an American law, which does not apply in Canada or much of the rest of the world.

Tell that to the founders of the Pirate Bay who were continuously raided and eventually wound up in jail, despite not being American, and not being in America.

Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#45
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait until competent leadership who actually understand business, who are actual entrepreneurs, get into positions of power - like Andrew Yang with his policies. I keep saying this: I believe piracy is a valid counterweight mechanism to the capitalistic for-profit system that would milk society dry/fleece us year round until we die from the elements: charging us more than is reasonable so we'll so FU and pira…

Translated: I can't afford X so it's OK to steal it, because corporations are evil for being for-profit. Got it. re UBI: you don't have to wait to see how 'well' would UBI work in practice - ask anyone from any European countries about their Roma population and how effectively they use the 'subsidies' (not the right word, but I can't recall the right one) from government. So many enterpreneurs and artists ... (/s jus…

Re: Re: UBI — there's a difference in how a person who's in pain but otherwise healthy will use painkillers, and how a person who is in pain but also is addicted to painkillers will use painkillers.

Like an addiction, prolonged poverty — and especially being born into poverty, and having your social circle consist mostly of other people born into poverty — changes many people for the worse, such that they become less able to effectively strategize to lift themselves out of poverty if they do get offered the resources to do so. They never learned how, and/or they have no role-models to mirror, so they don't even try.

UBI certainly isn't a magic fix for poverty. But I've never seen anyone claiming it to be. People in poverty are already usually receiving social assistance, so UBI wouldn't even change anything for them!

Instead, UBI is more likely to serve as a prophylactic to prevent poverty. It's a secure, predictable safety net that's just always there by default; a much-improved version of Unemployment, without stigma (because everyone gets it no matter what) and without restrictions (e.g. you get it even if you were previously self-employed. I mean, you get it even while you're employed, so of course you do.)

Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#47
post #21
post #15

A friend of mine (Canadian) uses piracy sites a lot for one reason: all the content they are interested in is geofenced to USA and completely unavailable in the country (Hulu)

>all the content they are interested in is geofenced to USA and completely unavailable in the country (Hulu) Like what? I saw a comment[1] a few days ago saying something to this effect, but someone replied pointing out it was available, just not in a manner that OP was satisfied with. FWIW I checked a hulu original that I recently watched, and it was available in canada under disney+. [1] https://news.ycombinator.co…

I sometimes have to go through an SSH tunnel simply to access some YouTube contents.

Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#48
post #32

People should understand, Canada's heritage minister (Guilbeault) has been trying to implement an online blocking system for a while now. The current government (Liberals) have shut down parliament, during covid, only to prevent investigations into their WE charity corruption. When a 3rd party candidate Maxime Bernier attempted his own party ... the media by law had to give him equal air time, but his reach was censo…

Seems like you're making a big leap from copyright enforcement.

Heres an article from Feb 2020 (last year) were Guilbeault was backtracking after a report came out that the government wanted to issue licenses for content creators.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2020/02/03/liberals...

> Asked if the government would block foreign websites like Breitbart News, the New York Times ... if they failed to comply ... Guilbeault said no one has said sites should be blocked in Canada but he added, “Frankly, I’m not sure I see what the big deal is.”

These are the people you're dealing with, they don't see any issue with this type of censorship. Authoritarian regimes don't happen at once, they grow over time.

Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#49

Where does the article mention a website-blocking system? I'm curious as to the technical details. I'm sure it'll work this time. "For Canada to have an innovative and flourishing digital economy, we must protect copyright online" Hrmph. Citation required. Anyway, I'm not sure why businesses are so concerned about copyright still. Maybe this is specific to Canada? But country-specific things aside: * The DMCA already…

The reason things like steam can "best" piracy is because piracy is so crippled by anti-piracy. Between sites disappearing, spotty content, abusive ads, viruses, malware, and risk of prosecution, it's not hard being better. Imagine if that weren't the case and the free experience were seamless.

As soon as you build a business model capable of delivering a quality experience, the necessary logistical entanglements that facilitate your business are now directly targetable by legal systems everywhere.

This is the soft power of the market at work. Short of refusing to create business presence or monetize, you'll never be able to get much of anything done.

If anything is to be done to force providers to raise the bar above a compelling, high quality piracy alternative, it quite literally has to be out of the goodness of contributor's hearts. Which means it must be so easy to build, people don't mind spending leisure time on it.

And assholes would still screw it up and ruin a good thing for everyone else. That won't ever change.

Re: Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites

#50

Where does the article mention a website-blocking system? I'm curious as to the technical details. I'm sure it'll work this time. "For Canada to have an innovative and flourishing digital economy, we must protect copyright online" Hrmph. Citation required. Anyway, I'm not sure why businesses are so concerned about copyright still. Maybe this is specific to Canada? But country-specific things aside: * The DMCA already…

> * Steam has already shown how to "best" piracy to the extent that a business can. It's not via copyright laws. Everyone thought rampant piracy would mean Steam won't work in Russia. That aged well. What's ironic to me is that, movie piracy was steadily falling and effectively dead after Netflix launched their streaming-video platform, very similar to how video game piracy started to taper off as Steam gained tracti…

>For a single low monthly fee you got access to movies from all the major networks, and a good selection of TV shows as a bonus. The networks started getting greedy - HBO Max, Paramount+, Disney+, Peacock, Discovery+, the list goes on - all wanting their own $5-$15/month cut on the action.

It's funny to think that the platform, which is pretty easily replicable, is nearly as valuable as the content.

Why should the content creators hand over all over the margins to Netflix?

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