Monday, August 18, 2008

Cory Doctorow endorses Anne Lagacé Dowson

BoingBoing co-founder, columnist and author Cory Doctorow has thrown his support behind the NDP candidate in Westmount-Ville-Marie. Dowson, a family friend of Doctorow, asked him for his endorsement and after interviewing her about her platform he happily gave it.

I've just spent half an hour on the phone with Dowson and I'm happy to say that based on what she told me about her platform, I'm absolutely delighted to offer her my unqualified endorsement.

Dowson pointed out that the NDP is the only federal Canadian party with a dedicated digital affairs critic: the always-sharp Charlie Angus, a former punk musician late of the band L'Etranger, who I used to see headlining punk shows when I was a teenager. Angus and the NDP have led the political criticism of the Tory Bill 61, a Canadian version of America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a copyright bill that was drafted in secret, without input from Canadian stakeholders, including coalitions of Canadian creators and music labels.

The NDP has also led the pack on criticising the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, another secretly negotiated proposal, this time for a global treaty on copyright that would dramatically increase the search, seizure and surveillance obligations to Canada and other signatories, forcing them to spy on everyday individuals to protect the profits of a few giant record companies.

Dowson also endorsed the NDP's activism on net neutrality -- Canada's major ISPs, Bell and Rogers, have led the world's Internet companies in a race to the bottom, imposing secret caps, spying on users, blocking protocols, and even blocking downstream ISPs' customers (so that ISPs that buy their backhaul from Bell are subject to the same filtering as Bell's own retail customers).

8 comments:

James Curran said...

Let me get this straight. A family friend has endorsed a family friend?

Well, that IS big news.

Cliff said...

Too bad the Liberal record on issues like copyright, net neutrality and standing up to big business for consumers is so miserable or they might have got his endorsement.

James Curran said...

You mean like when David McGuinty takes on the cheating cell phone companies? That kind of big business? Or when Stephane's Green Shift will make big polluters pay a carbon tax? That kind of Big Business? With all due respect Cliff, Canadians don't give a flying shit about Copyright infringements...unless somebody charges them for downloading a song.

My mom endorsed MY nomination. So did my doctor...he's a family friend.

Cliff said...

Michael Geist's Facebook group Fair Copyright for Canada has 90,000 members.

Of course that kind of cluelessness about what Canadians actually 'give a flying shit about' probably helps explain why your party are in opposition in this parliament and barely trending towards a minority government in the next one despite how loathsome Harper's Conservatives are.

By all means, carry on.

James Curran said...

As usual, the Dippers choose to fight Liberals instead of the Cons...even though t's their U.S backed Bill that's at question here.

And, just so you don't try to deceive the rest of however reads your blog, Liberal MP Scott Brison, has called the bill a "US made law" that would establish a "police state." A substantial majority (76%) of the population agrees the bill was drafted in the US, despite claims it was "born in Canada." That's right, a Liberal MP.

Good luck with ever getting to be the official opposition. It ain't much, but we'll take it. As for not moving in the polls? Wouldn't that be the Conservatives that are having issues with that...Oh, and maybe the Dippers at 6% in the province of Quebec?

Cliff said...

"As usual, the Dippers choose to fight Liberals instead of the Cons...even though t's their U.S backed Bill that's at question here"

A:) You came to my house with a chip on your shoulder and picked this fight.

B:) The Liberal attempt to sell out Canadians to huge American media conglomerate Bill C-60 was just as compromised, lobbyist authored and beholden to American copyright legislation and the Liberal proposed Bill C-74 which would have forced communications providers to build surveillance back-doors into the hardware that routes our phone calls, Internet traffic, and more was an Orwellian nightmare.

A pox on both your houses.

James Curran said...

Apples to Oranges.

Bill c-74 was a spy bill. I didn't like it. While Bill C-60 did not alter the right to make private copies of copyrighted material, it introduces limitations on the use of these private copies. In particular, the bill would make selling, renting, trading, distributing, and communicating legally-made private copies of a copyrighted work an infringement of copyrights. This implies that if downloads via peer-to-peer are "for personal use, and not redistributed, there will be no infringement. The one thing that the two bills have in common is that David Emerson is a common denominator.

As for the Facebook Group? You'll find thousands of us Liberals have joined.

The point is, and was supposed to be, a family friend endorsing a candidate does not an election win mean.

Cliff said...

I don't recall suggesting that it did.

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