[free-sklyarov] RANT!!!!

Andrew Lawrence ausage at ausage.com
Fri Jul 20 22:37:10 PDT 2001


On July 20, 2001 11:43 pm, you wrote:
> Interestingly, the <http://usembassy.state.gov/> URL does not seem to
> lead to any possibility of contacting consulates in Canada by email.
> They are apparently protected from Canadians wielding dangerous
> emails. Strange, eh?
>
> Somehow, I'm not optimistic about communication working by regular
> mail or telephone. Or perhaps being wanted by the FBI for 8 years for
> leaving the US in 1968 as a draft dodger has made me overly
> pessimistic. Any advice from other Canadians with an angle on this?

This morning I called the US Consultat here in Toronto and spoke to someone 
in the "Trade" department.  A very nice lady, who although clueless about 
this issue, listened to my complaint and promised to start a log off eveyone 
who called and pass it on to higher authoritites.

When I outlined the issues to her and told her I was very concerned since 
Dimitry Sklarov was arrested for doing something that is perfectly legal for 
me as a Canadian to do. She suggest I should speak to the Canadian gov't and 
I told her I had already contacted my Member of Parliament and the Minister.

I informed her that neither I, nor my business, would be purchasing Adobe 
products or for that matter any product where the intellectual property 
rights where controlled by interested in the United States.

This is is not just about Dimitry or Adobe.  It is about the United States -- 
which has a near monopoly on English languare IP -- using the DMCA to try and 
control intellectal property rights world wide.

I just download the Adobe eBook Reader to see how it worked... A quote from 
the Readme.htm file:
	"To prevent unauthorized reading..."

Now the last time I checked the Canadian Copyright Act, and the DMCA for that 
matter, "reading" was not one of the exclusive rights granted to authors to 
promote creativity in the arts and sciences.

There are a number of things I can do with a copyrighted work in Canada that 
are illegal in the US. (i.e. I can copy a music CD and give to a friend 
legally because I payed the royally to the music producers when I purchased a 
blank CDR or cassette or video tape), now there is one more.

It appears that Americas are about to lose their "right" to read with the 
DMCA.  Seems to me RMS wrote an essay about this a while back.  Perhaps his 
vision is true.  

Canada is studying revisions to the Copyright Act right now and I am going to 
do my best to see that we don't get a DMCA. 

Meanwhile, this afternoon Redhat called to negotiate a service contract for 
my systems and several of my clients.  I regretfully informed 
them that since they are a US based company, while the prosecution of Dimitry 
Sklyarov continues I will be unable to do business with them and am dumping 
their product in favour of one from a different source.

If enough people outside the US inform enough companies inside the US that 
because of the DMCA they are going to take their business elsewhere in the 
world the US gov't will have a real motivation to change the law.  For me 
that means 90% of the books, 95% of the movies, 80% of the music are products 
I will no longer purchase.

I don't know if it's possible, but I can image the effect a major drop in 
sales of American music, books, music and software would have.

Sorry for the waste of band with.... but I had to get this said....




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