The indictment goes so far as to frame the defendants as “a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale,” and repeatedly refers to the site as a “Mega consipracy[4].”

This marks the first time that a cyber locker has been taken down using criminal law instead of civil law. 4 people were arrested in New Zealand, with 3 others facing arrest in other countries. Data centers in the Netherlands, USA and Canada were also raided as part of the police action[1].

For its part, MegaUpload claims it is a neutral service provider. The “cyberlocker” concept acts only as a conduit for user-supplied content. Like a hard drive manufacturer or Internet Service Provider (ISP), they are not able to automatically block potentially infringing material. MegaUpload maintains that they exceed (US) DMCA requirements by providing major rights holders with “direct realtime takedown accesss.” They go on to say that of the billions of user files they host, “the vast majority are accessed less than 10 times during their lifetime.”[5]

Since SOPA/PIPA, it has become obvious that the USA has been co-opted by the RIAA/MPAA lobby (copyright trolls) to impose their own wish list for copyright laws. Wikileaks cables have also shown that the recent “Canadian” copyright reform (C-32 / C-11) came straight from the US trade representative. The USA has also been bullying other countries on imposing their own style of copyright and patent laws, written directly by the major special interest groups. They have also threatened to enforce trade sanctions on countries that refuse to bow to their demands.[6] Dozens of diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks also point to the same USA effort towards Canada, especially towards the copyright reforms contained in C-32 (now C-11), and the clear admission by the government that the consultations were just for show. [7]

These copyright trolls have claimed $500 Million in damages yet the CRIA (the canadian division of the RIAA, now called “Music Canada,”) was guilty of almost $6 billion dollars[2] in commercial copyright infringement and settled for $45 Million (0.75% of the actual damages).  By this standard, Megaupload should only pay $3.75 Million.

The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a treaty which seems to be a revisit of the unpopular Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which was also negotiated in secret. TPP wants to change copyright terms from Life+50 to Life+70. The copyright trolls at the table in these secret meetings are also demanding that Canada pass more bad legislation like the American DMCA which has been heavily criticized for its chilling effect on the Internet already. And likely making us pass legislation similar to SOPA/PIPA which sparked world wide outrage and protests by many popular sites including Wikipedia and Google.

The increase in copyright term length is sought after by said copyright trolls in order to prevent works from entering public domain; thereby removing the potential for companies to continue leeching off of them. Copyright now lasts longer than the media upon which the fixations are stored. The only way for them to enter the public domain is to copy them before the original has degraded enough to require “creative” restoration, thereby renewing the copyright.

The Pirate Party of Canada understands that we need to adjust “Intellectual Property” law to balance the needs of authors, inventors, and corporations with the needs of society.[8] Of particular concern, given the introduction of PIPA/SOPA in the US and Internet surveilance legislation in Canada, is the erosion of net neutrality and Internet privacy. By imposing liability on service providers for user-generated content, they are encouraging self-censorship on the Internet. ISPs, registrars, and webhosts are forced to impose restrictive Terms of Service on their customers. Websites and users in turn, are forced to censor themselves to avoid having their service cut off. The result is a passive Internet where the vast majority of users mindlessly consume content regurgitated by copyright trolls.

Proudly Crowdsourced
Pirate Party of Canada
Parti Pirate du Canada

Sources:

[1] US department of justice press release January 19, 2012:
“Justice Department Charges Leaders of Megaupload with Widespread Online Copyright Infringement”
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-crm-074.html

[2] Micheal Geist blog; December 7, 2009:
“Canadian Recording Industry Faces $6 Billion Copyright Infringement Lawsuit”  http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4596/135/

[3]David Kravets, Wired.com; January 19, 2012:
“Feds Shutter Megaupload, Arrest Executives”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/megaupload-indicted-shuttered/

[4]http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment

[5] MegaUpload FAQ; retrieved January 17, 2012:
“What Is MegaUpload’s Stance Towards Abuse?”
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A//www.megaupload.com/?c=faq

[6] Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; January 6, 2012:
“How the US pressured Spain to adopt unpopular Web blocking law”
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/how-the-us-convinced-spain-to-adopt-internet-censorship.ars

[7] Michael Geist blog, April 29 2011:
“Wikileaks Cables Show Massive U.S. Effort to Establish Canadian DMCA”
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5765/125/

[8] About the Pirate Party of Canada
https://www.pirateparty.ca/about

Do Mar is proud to release its first EP through a torrent tracker and most importantly with the help of Canada’s Pirate Party – a party that is increasingly becoming more relevant in Canada and across the world for its work in protecting our right to free speech and information access on the internet. ”

-Ujwal Arkalgud, of Do Mar

A Toronto-based  alternative rock band Do Mar, has decided to release their new “Live in the basement EP” via our Torrent system, CaPT.

You can get the torrent here.

Or, you can listen and download from Bandcamp.

Cheers,

Shawn Vulliez
Political Council Member
Pirate Party of Canada

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition.
We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe – but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world – because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

The Pirate Party of Canada has fought and will continue to fight against this bill by disseminating facts and updates in regards to the bill. Pro-Internet group OpenMedia has also come out against SOPA, and has started a petition to send to Prime Minister Harper and Canada’s Ambassador to the United States.

Read more on SOPA and it’s effects on Canadians at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority’s (CIRA) Blog

Jake Daynes
Official Representative
Pirate Party of Canada

Source Material: TorrentFreak

The wireless spectrum auction will see the sale of the 700Mhz band recently freed up by Canada’s move from Analog signal broadcasting. As many Pirates already know, the 700Mhz band gives the potential for the Canadian cellular market to be opened up to choice and competition. We know that Canadians want more choices, and we know that they deserve them – without having to pay exorbitant amounts for them.

This is something that the major three wireless carriers are fighting against. Thankfully, The Pirate Party of Canada and Open Media recognize the need for a competitive wireless market. We are very pleased with Open Media and their efforts to help Stop the Squeeze, so let’s join them and the independent carriers such as Mobilicity in fighting for Canadians’ rights to open and competitive digital communications.

The wireless spectrum is a public resource, let’s let the public be heard!

Jake Daynes
Official Representative
Pirate Party of Canada

Source Material:  http://openmedia.ca/blog/watch-out-big-3-canadians-are-making-themselves-heard

Pirate Parties across the globe worked hand in hand with online digital and civil rights movements to protest the bill, and these efforts have paid off wonderfully. SOPA was not just a detriment to United State’s citizen’s access to an open internet, but a detriment to the world’s citizens. Canada’s internet backbone goes through the United States, which means that we especially are subject to the whims of US legislators in this digital age.

The online protests about the bill were surprising and large. They ranged anywhere from callng Representatives, companies, and senators to get them to change their mind, to actively moving domain’s away from and targeting the business model of the companies that supported/lobbied for the bill. GoDaddy lost well over 100,000 domains in the space of about 10 days due to their involvement with these bills, along with other various targets. The Pirate Party of Canada is proud to have been part of the thousands of domain registrants who moved their domains away in protest of GoDaddy’s support of SOPA.

Jake Daynes
Official Representative
Pirate Party of Canada

Source Material: http://www.examiner.com/computers-in-denver/house-kills-sopa

A large part of their pay comes from stock options, which are taxed at half their value. This means there is a lot of money that should be heading into the government coffers to pay for valuable business initiatives and social policies that are instead deposited right back into the accounts that need it the least.  CEOs of companies involved in laying off hundreds of hard working Canadians, like Research in Motion with over $10 million combined to Mike Lazaridis and James Balsillie, or in getting the government to legislate their workers out of a fair contract, like Air Canada’s Calvin Rovinescu who brought home $4.5 million, are taking home excessive amounts of money that could have been used to assist people in raising their families.

Recently the major telecoms had the CRTC approve what amounts to UBB-Lite because their lines couldn’t handle the bandwidth pressure. Telus (#25), Rogers (#38), Shaw (#43 & 48) and Bell (#95) saw themselves take 5 of the top 100, making up $38 630 594 total. How about investing some of that cash into improving those fictional bandwidth issues so Canadians can have affordable & neutral Internet access?

We would love to know what you think about CEOs making over 189% more than their employees. What do you think should be done, if anything, about this rapid earnings gap growth that has seen that has seen it go from 40% higher than employees in the 1980s, to 85% by 1995, and now to a whopping 189%? Is this even an issue the Pirate Party of Canada should address?

For Immediate Release

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IN CANADIAN PARLIAMENT

Ottawa, ON – Jan 2nd, 2012 – The Canadian Pirate Party has uncovered evidence of copyright infringement originating from the Canadian House of Commons. The pirated files include film, music, computer programs and ebooks. The information has been discovered using similar IP-scraping tools used by the RIAA and MPAA to assemble computer addresses for class action copyright lawsuits, including the recent example where Canadian ISPs were forced to hand over the addresses of individuals accused of downloading “The Hurt Locker”.

“It’s pretty funny, given that this very same group of people is working on harsher copyright law with Bill C-11, ” says former Pirate Party Candidate for Vancouver Centre Travis McCrea, “It just highlights how absurd and unenforceable this copyright monopoly is. Just as in the Hurt Locker lawsuit, we can tell where the files were downloaded but it is impossible to tell which individual is responsible.”

More details on the IP addresses, files downloaded, and the method used to get this information can be found here.

The Pirate Party of Canada is a federal political party focused on thoughtful information policy reform, genuine democracy, civil liberties, and the freedom of the Internet. You can find out more online at www.pirateparty.ca .

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Media Contacts: pr@pirateparty.ca

The Pirate Party of Canada is pleased to see GoDaddy start listening to its customers, however we will still be moving our domains from their service to avoid any future conflicts.

This change in policy is concrete proof that we all have a voice, and when used it is a force to be reckoned with.

The Pirate Party of Canada is a federal political party focused on thoughtful information policy reform, genuine democracy, civil liberties, and the freedom of the Internet. You can find out more online at www.pirateparty.ca.