MP James Moore: Please Drop the Rhetoric

June 23rd, 2010 by Jon No comments »

We tried to be civil. Unfortunately, Conservative Heritage Minister James Moore has decided to take the battle over Bill C-32 to a new low:

In the video, Moore frames all opposed to his precious copyright reform bill as fear mongers and evil doers who are against any kind of copyright reform. This kind of false rhetorical framing will not result in a copyright solution that benefits all affected parties. Instead, it just muddies the waters and makes it tough to have a real discussion about the important issues that are at hand.

As many have probably guessed from the contents of my website and twitter stream, I am against the current iteration of Bill C-32. That said, I believe strongly that copyright reform is necessary in this country. Our current laws were written before the internet really took off, and need to be modernized in order to effectively deal with new technologies and situations. Most of the proposed bill is quality content, but the Section 41, Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information, is not.

Mr. Moore needs to step down from his high horse, cut out the rhetorical bullshit, and join in on the discussion that we are having about his proposed bill. Plugging your ears and screaming ‘na-na-na-na-boo-boo’ just doesn’t cut it when you’re an elected representative of the people.

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A Letter to the Federal Government Regarding Bill C-32

June 16th, 2010 by Jon No comments »

This week, I sent the following letter the a few key members of the Federal Government, outlining my concerns with the proposed Bill C-32. Those who have read my other posts regarding the bill may notice a great deal of similar language. As always, feel free to borrow this letter and to modify it in any way, shape, or form. Printed letters can be sent to Members of Parliament free of charge, and all Members’ contact information is available here.

To: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
To: The Honourable Tony Clement
To: The Honourable James Moore

CC: Marc Garneau (Liberal Industry critic)
CC: Pablo Rodriguez (Liberal Heritage critic)
CC: Charlie Angus (NDP Digital Affairs Critic)
CC: Peter Braid (MP, Kitchener-Waterloo)

Dear Members of Parliament:

Last week, our Conservative government introduced Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act. As its title suggests, the aim of the bill is to modernize Canadian copyright law, an admirable goal considering the incredible changes that the internet has had on our economy since our copyright laws were last reviewed in 1997. With respect to its stated goal, Bill C-32 is a reasonable proposal. It contains some much needed legislation that will indeed clarify and modernize our copyright code.

For example, the Network Services section of the Bill provides a safe harbour clause for Internet service providers and other network operators. In particular, the section provides legal protection for hosting service operators whose customers may have uploaded copyrighted works to their servers. Likewise, the Copyright Infringement section sets maximum monetary awards for copyright owners who successfully charge an individual with infringement of works for personal or commercial use. Given the astronomical awards granted by American courts in both the Capitol vs. Thomas (2007) and RIAA vs. Tenenbaum (2009) cases, this is an extremely important clause.

Unfortunately, every positive aspect of the proposed law is counteracted in the Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information section of the bill, wherein the proposed law explicitly bans the use, manufacture, import, distribution, sale, or rental of any technology or device capable of circumventing any technological protection measure (also called digital rights management, or DRM) schemes that have been placed on the digital content by its distributor. Should the bill become law, any use of the aforementioned technologies will constitute an immediate infringement of copyright and make the responsible party liable to all damages outlined within. Therefore, this section effectively removes all of the rights granted in earlier portions of the bill, including Non-commercial User-generated Content and Reproduction for Private Purposes, the two sections that the government is using to desperately peddle this bill as consumer-positive, when in fact it is nothing of the sort. In particular, the latter section proposes that it be made legal to create personal reproductions of copyrighted material (often referred to as time- or format-shifting, an activity that the vast number of Canadians already take part in) so long as a number of conditions are met, one of which is that “the individual, in order to make the reproduction, did not circumvent, as defined in section 41, a technological protection measure, as defined in that section, or cause one to be circumvented.”

Just like that, with a single sentence, all of the ‘rights’ that the Conservative government is waving around as they insist that their approach to copyright reform is not bought and paid for by foreign media conglomerates are struck from the record. With an anti-circumvention clause built into our copyright law, the ability to use legitimately purchased digital media in a fair and open manner (generally called fair use in the USA or fair dealing here in Canada) ceases to exist. The reason for this is that an excruciatingly small minority of the digital media that is sold today is unencumbered by some form of digital rights management. DVDs? Encrypted. Your player contains software that allows them to be read. BluRay discs? The very same. Video games? Every one. Perhaps this is the real reason that Bill C-32 was introduced at video game developer Electronic Arts’ Montreal studios. Cable television, Netflix digital downloads, eBooks, computer software of all sorts, online television services, and an uncountable number of other current and future consumer media products are all protected by some form of DRM. About the only type of digital media that you can actually buy that does not come coated in some form of technological protection measure is music, and yet millions of Canadians who purchased music from Apple’s iTunes store prior to January of 2009 still have affected tracks in their music collections. Under the proposed law, none of this digital content can be backed up, moved to a different device, transcoded to a different format, or otherwise tampered with, because to do so would require that its owner break the DRM that has been placed on it, thus making that person a criminal in the eyes of Canadian courts.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about laws of this sort is that they are known to be ineffective at stopping internet piracy. In 1996, before popular file-sharing services like Napster, KaZaa, Limewire, and BitTorrent were even invented, a group of countries that included Canada signed the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty (WIPO), a document that required that signatory countries enact laws prohibiting the circumvention of digital rights management schemes. The United States did so in its 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and twelve years later, the Canadian government is seeking to ratify the treaty under pressure from the United States and the European Union. Unfortunately for the government, a great deal has changed since the turn of the century, and many consumers are now aware of the problems that rights management schemes can cause them while trying to use their legitimately purchased media in seemingly normal and socially acceptable ways. In those same twelve years, the digital piracy situation faced by media companies worldwide has grown exponentially, and various media industries attribute billions of dollars per year in losses to digital piracy. If anti-circumvention laws were truly effective, piracy should never have become the problem that media companies claim that it is today; the DMCA put anti-circumvention laws in place in the United States a full year before the invention of Napster and three years before the introduction of the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol.

In truth, anti-circumvention laws styled after the United States’ DMCA serve only to reduce consumer choice while failing to prevent digital piracy in any capacity whatsoever. Lawmakers would do well to understand that DRM schemes are no more than the digital counterparts of real-world mechanical locks. There has never been, and will never be, a lock that cannot be broken by any determined party with time, knowledge, and resources on their side. Further, it is essential that lawmakers understand that a single defeat of the DRM scheme designed to protect digital media often results in the widespread availability of that media to any and all interested parties by way of the internet. Therein lies the problem with DRM as an anti-piracy measure: One does not have to be a determined hacker to access the media that a DRM scheme is intended to protect; one simply requires access to the internet, and knowledge of a website that distributes media that has been helpfully unlocked by other, more capable parties. The global nature of the internet ensures that the parties most interested in defeating digital rights management schemes need not operate in countries unfriendly to their cause. For these reasons, a government mandate that protects the sanctity of digital locks will not have the desired effect of preventing widespread domestic piracy. Instead, such a ruling will serve only to impact the ability of consumers to utilize their rightfully purchased digital media in a fair and open manner.

Since anti-circumvention legislation has not reduced piracy rates in countries where it has been introduced, and since the DRM schemes that it aims to sanctify do little to stop widespread piracy, but do make common criminals out of legitimate customers on a wide scale, it is a simple matter to conclude that this type of legislation is not, and never will be, in the best interests of the consumer. Gentlemen, I urge you all to reconsider the laws proposed in Bill C-32. As a young entrepreneur and a professional employed in our strong technology sector, I cannot help but be concerned about the potentially stifling effects of the proposed legislation on our economy, and on our ability to innovate and to create the technologies of the future.

Thank you for your time,

Jonathan Fritz, BSc.

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The Problem with Bill C-32

June 6th, 2010 by Jon 2 comments »

This past week, the Honourable James Moore, Conservative Minister of Heritage & Official Languages and the Honourable Tony Clement, Conservative Minister of Industry introduced Bill C-32, “Copyright Modernization Act“ at the Electronic Arts studios in Montreal, Quebec. As its title suggests, the aim of the bill is to modernize copyright law in Canada, an admirable goal considering that our copyright laws haven’t been reviewed since 1997. In Internet time, that’s nearly an eternity, and a lot has changed since then. With respect to its stated goal, Bill C-32 is a reasonably good proposal of law. It contains some much needed legislation that will indeed clarify and modernize our copyright code.

For example, the Network Services section provides a safe harbour clause for Internet service providers and other network operators. In particular, the section provides legal protection for hosting service operators whose customers may have uploaded copyrighted works to their servers. Likewise, the Copyright Infringement section sets maximum monetary awards for copyright owners who successfully charge an individual with infringement of works for personal or commercial use. Given the astronomical awards granted by American courts in both the Capitol vs. Thomas and RIAA vs. Tenenbaum cases, this is an extremely important clause.

Unfortunately, these positive aspects of the proposed law are counteracted in the Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information section of the bill. In this section, the proposed law explicitly bans the use, manufacture, import, distribution, sale, or rental of any technology or device capable of circumventing any technological protection measures (also called digital rights management, or DRM) schemes that have been placed on the digital content by its distributor. Under the proposed law, any use of the aforementioned technologies constitutes an immediate infringement of copyright, and makes the responsible party liable to all damages outlined therein. The problem with this section is that it effectively removes all of the rights granted in earlier sections of the bill, including Non-commercial User-generated Content and Reproduction for Private Purposes, the two sections that the government is using to desperately peddle this bill as consumer-positive, when in fact it is nothing of the sort. In particular, the latter section proposes that it be made legal to create personal reproductions of copyrighted material so long as a number of conditions are met, one of which is that “the individual, in order to make the reproduction, did not circumvent, as defined in section 41, a technological protection measure, as defined in that section, or cause one to be circumvented.”

And just like that, with a single sentence, all of the ‘rights’ that the government is waving around as they insist that their approach to copyright reform is not bought and paid for by foreign media conglomerates are struck from the record. You see, with an anti-circumvention clause built into our copyright law, the ability to use legitimately purchased digital media in a fair and open manner (generally called fair use in the USA or fair dealing here in Canada) ceases to exist. The reason for this is because an excruciatingly small minority of the digital media that is for sale today is unencumbered by some form of digital rights management. DVDs? Encrypted. Your player contains software that allows them to be read. BluRay discs? Same deal. Video Games? Absolutely. Why do you think the government introduced the law at Electronic Arts’ Montreal studios? Cable television, Netflix digital downloads, eBooks, computer software of all sorts, online television from Hulu and other major providers, and an uncountable number of other consumer media products are all protected by some form of DRM. About the only type of digital media that you can actually buy that doesn’t come coated in some form of protection measure is music, but millions of people who purchased music from the iTunes store prior to January of 2009 still have affected tracks in their music collections. Under the proposed law, none of this digital content can be backed up, moved to a different device, transcoded to a different format, or otherwise tampered with, because to do so would require that its owner break the DRM that has been placed on it, thus making that person a criminal in the eyes of Canadian courts.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about laws of this sort is that they are known to be ineffective at stopping internet piracy. Way back in 1996, before Napster, KaZaa, Limewire, or BitTorrent were invented, a group of countries got together and signed the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty, a document that required that signatory countries enact laws prohibiting the circumvention of digital rights management schemes. The United States did so in its 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and 12 years later, the Canadian government is seeking to ratify the treaty under pressure from the United States and the European Union by following suit. Unfortunately for the government, a lot has happened since the turn of the century, and many consumers are now aware of the problems that rights management schemes can cause them while trying to use their legitimately purchased media in seemingly acceptable ways. In those same 12 years, the piracy situation has yet to stabalize, and the various media industries still attribute billions of dollars per year in losses to digital piracy. So what’s going on? If anti-circumvention laws were truly effective, wouldn’t the rate of piracy drop in countries where they are introduced?

Allow me to explain with a quote from one of my previous posts, An Open Letter to the Conservative Government of Canada:

Anti-circumvention laws styled after those of the United States’ 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act serve only to reduce consumer choice while failing to prevent digital piracy in any capacity whatsoever. Lawmakers would do well to understand that digital rights management (DRM) schemes are no more than the digital counterparts of real-world mechanical locks. There has never been, and will never be, a lock that cannot be broken by any determined party with time, knowledge, and resources on their side. In the digital case, a single defeat of the DRM system designed to protect digital media often results in the widespread availability of that media to any and all interested parties by way of the internet. Therein lies the biggest problem with DRM schemes: One does not have to be a determined hacker to access the media that a DRM scheme is intended to protect; one simply requires access to the internet, and knowledge of a website that distributes media that has been helpfully unlocked by other, more capable parties. The global nature of the internet ensures that the parties most interested in defeating digital rights management schemes need not operate in countries unfriendly to their cause. As such, a government mandate that protects the sanctity of digital locks will not have the desired effect of preventing widespread domestic piracy. Instead, such a ruling will serve only to impact the ability of consumers to utilize their rightfully purchased digital media in a fair and open manner.

Since anti-circumvention legislation has not reduced piracy rates in countries where it has been introduced, and since the digital rights management schemes that it aims to sanctify often do little to stop widespread piracy, but do inconvenience legitimate customers on a wide scale, it is a simple matter to conclude that this type of legislation is not, and never will be, in the best interests of the consumer, who also happens to be the voter responsible for electing the officers of government that attempt to introduce it into law. So why are your elected representatives being complacent in protecting your interests? Perhaps you should ask them about it.

Those readers with an interest in copyright law, internet piracy, and the effects of anti-circumvention legislation are encouraged to read Ripped by Greg Kot and Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars by William Patry, as well as to check out Professor Michael Geist’s excellent Blog.

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Thoughts on Openbook

May 23rd, 2010 by Jon No comments »

The biggest question that a project like OpenBook raises is that of where to lay the blame. It quite clearly represents an egregious violation of personal privacy; But is that the fault of Facebook, of its users, or of advertisers who fund the site in exchange for the data? Or is Zuckerberg right when he claims that social mores are changing with respect to the expectation of privacy? Based on the screen shots below, I certainly hope not:

One result of searching "creampie" on OpenBook

Me too! My favourite is banana cream! Oh, wait...

Brody Pieters: God damn, ya gotta love a glory hole!!!

That and working at McDonalds for the rest of your life

Nathan Longtin: "Just lost my anal virginity"

That's the kind of thing that you might want to keep to yourself.

Dilbagh Singh: "Guys I have lost my cell phone. My new number is 0062-81536252022"

Quick! Everybody phone this guy and congratulate him on his purchase!

Murat Yilmaz: "ppl add my pin 2246AF49 ;]"

Anybody have the ability to remotely wipe devices?

Lisa Nicholas: "im only gunna say this once and only once, you wanna start shit with me, say shit about my family and about me being pregnant and be ignorant fucking assholes and make shit up. i will find you.. i dont give a fuck!!! if im pregant or not! i will do something because im DONE DEALING WITH THIS SHIT! so go ahead say some more shit bitches IM NOT SCARED OF YOU!"

Personally, I'm scared for her kid.

The bottom line here is that most of these are things that should be kept to yourself. Presumably, none of these fine specimens realized just how public a forum Facebook really is. The real problem is that you can hardly blame them, considering how often the privacy policy changes, and how far the situation has eroded since the site was first launched. There is an excellent infographic by a fellow named Matt McKeon that illustrates just how far things have come along:

Click on the image to see an animated version of the graphic that shows the state of Facebook privacy in each year since 2005

Click on the image to see an animated version of the graphic that shows the state of Facebook privacy in each year since 2005

It’s funny that even though this issue has been covered multiple times by many a news outlet, the best that Facebook addicts can muster is to start a protest group on the site itself whenever the policies are changed. Perhaps Zuckerberg is right, and I actually am the weird one for not having an account with the site.

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An Open Letter to the Conservative Government of Canada

May 8th, 2010 by Jon 1 comment »

To: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
To: The Honourable Tony Clement
To: The Honourable James Moore

CC: Marc Garneau (Liberal Industry critic)
CC: Pablo Rodriguez (Liberal Heritage critic)
CC: Charlie Angus (NDP Digital Affairs Critic)
CC: Peter Braid (MP, Kitcener-Waterloo)

Dear Members of Parliament:

It is with much consternation that I view the continued efforts of the federal Conservative government of Canada to ‘reform’ Canadian copyright law. I fear that the government has lost sight of the original purpose of copyright law, and has forgotten their sworn duty to protect the interests of their constituents over those of foreign media conglomerates.  This week brought the news that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ordered the Honourable James Moore, Conservative Minister of Heritage & Official Languages, to proceed in drafting a copyright reform bill that is likely to include strong anti-circumvention clauses and an inflexible approach to fair dealing exceptions. As a Canadian citizen and an entrepreneur in our strong technology sector, I must make clear my view that these types of laws fail to benefit the end users of technology, and Canadian industry as a whole.

In particular, anti-circumvention laws styled after those of the United States’ 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act serve only to reduce consumer choice while failing to prevent digital piracy in any capacity whatsoever. Lawmakers would do well to understand that digital rights management (DRM) schemes are no more than the digital counterparts of real-world mechanical locks. There has never been, and will never be, a lock that cannot be broken by any determined party with time, knowledge, and resources on their side. In the digital case, a single defeat of the DRM system designed to protect digital media often results in the widespread availability of that media to any and all interested parties by way of the internet. Therein lies the biggest problem with DRM schemes: One does not have to be a determined hacker to access the media that a DRM scheme is intended to protect; one simply requires access to the internet, and knowledge of a website that distributes media that has been helpfully unlocked by other, more capable parties.

The global nature of the internet ensures that the parties most interested in defeating digital rights management schemes need not operate in countries unfriendly to their cause. As such, a government mandate that protects the sanctity of digital locks will not have the desired effect of preventing widespread domestic piracy. Instead, such a ruling will serve only to impact the ability of consumers to utilize their rightfully purchased digital media in a fair and open manner. Taken to their fullest extent, anti-circumvention laws prevent consumers from watching legitimately purchased films on their computers and from listening to personally owned music on their mobile devices. They encourage a marketplace that limits consumer choice and promotes vendor lock-in; a market that licenses media to consumers instead of selling it. This situation often results in the loss of personal property when DRM servers that consumers rely on to enjoy their media are inevitably shut down for economical reasons.

Last summer, the federal Conservative government conducted public copyright consultations under the auspices of creating what they advertised as a “made in Canada approach to copyright reform.” Unfortunately, it seems as though the thousands of voices that participated in those deliberations were largely ignored by this government, contrary to the very concept of a representative democracy. While we can all agree that copyright reform is necessary, it is important that the reforms that are ultimately enacted accurately represent the interests of the majority of Canadians, whose lives are impacted by their access to media technology on a daily basis. We must remember that the primary purpose of copyright law is provide a monetary incentive for artists to contribute to our society, and not to enrich foreign media conglomerates.

Thank you for your time,

Jonathan Fritz,

A concerned citizen

This open letter was emailed and posted to all listed Members of Parliament. If you are interested in joining in on the discussion and want your voice to be heard by your representatives, feel free to borrow my letter and to modify it as you wish. Alternatively, head over to the website of the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights and use their automated form to accomplish the same task.

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When Copyright Goes Bad

April 20th, 2010 by Jon No comments »

Just wanted to share this fantastic short documentary about the recent shifts in copyright law from Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch.

The film features Fred Von Lohmann, Michael Geist, and others, and discusses the problem of physical-age copyright law in our digital age.

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A ‘Made in Canada Solution’ My Ass

April 19th, 2010 by Jon No comments »

Today, Michael Geist, law professor and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law from the University of Ottawa, tweeted a link to some leaked documents allegedly pertaining to trade negotiations between Canada and the European Union. While there are quite a few documents available, I took a moment to flip through the one focused on intellectual property negotiations, and found some rather shocking proposals that would both lengthen existing copyright terms and dismantle what few fair-use laws currently exist in Canada.

It’s no secret that our federal copyright law is a mess. While US copyright law tends to be more draconian in nature (see the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act), Canadian copyright law consists of a mass of overlapping statutes and supreme court decisions that combine to make it inefficient, costly to consumers, and extremely hard to navigate. Check out this episode of Jesse Brown’s Search Engine Podcast for a great interview with Howard Knopf, an intellectual property lawyer from Ottawa who believes that Canada already has excessive IP laws, and the Copyright Board of Canada’s ridiculously long list of Canadian copyright organizations for more information.

This past summer, our federal conservative government held public copyright consultations on the possibility of Canadian copyright reform. At the time, I both participated in the consultation process, and wrote a lengthy post detailing my answers to the questions posed by the government. Based on this leak, and previous leaks of alleged ACTA materials, I guess that secretive international treaties were what our government actually had in mind when they said that they would take a ‘made in Canada’ approach to the reform process.

So without further ado (and with full recognition that I am not a lawyer, and could be way off the mark with my comments), I’ll run through a couple of the scarier things that I found in the leaked document:

  1. A possible extension of existing copyright terms from 50 years to 70 past death:

    The rights of an author of a literary or artistic work within the meaning of Article 2 of the Berne Convention shall run for the life of the author [EC: and for 70 years after his death, irrespective of the date when the work is lawfully made available to the public.] [Canada: and the remainder of the calendar year in which the author dies, and a period of at least 50 years following the end of that calendar year.]

  2. Term extensions for orphaned works:

    [EC: In the case of anonymous or pseudonymous works, the term of protection shall run for 70 years after the work is lawfully made available to the public.] [Canada: Where the identity of the author of a work is unknown, copyright in the work shall subsist for whichever of the following terms ends earlier:
    (a) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the first publication of the work and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year, and
    (b) a term consisting of the remainder of the calendar year of the making of the work and a period of seventy-five years following the end of that calendar year.]

  3. 25-year term protection for the first person who uses a copyrighted work after its initial expiry date:

    [EC: The Parties shall ensure that any person who, after the expiry of copyright protection, for the first time lawfully publishes or lawfully communicates to the public a previously unpublished work, shall benefit from a protection equivalent to the economic rights of the author. The term of protection of such rights shall be 25 years from the time when the work was first lawfully published or lawfully communicated to the public.

  4. Non-negotiable royalties to the rights holder of a copyrighted work any time that it is resold (this could mean a loss of the ability to sell used books/CDs at a garage sale):

    The Parties shall provide, for the benefit of the author of an original work of art, a resale right, to be defined as an inalienable right, which cannot be waived, even in advance, to receive a royalty based on the sale price obtained for any resale of the work, subsequent to the first transfer of the work by the author.

  5. Full-on DMCA-style prohibition of any device that can be used to circumvent Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes:

    The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective. The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
    (a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
    (b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
    (c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitation the circumvention of, any effective technological measures.
    For the purposes of this Agreement, the expression ‘technological measures’ means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the right holder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law. Technological measures shall be deemed ‘effective’ where the use of a protected work or other subject matter is controlled by the right holders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.

  6. As well legal ramifications for any person who uses a device that can circumvent DRM schemes:

    The Parties shall provide adequate legal protection against any person knowingly performing without authority any of the following acts:
    (a) the removal or alteration of any electronic rights-management information;
    (b) the distribution, importation for distribution, broadcasting, communication or making available to the public of works or other subject-matter protected under this Agreement from which electronic rights-management information has been removed or altered without authority, if such person knows, or has reasonable grounds to know, that by so doing he is inducing, enabling, facilitating or concealing an infringement of any copyright or any rights related to copyright as provided by law.

  7. Finally, a potentially positive section that seems to limit the ability of ISPs to use deep-packet inspection and selective filtering on their customers’ internet connections:

    Where an information society service is provided that consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network, Parties shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information transmitted, on condition that the provider:
    (a) does not initiate the transmission;
    (b) does not select the receiver of the transmission; and
    (c) does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission.

Please take a moment to read the document for yourself, and consider contacting your member of parliament to discuss the proposed treaty with him/her. It’s only by being vigilant that we, the citizenry, can protect our rights against laws such as this that are quite obviously slanted in the favour of corporate rights holders.

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Michael Specter: The Danger of Science Denial

April 12th, 2010 by Jon No comments »

Just wanted to share another fantastic TED talk, this time from Michael Specter of The New Yorker.

In his talk, Specter argues that by any metric, we are currently living in the greatest time in which anybody could ever have lived throughout the entire history of the world. He then qualifies that claim by stating that if we don’t change popular opinion on the issues currently facing modern science, that state won’t last. In particular, Specter has beef with what most people call ‘junk science,’ including homeopathic medicines, herbal remedies, and the batshit-crazy beliefs of Jenny McCarthy. It is his belief that in order to solve the important problems that are facing modern science, we as a people must overcome our superstitious distrust toward the scientific method, and the gifts that it has brought humankind.

Enjoy.

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More Public Transit Talk

April 10th, 2010 by Jon No comments »

I spent my morning enjoying a coffee while reading through the Region of Waterloo’s Moving Forward 2031 Transportation Master Plan (pdf). It contains some very interesting information related to last week’s post on the feasibility of light rail transit here in the Region of Waterloo.

The report reviews the justification for some sort of rapid transit system, discusses three alternative plans for the building of such a system, the tax burden imposed by each, and the justification for settling on a north-south light rail line supported by a series of east-west iXpress-like bus routes. One of the most interesting pieces of information in the document concerns the current rate of rapid transit growth, as reported by the GRT:

Since 1999, annual transit ridership has increased from 9.5 million rides in 2000 to 16.5 million rides in 2009; a 75 per cent increase or 6.3 per cent annually. This increase is significant compared with the population increase of 1.85 per cent per year in the region. The commitment to funding increased service levels and new initiatives such as the iXpress has played a key role in ridership increases.

It also contains a map of the region upon which the proposed upgrades to our public transit system have been superimposed:

A map of proposed improvements to the transit system here in Waterloo Region

A map of proposed improvements to the transit system here in Waterloo Region (Click to Enlarge)

Finally, the document announces three public consultations to be held this month in Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo. The meetings will present current plan for the future of transit in our region, and accept public feedback on the proposed improvements. The meetings are as follows:

Thursday, April 8, 2010
United Kingdom Club
35 International Village Dr.,
Cambridge

Tuesday, April 13, 2010
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
54 Queen St. N.,
Kitchener

Thursday, April 15, 2010
First United Church
16 William St. W.,
Waterloo

Check out the to the TriTAG Blog for related information on the future of transit in the Region of Waterloo.

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Light Rail Transit?

April 3rd, 2010 by Jon 3 comments »

Earlier this week, I stumbled across the third episode of a new podcast called The 100 that was all about issues local to Waterloo Region, politics included. One of the primary issues that was discussed in the episode was the state of public transit here in Waterloo Region, which naturally led into a discussion about the proposed Light Rail Transit system (LRT). Listening to the piece, I realized just how uninformed I am about the proposal. Since the LRT has been a divisive issue since its introduction, and since there are so many misconceptions surrounding the project, I decided to try and learn as much about it as I could. In the process, I will try to dispel some of the myths surrounding the proposal.

A little bit of background

A map of the proposed route for the Waterloo Region Light Rail Transit system

The proposed route of the LRT (Click to Enlarge)

According to the Region of Waterloo’s Rapid Transit website, the LRT will be a system of public transportation that forms a backbone for attractive, inexpensive public transit that runs through our city centre. It will be constructed in two phases: in the first, a light rail system will be built between Conestoga Mall in Waterloo and the Fairview Park Mall in Kitchener, with a bus route running from Fairview Park mall to the Ainslie Street terminal in Cambridge. In the second phase, the bus line to Cambridge will be replaced with a continuation of the light rail transit line.

The entire project will cost the region an estimated $790 million to build, with an additional $1 million per year set aside to help build transit ridership in Cambridge for the first ten years of the project. The operating cost overhead added to our existing public transit system will result in a property tax increase of about $40 per year per household. The region is currently seeking funding for the project from the federal and provincial governments, who have promised up to 2/3 of the required monies in past budgets and announcements. Construction of the first phase of the LRT is expected to begin in 2012, with the line slated to open in late 2014.

Why the focus on the city centre?
When many people hear about the plans for the LRT, their first reaction is that we shouldn’t pour such a massive amount of money into a transit system that will ‘really only benefit those who live or work near the city centre.’ The planned line runs north to south along King Street for the majority of its distance, and many see it as a system that will benefit only a minority of our population. So why the focus on the city centre?

Basically, the region is landlocked. According to the regulations of the province of Ontario’s Places to Grow initiative, by 2015, at least 40% of all annual residential development within the urban areas of Waterloo Region must take place in the urban centres of our existing cities. The regulations further stipulate that we must intensify these core areas so that our cities demonstrate a minimum of 200 people and jobs per hectare of land. This means an end to the sprawling suburbs that we’ve been building to accommodate our expanding population for the past 50 years. The new focus is on building upward instead of outward.

The Region estimates that when our census data is combined with these new provincial stipulations, we can expect an influx of around 100,000 people to our city centre over the course of the next two decades; likely more once the LRT and other urban renewal projects are completed. This growth will exacerbate the traffic problem that is already present in the area, and we will need to come up with some way to relieve that congestion, lest the city grind to a halt.

So what about building more roads or increasing the number of buses?
Unfortunately, due to the less than ideal urban planning of years past, there really isn’t any more room for roads in the downtown areas of Kitchener and Waterloo, unless we demolish existing commercial and residential buildings in order to accommodate road widening. While this alone is an undesirable solution, wider roads also tend to reduce the desirability of a neighbourhood, as they increase noise and traffic, and present a physical barrier to pedestrian travel. Since the overall goal of this project is to increase the density of our downtown core, more or wider roads are not the answer. Another consideration is parking availability. Many people currently avoid our downtown areas because parking is at a premium. A fast, cost-effective transit system would allow both consumers and employees to reach downtown shops and workplaces without having to bring their cars with them.

A Grand River Transit bus

A GRT Bus

All right, so we need public transit for the downtown core. How about buses? According to Grand River Transit, bus service alone cannot continue to provide enough capacity for the projected increases in regional population and transit ridership. The existing iXpress system runs a route very similar to that of the proposed LRT system, and is already running at near capacity. Simply increasing the number of buses on the road will lead only to further congestion of our busy roadways, as buses share a lane with other traffic, and are constantly stopping and starting. Traffic congestion already makes our bus system unreliable, and thus undesirable to the vast majority of our population. A transit system like the LRT that travels within a dedicated lane can avoid this problem.

Finally, unlike widened lanes or increased bus frequency, a permanent LRT installation is a quiet, efficient, and attractive public transit solution that tends to increase property values and standard of living along its route. Should this claim seem incredulous, I urge you to read about an example case study from the City of Portland, Oregon.

Will this thing actually be used?
According to the Region, transit models developed in association with the Universities of Waterloo and Toronto show that ridership throughout the downtown core can be expected to nearly triple with an LRT system in place. The same model predicted a ridership of 27,000 passengers per day on opening (about three times as many as the iXpress route currently services), with an expected increase to 56,000 passengers per day by 2031. Although the estimated growth in ridership may seem large, one must keep in mind the estimated population influx of over 100,000 residents to the area over the same period of time.

Those who live outside of the area directly surrounding the installation will also be able to use it. The region has proposed three park and ride facilities, and a number of cross-city bus routes similar to the current iXpress system that will run east to west, ferrying passengers to and from the LRT backbone. Ideally, the combination of high speed bus service and the high speed LRT installation will create exactly the kind of desirable public transit system that solves the congestion problems that we face while urging the inner city growth that is required by provincial law.

However, some people aren’t happy with the plan…

The Taxpayers for Sensible Transit

The T4ST is a group opposed to the plan

As is to be expected on any large infrastructure project, some members of our community are unhappy with the proposed plan. Unfortunately, many of the fears on which they are basing their assessment of the plan are simply unfounded, and the dissidents show a lack of willing to educate themselves on the issues at hand before commenting. For instance, a petition organized by the Taxpayers for Sensible Transit (T4ST) claims that

“The LRT will turn King Street and other streets into rail corridors. For much of the route, King will be reduced to one lane of car traffic each way. There will be no parallel parking, and left-turns will be impossible. This will reduce accessibility and have a negative impact on many businesses.”

In point of fact, the vast majority of King Street is already one lane of car traffic in each direction, a situation that will not change. While it is true that parallel parking is likely to be removed along much of the route, larger parking structures like the one built across from The Shops at Waterloo Town Square can easily handle the displaced vehicles, and many people will use the LRT to get downtown instead of bringing their cars at all. Left turns will be no harder to make than they are now, as LRT trains will always be given the right of way at intersections, allowing them to move through quickly without disrupting traffic. While the construction process may temporarily reduce accessibility to many businesses along the route, the Region feels that its effects will be more than offset by the increased levels of pedestrian traffic that the LRT system will bring to the downtown core, and the increased population density that the project will encourage along its route.

Although the wording of their petition may be a little bit off base, the Technical Studies page of the T4ST’s website is a little bit better written, and is also worth addressing. In particular, it points out that the estimates of initial ridership and eventual rider growth increased wildly between two studies commissioned by the Region, one from 2005, and the other from 2009. Unfortunately, the claim of the T4ST does not take into account the actual conclusions of the 2005 study (*.pdf), as expressed in the following excerpt:

As points of comparison, the Edmonton LRT system, which is similar in size to the proposed Region of Waterloo system, reports 36,000 daily boardings (track length 12.5 km and 10 stations) with a transit service population of 660,000. By 2041, the Regional transit system and service population assumptions would be similar to Edmonton today. The Portland LRT system (serving a much larger 1.25 M. population) reports 80,000 daily boardings or 1,300 boards per km and 1,500 boards per station. For the Region of Waterloo LRT line, boards per km are estimated at between 900 and 1,900 (2011 to 2041), while boards per station are estimated at between 1,300 and 2,800 (2011 to 2041).

This paragraph rather clearly shows that even with the lower estimates of the 2005 study, the projected ridership of the proposed system was still found to eventually be comparable to similar systems in both Edmonton, Alberta and Portland, Oregon. On the same page, the T4ST also points out that the 2005 study showed that an expanded bus system would cost far less than a light rail system, and thus made much more economic sense for the Region. However, the group discounts the additional benefits of the LRT that the study also revealed. Quoting again from the 2005 study:

The TransDec model is typically used to evaluate traditional transportation projects and is not well suited to evaluate a complex initiative such as the Region’s [rapid  public transit] initiative… The results indicate that although costs of LRT are higher than [bus rapid transit systems] BRT, the benefits associated with LRT are also much greater than BRT and that LRT is much more likely to achieve the benefits associated with the Regional Growth Management Strategy than BRT.

Unfortunately, careful reading of both the T4ST’s website and the studies in question reveal the formers’ tendency towards misinformation. Because the Region’s 2005 study addresses most of the concerns raised by the T4ST, those who agree with their concerns are urged to read it for themselves. The Tri-Cities Transit Action Group (triTAG) also runs an excellent page dedicated to dispelling the myths around the proposed light rail system.

Well, I’m Convinced
Everything that I’ve been able to find about the proposed system makes it seem like a great idea, and one that will finally make our public transportation system attractive to the vast majority of our citizens. It’s no secret that urban sprawl of the kind that we’ve witnessed throughout south-western Ontario increases living costs, raises health concerns, and leads to more time spent commuting than with family. It’s also no secret that while Grand River Transit tries its best to provide timely and reliable bus service, it falls short at times. By avoiding congestion and helping to construct dense communities centred around the service, the light rail transit line will allow us to conform to the demands of the province’s Places to Grow initiative, and will ultimately result in a community that is more attractive and easier to navigate for all of our citizens.

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