DMCA.CA unveilled; Bill C-61

Courtesy rhykan, there's an action against the Canadian DMCA at copyrightforcanadians.ca:

After months of hesitation, Industry Minister Jim Prentice has finally revealed his re-write of Canada's rules of copyright. As expected, the bill contains major concessions to the American entertainment industry. Prentice's bill forbids Canadians from engaging in ordinary practices such as ripping DVDs onto video iPods, unlocking digital phones for use with a competitor’s services, and paves the road for US-style consumer lawsuits for file-sharing. Tell your MP to represent you in the forthcoming copyright debate, and stop Prentice from steamrolling a bill that's worse than America's DMCA through Parliament without listening to Canadian voices.

You can contact your MP through this page on the copyrightforcanadians.ca website, or through your own means as you see fit.

Okay, so, FISA action in progress now; TAKE ACTION

Picosummary: all the bad FISA news appears to be true; the Democratic leadership is solidly behind it, with the GOP; donate to the campaign against its Democratic point-man here; contact your legislators through StopTheSpying.org, here.

Okay, so not only is the Democratic leadership passing the FISA changes that give sweeping new domestic spying/warrantless wiretapping powers to the Chief Executive, granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies in the face of blatant and direct violation of whole sets of Federal laws, and so on and on and on - they're doing it the same way Senator Reid did it a few months ago in the Senate, using all options available to set up guaranteed passage. Specifically, a passage wide enough that those in the leadership can then cast a fake and meaningless vote against it so that they can pretend to have opposed it the entire time. This is a lie of the most reprehensible sort possible by an elected official.

It's worth remembering that if the House and Senate Democratic leadership didn't want this coming to the floor, they could and would stop it. Remember Bill Frist's "Majority of the Majority" rule? If a bill didn't have majority support in the GOP alone, it wouldn't get to the floor, and there were rules they used to insure that happened. Those rules haven't changed. This is happening because it is precisely what the Democratic leadership wants to have happen. The House has set this version up; the Senate leadership has signed off on it, refusing to organise any effort against the bill because they support it.

Adding to the swill, various members of the Democratic leadership are lying about the amnesty, saying it's not in the bill. This is bullshit, in that the bill requires the court (in the last version that surfaced) to grant all retroactive immunity if the companies can show that they were asked to engage in the spying and were told by the administration that it was legal. Not only does this threshhold ignore the legal responsibilities of the corporation to validate the legality of the request, this is the same administration which has argued before Congress that they have a right to torture children, and even better, we already know the administration did this. The "requirements" for amnesty have already been met, and this is a bill ordering the court to grant amnesty so that Congressional Democrats can lie and say they didn't do it.

Glenn Greenwald has excerpts from judicial opinions ruling against AT&T's effort to get the lawsuits dismissed, opinions ruling that, "AT&T's alleged actions here violate the constitutional rights clearly established in [a previous case]... AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonable entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal." (This opinion written by a judge appointed by President Bush (41).)

Also, here's Senator Feingold and Dodd (sadly, the same Dodd implicated in the Countrywide bribery scandal just getting started) correctly calling bullshit:

...under the Bond proposal, the result of the FISA Court’s evaluation would be predetermined. Regardless of how much information it is permitted to review, what standard of review is employed, how open the proceedings are, and what role the plaintiffs’ lawyers are permitted to play, the FISA Court would be required to grant immunity.

So that's where we are. This link is to a fundraiser against House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) to run a campaign against Mr. Hoyer for his role in this tragedy. He's targeted in particular as he seems to be point for the Democratic effort to pass Representative Kit Bond (R-MO)'s bill that will enshrine Mr. Bush's brutal ass-raping of this particular part of the former Constitution. Go give money. If money isn't available, there are many action links on the Firedoglake page, including this one at StopTheSpying.org. Regardless, just - go. Do.

A coalition appears! Support (y/y)?

There's a grand coalition being founded between the Hamscher/Greenwald/Digby left, the Ron Paul/Lymon/Williams/libertarian right, and civil libertarian groups including the ACLU. It's currently called the Strangebedfellows Alliance and more news is promised; the first plan of action is working against the FISA disgrace and against Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

And if you haven't donated to the anti-Hoyer cause, now is a good time. This is going to take money, on top of everything else.

I would personally enjoy seeing this become a replacement for one or both of the current major parties, as unlikely as that is. Party turnover is long, long, long overdue.

yis pls. to build these nao

Godt dammit that's fast.

( Quizzies! )