You see, they bought out all-Canadian Futureshop and you would have had a hard time convincing me that it was not the intent of Best Buy to create their own stores in as many markets as possible and then begin closing down Futureshop stores, in order to get rid of the generally higher-paid commissioned sales staff and instead simply having the minimum-wage, undertrained drones that staff many Best Buy locations. I still think it might be what they are working into… but we’ll just set that aside for a moment.

An Op-Ed piece in the Vancouver Sun written by Ron Wilson, Best Buy’s senior vice-president of merchandising, has shown me that Best Buy may not be entirely evil. The article is about copyright and the current issues regarding the Canadian DMCA, and how it has pitted Industry Minister Jim Prentice and the current Conservative government supported by a bunch of bootlicking, greedy content producing companies (not the artists or producers themselves, but those who have appointed themselves to a position in charge of content) against most of the in-the-know Canadian populace, numerous artists, and big Canadian retailers and telecommunications companies.

A while back it looked like this fight was going to be lost before it had begun because the government was going to try and pull a sneak job to slip it past the public unawares. A huge outcry from ordinary people put the brakes on the introduction of the regressive legislation just before the holidays – but I was still worried that the Conservatives, always with their eye on the needs of the wealthy and corporate community above all else, would just find some other way to get this unwanted law on the books.

Ron Wilson writes an articulate, intelligent rebuttal to any and all arguments put forth for the Canadian DMCA, and he does it without over-intellectualizing – and from the perspective of a big corporate taxpayer to boot! I know it might mean nothing and be corny to some of you, but it nearly brought a tear to my eye to learn that at least some companies appear to be on OUR side in this fight, looking out for the little guy (even if it is in their own best financial interest in this circumstance).

Pirates are always going to pirate, and you will always be able to illegally download stuff. The only purpose of the new Canadian legislation was to make criminals of people who do not ordinarily do criminal things. This kind of wrong-headed law reeks of the sort of thing that could bring down a minority government which has been blinded by a few vocal industry lobbyists.

And I, for one, welcome an election with this as a key issue.

Right now, though, I thought it was amusing to read a quote from a news release from ACTRA (for those of you who don’t know, that is the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists), expressing their “outrage” over the delay of the bill after Minister Jim Prentice found himself deluged with questions and complaints about his new legislation.

The entire article is here. But, the most significant quote which I found amusing was the opening line:

“The government’s about-face decision to abandon the scheduled introduction of new Copyright legislation is a detriment to Canada’s artists, and a hijacking of the policy process by a vocal minority.”

A vocal minority.

That’s what the voters in this country are, according to the “industry”.

The last I checked, ACTRA had 21000 members – and it doesn’t take much searching to find that their membership is far from unanimous in supporting the ACTRA position. Disregarding ANY other people who are concerned about this, we can look at the facebook group “Fair Copyright for Canada” and make a comparison. The group has 25588 members as of this writing.

Taking the facebook group and ACTRA’s membership numbers alone, there are more people in favour of avoiding the USA-DMCA-like billl than supporting it.

So – doesn’t that mean that effectively ACTRA is nothing more than a vocal minority smaller than the very same group they claim is not making a valid claim because they are a minority?

Hmmm!

Let’s see – a small number of corporations extremely concerned about profits being cut because they refuse to update their obsolete distribution systems, vs. some percentage of the 22812683 (yes that’s 22 million) registered Canadian voters. There are 2 million Canadian facebook members. 25000+ have joined that single group, representing a minimum of 1.3% of the Canadian membership of facebook expressing their concern by joining just that one single group. Lets make some comparisons:

• 1.3% of voters would be 296565 people.
• 10% of voters would be 2281268 people.

Do I even need to point out how many Canadian VOTERS it would be if more than 10% of people oppose a DMCA-style bill? What if it is 15%? 20%? 40%? 49%? All of these are a MINORITY who I am almost certain could be quite vocal.

We have a government running the country that represents perhaps a third of the voters in this country at most. Aren’t they nothing more than a vocal minority which has achieved power?

Sorry, CRIA and ACTRA – you aren’t going to sneak this one by with your deep pockets and backroom deals. Your outrage over the bill being held back demonstrates your absolute contempt for your customers, and I think its about time you get some comeuppance.

Anyone else?