[Ecommerce] Re: [Upd-discuss] Michael Geist: Why Canada should follow UK, not US on copyright

[Michael Hart]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Manon Ress wrote:

> Why Canada should follow U.K., not U.S., on copyright
>
> MICHAEL GEIST
> (http://geistculturedeficit.notlong.com).

This article is totally amazing. . .I love it!

The only issue I have with it is that ALL the major industrial
powers are trying their hardest to get more copyright fees,
not just the U.S.

One example that Canandian might appreciate is that the longstanding
North-American World Servide of the BBC was recently cancelled,
just so the BBC could CHARGE millions of dollars for what they
previously SPENT millions of dollars to send to North America.

I can still recall the first time I tried to tune in to the BBC
and it wasn't there, not on any of the half dozen positions on
my shortwave dial that used to carry it, so I emailed dozens of
my friends to ask if they were having the same problem.

It turned out that the the new electronic media capabilities
and money transfer capabilities had allowed the BBC to REVERSE
THE CHARGES on sending their programs to North America, and now
millions of dollars were being sent to the BBC from North America
to pay for something the BBC used to pay to get us to listen to.

I'm not going to go into the entire history of the BBC and the
"balance of power an opinion" that Great Britain used to impose
on the world, but the truth is that the North American World Service
of the BBC was basically a propaganda machine, with goals not unlike
those of Voice Of America [VOA] or Radio Moscow [which had also gone
off the air not all that long before these events I am relating.

All of a sudden, two of the major shortwave presences that had been
constant on my radio dial for my entire lifetime. . .were gone!!!

A lot of research turned up the truth, that our local stations here,
many of them not-for-profit, were sending our contributions over to
the BBC, millions of dollars per year, in a huge paradigm shift from
the BBC paying the bill to get their programs to us, to us paying
them for their programs.

For those of you who never listened to the shortwave to get the news
from other sources than your own local points of view, this was HUGE!

Not only that, but now the BBC actually creates different news programs
to be rebroadcast in North America, so we don't actually GET the same
news from them as the rest of the world does any longer.  This is true
for the televised BBC news, not sure about the radio version.

I have found one alternative. . .some of us can get the BBC shortwave
service aimed at Bermuda and the Carribean. . .which apparently has
not been altered by these changes.

Nevertheless, the money flow for BBC programming aimed at North America
HAS BEEN REVERSED, but I'll be THAT doesn't show up in those figures.


Thanks!!!


Nice To Hear From You!


Michael


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