Devit!

With major concerns in the Information Technology industry around Digital Rights Management (DRM), the Canadian version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) named “Bill C-61″ and other hot topic issues you need to know where your politician stands on these critical topics that could affect every man woman and child in Canada. Where does each party stand on open source software, DRM, Copyright Reform, Net Neutrality?

What are the current government’s views on these topics? Well, we can make assumptions based on the copyright bill “Bill C-61″ but unfortunately at this point we don’t have any promises or statements from the Conservative Party of Canada on any of these topics. We were shocked that most parties didn’t include any of these critical issues in their platforms. South of the border, in the current presidential election, each candidate has specifically noted their stance on many technology issues facing their IT industry.

After reviewing the New Democratic Party’s platform we found that none of these important topics are mentioned, however at the very least they’ve expressed their views on copyright reform in several news releases. Specifically we were able to find out that the Green Party of Canada and some NDP MP’s are in support of a copyright reform proposal by Michael Geist. Obviously these vital topics not registering on parties platform’s is far from ideal so we were again surprised to see that the Liberal Party of Canada had nothing on all of these topics along with the BLOC Québécois.

The only party that has addressed these issues in their official party platform is the Green Party of Canada. You can read more about their views here and here. We must applaud the Green Party for taking a stance on these important issues.  The Green Party has come out in support for open source software development, and open discussions on a variety of topics including internet privacy, copyright and DRM issues.  This is a step in the right direction but rather disappointing that no other parties are providing their views and stances on these important issues.

We need to demand more as professionals in the IT field and help our politicians make informed decisions on these critical issues by providing information, support and feedback.

Let’s work together and demand that all parties in Canada provide their stance on technology challenges moving forward within Canada and internationally.

Don’t forget to exercise your rights and Vote!

For more information on these topics we recommend Michael Giest’s blog. We would also recommend contacting your member of parliament and all political parties to bring these important issues to their attention. Click here to find your member of parliament.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under Devit!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.