Parliamentary Research Branch publications

Friday's Hansard was boring, I was busy on the weekend, and today's won't be available until tomorrow, so to tide you over, above is a link to a bunch of background publications on various affairs under consideration in Parliament.  These seem to be pretty good - informative and reasonably unbiased.  Want to hear more about child pornography?  Of course you do!  So just take a look at this subsection of one of the papers linked through the page above.  Note that even under the new proposed legislation (Bill C-15A), it would require a Real Live Court Order before an ISP could be compelled to remove child pornography from a Web site.  Compare an contrast that with the "notice and takedown" regimes proposed in the copyright wars, wherein a plaintiff could compel takedown in advance of ever having a judge's authorization.

Assuming both proposals succeed, that would mean that in Canada, copyright infringement would be treated as worse than child pornography in at least one sense.  Let's set aside my objections to the legal definition of "child pornography" for a moment, and just think about our gut reactions to the two types of material.  Child pornography, copyright infringement.  Copyright infringement, child pornography.  Child pornography on the Web:  court order from a judge necessary to take it down.  Copyright infringement on the Web:  verified complaint from someone who claims to be harmed by it, necessary to take it down.  Takedown of copyright infringement treated as a more urgent matter than takedown of child pornography.  Is that a sensible ordering of priorities?

[Parliamentary Research Branch publications]