There's Transparency and Then There's "Transparency"

From the government that wants Bill C-10 to be law:

While debate over Bill C-10 is still dominating the public conversation, another disturbing piece of Internet policy has quietly emerged from the federal government: a grab for website blocking powers.

On April 14, the federal government launched a “Consultation on a Modern Copyright Framework for Online Intermediaries”. In the policy paper for the consultation, the government proposes giving itself sweeping censorship powers to demand our ISPs and other online intermediaries — folk like our libraries, universities, and online platforms — block access to websites through their services.

And that’s just to start! The proposal goes on to suggest stripping many of the legal protections intermediaries currently enjoy if their services are used to improperly link to or access copyrighted content, and helpfully suggests ISPs suspend our Internet, or even ban us permanently from their platforms if they’re concerned about their increased legal risk. All this, any time that litigious rights holding companies like Bell, Disney or Corus Entertainment claim anyone using our Internet connection has improperly accessed their copyrighted materials.

These proposals are disproportionate and unjustified by the limited scale of copyright infringement in Canada, and deeply open to abuse. The reality is that online violation of copyright is a limited and shrinking issue in Canada — most people prefer paying for creative content most of the time, when rights holders offer a reasonable way to do so. But this idea to shut off parts of the web at the whim of copyright giants didn’t come out left field. In fact, Bell has put forward different versions of this website blocking proposal — ironically dubbed “FairPlay” — repeatedly for many years, including at the CRTC, during NAFTA renegotiation, during the government’s BTLR review, and during previous copyright consultations. Every level of government has so far rejected their proposals - but that might be about to change.

Bill C-10 would also ensure that things like the items below never go public:

A woman has filed a $1.25 million lawsuit against the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, alleging that, while she was a scholarship student, she was sexually harassed by her mentor and the foundation then pressured her to sign a non-disclosure agreement to keep it quiet.

** 

The Commons government operations committee yesterday by a 6-5 vote ordered disclosure of confidential emails regarding a sole-sourced federal contract to the Prime Minister’s half-brother. Kyle Kemper, an Ottawa bitcoin developer, was paid to attend a Swiss conference as a “champion speaker” on behalf of the Government of Canada: “What is the suspicion here?”

 

Of course, the popular press has millions of reasons to be compliant.