<story><title>Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites</title><url>https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2021/04/the-government-of-canada-launches-consultation-on-a-modern-copyright-framework-for-online-intermediaries.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cashewchoo</author><text>Where does the article mention a website-blocking system? I&amp;#x27;m curious as to the technical details. I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;sure&lt;/i&gt; it&amp;#x27;ll work this time.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;For Canada to have an innovative and flourishing digital economy, we must protect copyright online&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Hrmph. Citation required.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I&amp;#x27;m not sure why businesses are so concerned about copyright still. Maybe this is specific to Canada? But country-specific things aside:&lt;p&gt;* The DMCA already makes it easy enough to keep things like KickAssTorrents offline, which was honestly the closest I&amp;#x27;ve seen to a good tracker going mainstream.&lt;p&gt;* Steam has already shown how to &amp;quot;best&amp;quot; piracy to the extent that a business can. It&amp;#x27;s not via copyright laws. Everyone thought rampant piracy would mean Steam won&amp;#x27;t work in Russia. That aged well.&lt;p&gt;* Actually combating piracy on a technical level suffers greatly from the 80&amp;#x2F;20 rule. You can eliminate 80% of the piracy with 20% of the effort. But getting that last 20% is going to take 1000% of the remaining 80% of the work. (Sorry, yes, that was an attempt at a joke). It&amp;#x27;s basically not going to happen. Look at how well things like optical media DRM have gone. Look at how streaming DRM is going. Look at how hard it is for even *China* to stop its people from accessing free information online, much less normal countries with normal amounts of human rights abuses stop people from getting downloads of whatever Disney&amp;#x27;s latest remake is.&lt;p&gt;Dunno. As much as I hate copyright, and as much as I love free culture, it&amp;#x27;s hard for me to get too interested or worried about stuff like this nowadays, from a legal realism standpoint.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FractalParadigm</author><text>&amp;gt; * Steam has already shown how to &amp;quot;best&amp;quot; piracy to the extent that a business can. It&amp;#x27;s not via copyright laws. Everyone thought rampant piracy would mean Steam won&amp;#x27;t work in Russia. That aged well.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s ironic to me is that, movie piracy was steadily falling and effectively dead after Netflix launched their streaming-video platform, very similar to how video game piracy started to taper off as Steam gained traction. For a single low monthly fee you got access to movies from all the major networks, and a good selection of TV shows as a bonus. The networks started getting greedy - HBO Max, Paramount+, Disney+, Peacock, Discovery+, the list goes on - all wanting their own $5-$15&amp;#x2F;month cut on the action. It&amp;#x27;s a wonder why piracy has been back on the rise[0].&lt;p&gt;I agree that the quasi-monopolies of early Netflix or Steam through most of it&amp;#x27;s history are arguably bad, but the irony is that they&amp;#x27;re the most consumer-friendly ways to distribute media while effectively curbing piracy. The fragmentation of services; managing potentially a dozen subscriptions and the apps the accompany them, gets tiring for users who just want to sit down and watch Star Trek without hunting for it.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll throw in my two cents, that my personal experiences line up with this 100%. Before ~2010 when I was introduced to Steam I pirated virtually every game I played, but since then have only done so in very extreme circumstances. Similarly with music, as soon as Spotify, then Tidal were introduced to Canada, I haven&amp;#x27;t pirated a song since. Movies on the other hand, there was a several-year period where I didn&amp;#x27;t pirate a single movie- &lt;i&gt;nobody&lt;/i&gt; I knew did anymore. In the past ~2-3 years I&amp;#x27;ve been having people ask me about torrenting movies again, and I&amp;#x27;ve caught myself doing it a lot more often than I would like to, but I just can&amp;#x27;t bring myself to spend $15&amp;#x2F;month on Netflix, $12&amp;#x2F;month for Disney+, $10&amp;#x2F;month for Crave, $6&amp;#x2F;month for Paramount+... While you can setup Radarr&amp;#x2F;Sonarr and Emby to accomplish the same for $0 (you could argue the cost of storage, but the $43&amp;#x2F;month saved on services gets you 3 brand new 4TB hard drives each year with money to spare).&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nymag.com&amp;#x2F;intelligencer&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;piracy-is-back.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nymag.com&amp;#x2F;intelligencer&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;piracy-is-back.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Canadian government proposes website-blocking system for piracy websites</title><url>https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2021/04/the-government-of-canada-launches-consultation-on-a-modern-copyright-framework-for-online-intermediaries.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cashewchoo</author><text>Where does the article mention a website-blocking system? I&amp;#x27;m curious as to the technical details. I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;sure&lt;/i&gt; it&amp;#x27;ll work this time.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;For Canada to have an innovative and flourishing digital economy, we must protect copyright online&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Hrmph. Citation required.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I&amp;#x27;m not sure why businesses are so concerned about copyright still. Maybe this is specific to Canada? But country-specific things aside:&lt;p&gt;* The DMCA already makes it easy enough to keep things like KickAssTorrents offline, which was honestly the closest I&amp;#x27;ve seen to a good tracker going mainstream.&lt;p&gt;* Steam has already shown how to &amp;quot;best&amp;quot; piracy to the extent that a business can. It&amp;#x27;s not via copyright laws. Everyone thought rampant piracy would mean Steam won&amp;#x27;t work in Russia. That aged well.&lt;p&gt;* Actually combating piracy on a technical level suffers greatly from the 80&amp;#x2F;20 rule. You can eliminate 80% of the piracy with 20% of the effort. But getting that last 20% is going to take 1000% of the remaining 80% of the work. (Sorry, yes, that was an attempt at a joke). It&amp;#x27;s basically not going to happen. Look at how well things like optical media DRM have gone. Look at how streaming DRM is going. Look at how hard it is for even *China* to stop its people from accessing free information online, much less normal countries with normal amounts of human rights abuses stop people from getting downloads of whatever Disney&amp;#x27;s latest remake is.&lt;p&gt;Dunno. As much as I hate copyright, and as much as I love free culture, it&amp;#x27;s hard for me to get too interested or worried about stuff like this nowadays, from a legal realism standpoint.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gpm</author><text>&amp;gt; Where does the article mention a website-blocking system?&lt;p&gt;Read the longer version rather than the press release: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ic.gc.ca&amp;#x2F;eic&amp;#x2F;site&amp;#x2F;693.nsf&amp;#x2F;eng&amp;#x2F;00191.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ic.gc.ca&amp;#x2F;eic&amp;#x2F;site&amp;#x2F;693.nsf&amp;#x2F;eng&amp;#x2F;00191.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;d. clarify or strengthen rights holders&amp;#x27; enforcement tools against intermediaries, including by way of a statutory &amp;quot;website-blocking&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;de-indexing&amp;quot; regime.</text></comment>