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Most polls show that a majority of Americans want a health care overhaul to include a public option — a government insurance program that competes with private insurers.

So it might seem logical that Senate Democrats, with their 60-vote majority, would include a public option in the bill that’s headed for the Senate floor. But no decision has been made yet, because it’s not clear how many Democrats would back a public option.

Earlier this month, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and 29 Democratic colleagues sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is leading the effort to blend the bills of two committees — the Finance Committee and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The HELP Committee’s bill includes a public option, while the Finance Committee’s does not.

Sanders and the others, who make up half of the Democratic caucus, want any bill Reid sends to the full Senate to include a public option.

“This is an overwhelmingly Democratic bill,” Sanders says. “How, if you are the Democratic Party presenting your bill, do you say no to over 80 percent of the people in your own party, and expect there to be grass-roots support for real health care reform?”

But centrist Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana says, “I’m not for a government-run national taxpayer subsidized plan, and never will be.”

Landrieu says it makes no sense to create a third government health care program when Medicare and Medicaid are already headed for insolvency.

Still, Landrieu sounds as if she could eventually be persuaded to back some form of a public option.

“In some states at the end of the line, they don’t believe they’re going to have the kind of choice that we think consumers and businesses need,” Landrieu says. “If the costs are still too high, then perhaps a fallback or a trigger, but something that is on a level playing field.”

Another Democratic holdout has been Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln. She voted against including a public option in the Finance Committee’s bill.

She faces a potentially difficult re-election bid next year, and hesitates when asked whether she’d vote for a health care bill that has a public option.

“It all depends on how it’s gonna be written,” Lincoln says. “I think the most important thing we can do is provide choice and competition, and that’s gonna help us bring down the price and make sure everybody’s got good options.”

But Lincoln says she has ruled out a government-funded and a government-operated plan.

Max Baucus, the Democrat who chairs the Finance Committee, also voted against putting a public option in his panel’s bill. Asked Tuesday whether the bill the Senate takes up should have such an option, Baucus said his aim is to get legislation that passes.

“What provisions help push it over the goal line should be in,” Baucus adds. “Provisions that don’t allow us to get 60 votes should not be in.”

Other Democratic senators say the only public option they’re interested in would be run by each state.

Among those holdouts is Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, “It makes a lot more sense to me to have the states involved in this than not to have them involved, and try to do it all at the national level.”

And then there’s Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman, a member of the Democratic caucus who opposes a public option. Lieberman says he’s inclined to vote with his caucus against any GOP filibuster aimed at blocking a health care bill with a public option from coming to the Senate floor, “because our country needs health insurance reform,” he says. “But if I decide in the end the bill that is about to leave the Senate is gonna do more harm than good, then I won’t vote for cloture at that point.”

In other words, Lieberman might be willing to help Republicans filibuster a health care bill when it comes up for a final vote.

Further complicating matters is Illinois Democrat Roland Burris, who says he won’t vote for a health care bill unless it does have a public option.

“If it doesn’t have a public option, it’s not a bill,” Burris says. “It’s not going to solve any problems. If it doesn’t have that, it isn’t gonna help anybody but the insurance companies.”

However Democratic leader Reid decides on a public option, he’ll have his work cut out finding 59 other senators to back him up.

Last summer I was privileged to join President Obama, then Senator Obama, on his second visit to Israel. I followed him as he studied each wall at Yad Vashem.  I looked on from a distance as he slipped a personal prayer into the stones of the Western Wall, the Kotel.  I witnessed the courage and endurance of the citizens of Sderot and touched the remnants of the countless Hamas rockets that are their ever-present terror. 

This week, I am back in Israel representing the Administration at a conference hosted by President Peres and meeting with key Israeli and Palestinian leaders.  

I carried a message from our President about a vision of the world that lies within our grasp — if we have the courage to seize it. 

The right place to start is with a common vision—not of some distant future but of the world we seek for our children and our grandchildren.  Our view of that world is rooted in a truth that my nation has long held to be self-evident: and that is that all people are created equal—of equal worth, of equal consequence, and with equal rights.

This is a belief that’s deeply rooted in the American experience, but it’s also one with universal power. We cannot afford to write off vast swathes of the world as somehow marginal or irrelevant or doomed. We wouldn’t tolerate it for our own children, and we shouldn’t accept it for someone else’s. The belief that we all matter equally carries powerful implications. It means that no child should be left to drown in conflict and despair. It means that, in a moral sense, all of our fates are bound together.

But this bedrock belief in human equality and human dignity also has powerful geopolitical implications in our interconnected age. It drives us toward a foreign policy that is principled and pragmatic—one that recognizes not only the moral claim placed upon us by our common humanity, but also the strategic realities that we face in our interlinked world. Today, transnational security threats such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, pandemics, and climate change can cross borders as freely as a storm. So the days when we could view our own interests in isolation are over. The days when we could focus on our own security and prosperity without regard for that of others are past. More and more, our fates are bound closer together. More and more, we live in a world where we rise and fall together, where zero-sum politics no longer fit today’s hard realities, where what’s good for others is often good for us.

A realistic view of the world thus requires an ambitious approach to the world. We must tackle the great problems that we face together. We must find cooperative solutions to challenges that pay no heed to borders. We must think strategically rather than just acting tactically. And we must recognize that there is a growing sphere where our interests and our values converge.

[Ed. Note: Click here to read the full speech delivered by Ambassador Rice at the Israeli Presidential Conference 2009, Facing Tomorrow, Jerusalem]

Susan E. Rice is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations

A few different people have sent in the news that some more well known singers are saying that the industry is overreacting to the issue of file sharing. Sky News talked to three top female singers, Shakira, Norah Jones and Nelly Furtado, and found they all recognized that it was pretty much the natural state of the market, and it helped gain more exposure:

“I like what’s going on because I feel closer to the fans and the people who appreciate the music. It’s the democratisation of music in a way, and music is a gift. That’s what it should be, a gift.” — Shakira

“If people hear it I’m happy. I’m not going to say go and steal my album, but you know I think its great that young people who don’t have a lot of money can listen to music and be exposed to new things.” — Norah Jones

“If you love music you’re going to make it anyway. You’ll find an audience, and you may not make like millions of dollars but you’ll make enough to have a house and a family and a car.” — Nelly Furtado

Looks like more and more musicians are realizing that fighting file sharing doesn’t make sense, but learning to embrace it has tremendous benefits. Maybe, one of these days, the record labels will figure this out as well.

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Take a bunch of junk, pile it up, and shine a light on it. 
Incredible shadow art created from junk. Go here.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

WIthin hours of one another, Microsoft and Google announced that their respective search engines would begin indexing tweets from popular microblogging service Twitter.

Microsoft was first on the scene, when Redmond’s President of Online Services Division Qi Lu announced the beta of Bing.com/twitter had opened at the Web 2.0 summit today. The beta provides a real-time index of tweets, and the ability to rank tweets according to its relevance.

“If you want to keep an eye on [a] topic, you can just watch the Tweets roll in. Or, click on ‘See more Tweets about…’ to go to a page full of Tweets. On that page, you can change the ordering to ‘Best Match.’ Here we arrange Tweets differently. If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower,” Paul Yiu of the Bing Social Search Team blogged this morning.

Then, Google’s Vice President of Search and User Experience Marissa Mayer followed up with a quick and casual announcement that, oh yeah, Google can do that too.

Mayer is also expected to give a presentation at the Web 2.0 summit where more details are sure to be disclosed. But Bing has fully beaten Google to the punch, since the Mountain View, CA search giant doesn’t actually have a product to show for its agreement with Twitter yet. Mayer said, “We look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

Earlier this year, we noted that Cook County (Illinois) sheriff Thomas Dart appeared to be totally unfamiliar with the law when he sued Craigslist for prostitution. As was pretty clear at the time, Craigslist is the service provider and is quite obviously protected by Section 230 immunity. Besides, law enforcement officials who actually care about dealing with prostitution, rather than just generating headlines have figured out that it makes sense to use Craigslist as a tool to help track and combat prostitution.

Even after all of this was clearly explained to Sheriff Dart, he still insisted that his lawsuit made sense. It looks like the court system, however, does not agree. As expected, the case has been dismissed on Section 230 grounds. The decision (pdf) goes through a lengthy discussion on various cases on Section 230, but concludes reasonably:

Sheriff Dart may continue to use Craigslist’s website to identify and pursue individuals who post allegedly unlawful content… But he cannot sue Craigslist for their conduct.

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Halloween is coming up and if there’s one thing I know it’s that geeks love Halloween. The opportunity to hide behind a mask, to subvert the status quo, and to dress up like sexy nurse/sexy witch/sexy balloon boy is a cause for celebration. That said, we’re offering one Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Console to the winner of our First Annual CrunchGear Halloween Costume Contest.

Here’s how to enter.

Send a link to a picture of yourself or send a file of up to 200KB of you in your best geek Halloween costume to [email protected] with the subject line “COSTUME CONTEST.” You can upload it to any service but please don’t bombard our mailbox with huge image files.

There are a few rules:

* You must be holding something with the word “CrunchGear” written on it. This is proof you didn’t raid some Halloween store’s website.
* The contest will run from today until noon Eastern November 1, 2009
* We will then choose ten runners up and then allow you to choose the winner via a method I will discuss on November 1. We will close the contest on November 10.
* The winner will receive their XBox by November 10, the release date of Modern Warfare 2.

Please have fun and be creative. Here’s some inspiration.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

One area of Web standards where both Mozilla Firefox (version 3.5.3 CRPI: 7.34) and Opera (version 10 CRPI: 6.38) have an edge over Google Chrome (build 3.0.195.25 CRPI: 15.85) is in the field of page-designated font rendering. It’s where the code for the Web page specifies which fonts to use, and even triggers the downloading of those fonts where necessary. Actually, Opera 10 has led the way in scalable Web fonts support although Firefox 3.5 has followed close behind.

The problem here has been with the extremely proprietary nature of the fonts used for the Web. They actually are TrueType and OpenType fonts, the majority of whose licensing prohibits their use for anything other than installation in commercial operating systems on a per-desktop basis. Even though some typographers have created free renderings of their commercial font products (here’s a favorite of mine: Museo Sans by Exljbris), there’s some question as to whether type designers are technically allowed to use the proprietary underpinnings of font technology (mostly contributed by Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple) for use on the Web.

Now, in an effort to resolve this little dilemma, Mozilla is announcing that forthcoming daily builds of version 3.6 (presumably the Beta 2 Preview editions) will support CSS3 @font-face embedding using a font format that is not TrueType or OpenType. It’s being called Web Open Font Format (WOFF), and its purpose is simply to repackage the same spline data that appears in TrueType and OpenType font files, in a format and with licensing that’s tailored exclusively for use on the Web.

Leading the move toward WOFF is Mozilla contributor Jonathan Kew. In a document Kew co-authored for the W3 Consortium, he writes, “A WOFF font file is simply a repackaged version of a sfnt-based font in compressed form. The format also allows font metadata and private-use data to be included separately from the font data. WOFF encoding tools convert an existing sfnt-based font into a WOFF formatted file, and user agents restore the original sfnt-based font data for use with a Web page.” (Here, “sfnt” refers to a specific type of spline geometric data, and is a term based on how early Macintosh systems tagged spline data appearing in OpenType files.)

The metadata will enable foundries to include licensing information which could, for example, restrict a downloaded font’s ability to be used anywhere on the user’s system except on the page that triggered its download. Or, it could enable an open font intended to be used multiple places, to be shared freely.
What WOFF could also enable — as part of a future wave of developments that could be ready for Firefox 3.7 next year — is for Web designers to use the variations that are present in font files, but which HTML and even CSS have never directly covered: Many fonts include hints for how renderers should typeset small caps, and how it handles ligatures — like connecting capital “T” with small “h,” or small “f” with small “t.” Without a mechanism in place for addressing the special capabilities of many fonts, CSS can’t get a handle on them.

So Mozilla engineers proposed an amendment to CSS just last June 29: a new property called font-variant that enables exclusive properties of embedded fonts to be declared outright. In a build of Firefox 3.6 that was altered by Kew for testing this feature, he was able to produce the lavish typographical poster you see here, using a font called Megalopolis by Jack Usine that’s rich with ligatures, using only HTML.

With full font features enabled, diacritical marks, monospaced numerals, and capital letters and descending lower-case characters with sweeping swashes only where applicable (like the beginnings of sentences), would all become addressable by browsers, making them effectively the typographical layout engines that engineers always knew they could be. The result could be a Web where usable text may appear as clearly as on the printed page.

The biggest hurdle the Mozilla engineers may face with this feature is a familiar one: contending with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer trying to implement the same feature, but in a different way. As Mozilla contributor Christopher Blizzard acknowledged in a blog post yesterday, “IE currently tries to download all fonts on the page, whether they are used or not. That makes site-wide stylesheets containing all fonts used on site pages difficult, since IE will always try to download all fonts defined in @font-face rules, wasting lots of server bandwidth.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

 Reaping the benefits: Science and the sustainable intensification of global agriculture

Reaping the benefits: Science and the sustainable intensification of global agriculture

21 Oct 2009

The Royal Society has published the report of a landmark study examining the contribution of the biological sciences to food crop production.  The study was conducted by a working group chaired by Sir David Baulcombe FRS. The group included experts on agriculture, international development, conservation biology and plant science.

Food security is one of this century’s key global challenges. Producing enough food for the increasing global population must be done in the face of changing consumption patterns, the impacts of climate change and the growing scarcity of water and land. Crop production methods must also sustain the environment, preserve natural resources and support livelihoods of farmers and rural populations around the world. This report discusses the need for a sustainable intensification’ of global agriculture in which yields are increased without adverse environmental impact and without the cultivation of more land.

The report begins by setting out the challenges to food crop production. It then goes on to examine in detail the various technologies that might be used to enhance production, with the conclusion that a diversity of approaches are needed. Due to the scale of the challenge, no technology should be ruled out, and different strategies may need to be employed in different regions and circumstances. Finally, consideration is given to the consequences and complications of food crop innovation.

The recommendations of the report include the following:

• Research Councils UK (RCUK) should develop a cross-council grand challenge’ on global food crop security as a priority. This needs to secure at least £2 billion over 10 years to make a substantial difference.
• RCUK should increase support for ecosystem-based approaches, agronomy and the related sciences that underpin improved crop and soil management.
• Universities should work with funding bodies to reverse the decline in subjects relevant to a sustainable intensification of food crop production, such as agronomy, plant physiology, pathology and general botany, soil science, environmental microbiology, weed science and entomology

Update: Bing has now made the announcments and Google has announced a deal with Twitter too. Google’s Marissa Mayer writes:

…we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

Original Article: Microsoft is expected to announce two separate deals today – one with Twitter and one with Facebook. From the sound of it, the deals would be similar in nature, both giving Bing access to index status updates from both social networks.

Kara Swisher at Boomtown says that both deals are confirmed and are expected to be announced this afternoon at the Web 2.0 summit. The deals are non-exclusive, however. And you know what that means.

Google has been reported to have been talking with both Twitter and Facebook too, and it would be no surprise to see deals made there as well.

But this is Microsoft’s moment. But what will it mean as far as status updates from both Twitter and Facebook?

"Much of what is posted on Twitter is public by design, while Facebook’s users prefer the closed nature of the service to disperse a wide variety of personal information only to their friends and they want to control it," says Swisher. "Thus, sources said, not all Facebook updates will be included in the real-time feed to be searched by Bing, but only those its users choose to make available to the wider public. Facebook will apparently provide users with a numbers of new tools to do so."

According to Swisher, neither of Microsoft’s deals will bear fruit for several weeks, and that would leave plenty of time for Google to sneak in with its own deals. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

As for the financial details of Microsoft’s deals with Twitter and Facebook, these can only be speculated upon at this point.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Energy Future Holdings has extended the deadline for early offers in its debt exchange, a massive debt restructuring that ran into opposition from bondholders, according to a company statement.

The deadline for early tenders is now 5 p.m. (2100 GMT) Oct 23, New York City time, Energy Future Holdings said on Monday. The original deadline was 5 p.m. (2100 GMT) Oct 19. The deadline for consenting to amendments of bond indentures also moved to Oct 23 from Oct 19.

Energy Future, formerly known as TXU, has been trying to reduce its $43 billion debt load by about $2 billion by offering to exchange outstanding debt for new notes at steep discounts.

Franklin Templeton Investments and other major bondholders holding more than 50 percent of bonds targeted in the debt exchange have formed a group to oppose it, a source close to the deal has said.

Bondholders believe the discounts are too steep now that the bond markets have recovered from a sell-off earlier this year, according to analysts. Debtholders are also opposed to amendments Energy Future is seeking that could make it easier for the company to sell its prized transmission business, Oncor.

Bondholders are being offered between 46.5 cents and 74.5 cents on the dollar if they exchange their debt by the early tender deadline. They will receive slightly less if the bonds are exchanged after that. The offer expires Nov. 3.

Energy Future took on a great deal of debt when Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners took it private in the largest leveraged buyout ever in 2007. The company has been burning cash since the market for power worsened and a weak economy hurt demand. (Reporting by Dena Aubin; Editing by Theodore d’Afflisio)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – AGA Medical Holdings Inc., a maker of devices for heart defects and blood vessel diseases, became the latest IPO to disappoint in its debut, rising only 0.7 percent in its first day of trade.

AGA shares started trading at $14.50 on the Nasdaq, rose as much as 2.4 percent to $14.85 and ended 10 cents higher for the day.

Historically, U.S. IPO stocks have on average risen 10 to 12 percent in their first day, but AGA Medical became the 11th IPO out of 15 since mid-September to have an sub-par first-day, which came on the heels of the IPO pricing below expectations on Tuesday evening.

AGA priced shares at $14.50, below the expected price range of $15 to $16 a share, which it had lowered earlier Tuesday from $19 to $21.

The company, whose largest shareholder is private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe LP, sold 13.75 million shares and raised $199.4 million. As recently as Monday it had estimated it would raise $275 million.

Despite the disappointing pricing, the shares stood their ground in their debut because of company’s profit margins and pipeline of products, an analyst said.

“The market opportunity for their pipeline products is about $6 billion and they are highly profitable,” said Matt Therian, an analyst with Connecticut-based investment firm Renaissance Capital.

The downward pressure during the pricing came partly from uncertainty over how long regulatory approval for new products and for new applications for existing products could take, he said.

Investors may have also balked after AGA’s co-founder Franck Gougeon upped the number of shares he was selling by about 2 million on Tuesday, while AGA itself sold fewer shares, leaving it with less money with which to pay down debt.

“It does not send a vote of confidence when you see pricing pressure and selling shareholders sell more shares,” Therian said.

At the share price of $15.50 that AGA had expected, the company would have realized $96 million from the offering, less than the net proceeds of $154.2 million it had originally estimated.

Welsh Carson, which did not sell any shares in the IPO, still owns 51.7 percent of the company after the IPO.

The move by Gougeon echoes that of the owners of RailAmerica (RA.N), a rail operator that went public last week.

RailAmerica’s owners, private equity funds managed by Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG.N), also lowered the price range ahead of its IPO, while Fortress sold 1 million more shares than expected. Shares fell 8 percent in their debut.

The last IPO of a company owned by Welsh, Carson — an offering last month by hospital operator Select Medical Holdings Corp (SEM.N) — also priced below range. On Wednesday Select Medical shares were down 3 percent from the IPO price.

AGA’s lead products, Amplatzer devices, treat structural heart defects and made up 55.4 percent of AGA sales in the 2009 first half. AGA warned in its prospectus that it was likely to remain dependent on Amplatzer for the next few years.

The company has other products in development, including vascular grafts.

AGA’s first-half sales totaled $94.4 million, with a net loss of $4.2 million. (Editing by John Wallace and Steve Orlofsky)

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LONDON (Reuters) – The private equity owners of Britain’s biggest bingo company, Gala Coral, are moving closer to agreeing on a debt restructuring deal with the company’s mezzanine lenders, two sources said on Wednesday.

Junior-ranked lenders, led by Intermediate Capital Group Plc (ICP.L) and Park Square, and Gala’s private equity owners, Candover Investments Plc (CDI.L), Cinven Ltd [CINV.UL] and Permira [PERM.UL], are working on a deal that would see the two sides share control of the company, the sources said.

The owners of Gala Coral, which runs more than 150 bingo clubs across Britain as well as 1,600 betting shops, need a deal with lenders because the company is close to breaching the terms of its 2.7 billion pounds ($4.47 billion) of debt.

The deal may see mezzanine lenders and private equity owners take equal representation on the board of directors, one of the sources said.

The proposal will be put to Gala Coral’s current board of directors on Friday before being presented to senior lenders, the source said.

“We want a fully baked deal before looking to get this approved,” the source added.

Candover, Cinven, Gala Coral and Permira could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this month the mezzanine lenders proposed taking an equity stake in the company in exchange for “turning off” interest payments on the debt, which carries high interest rates and totals more than 500 million pounds. 

Delaying the interest payments would save the company several hundred million pounds.

If accepted, the deal between owners and lenders would give the mezzanine debt holders much greater say over the running of the company.

The talks come as junior debt holders in Europe look to be more active in defending their investments.

“Mezzanine lenders are being more pushy and coming up with their own solutions rather than accepting senior lenders’ solutions after they were wiped out earlier this year,” a senior leveraged finance banker said. ($1=.6045 Pound) (Reporting by Tom Freke and Tessa Walsh)

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Coca-Cola has launched a social media campaign that will send three bloggers to more than 200 countries over the period of a year.

The campaign called "Expedition 206" is part of the beverage makers Open Happiness marketing effort launched at the beginning of the year.

Coca-Cola has selected nine finalists and is allowing fans to make the final decision by voting for their favorite candidates on the Expedition 206 website through November 6. Fans can vote once each day during the three-week voting period.

Beginning in Madrid on January1, 2010 and ending at the World of Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta on December 31, the story of the bloggers travels will be available on the Expedition 206 site, as well as on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and other social networking sites.

Adam Brown,
Digital Communications,
Coca-Cola

"This mash-up of social media — online photo galleries, video clips, blogs, microblogs, social networking — combined with an amazing journey, enthusiastic travelers and a theme of happiness is a great way for us to connect with people around the world," said Adam Brown, director, Office of Digital Communications and Social Media, The Coca-Cola Company.

"The global adoption of social media has given us a way to deliver a year-long reality TV series without the TV."

Fans will be able to interact with the three bloggers via the Expedition 206 website and offer suggestions on where they go, what they do and who they visit in each country. Stops along the way include the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.
 

CHARLOTTE (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) agreed to sell First Republic private bank to a group of private equity investors.

A consortium of private equity firms, including General Atlantic Partners and Colony Capital, are part of the deal, with First Republic Chairman and Chief Executive James Herbert part of the winning bid, the bank said in a statement on Wednesday.

First Republic’s current management would continue to run the bank, according to the statement. The sale is expected to close in the second quarter of 2010.

At the end of third-quarter, First Republic reported $19 billion in total assets, $16 billion in deposits and $15 billion in client assets under management in its wealth division.

A Bank of America spokesman was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Joe Rauch, editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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Rob Hyndman points us to a column in Toronto’s Globe & Mail by Barrie McKenna that is basically all of the recording industry’s talking points on copyright, without even a nod to the views of the other side. It appears that most of the info is (surprise, surprise) based on a recording industry lawyer. It starts with a nice little moral panic about how file sharing sites are rushing to base themselves in Canada due to the country’s supposedly lax copyright laws. Of course, that’s ridiculous. Canada has very strong copyright laws already. What they don’t have is a DMCA. That’s what the industry wants. McKenna tries to bolster his claim that Canada has weak copyright laws with the following:

Earlier this year, the Obama administration put Canada on its blacklist of shame – a “priority watch list” of intellectual property laggards, joining the likes of China, Russia and Venezuela.

Sounds nice, but incredibly misleading. The “blacklist of shame” that McKenna mentions, but does not explain, is actually the US Trade Rep’s special “301 Report.” Mention it to just about any policy maker (excluding those pushing for protectionist policies for a specific industry, of course), and you get an eye roll. It’s not so much “the Obama administration” but industries with wishlists attempting to restrain trade in foreign countries by putting forth scary stories about what’s happening in those countries. The USTR basically takes those industry-submitted reports and wraps them up into the 301 report. It’s a joke. Most of the complaints in the report concern countries that actually are in perfect compliance with international treaties — but which the industry still wants to go further.

Of course, given that McKenna’s source is an industry lawyer, perhaps it’s not surprising that such info wasn’t shared. But, the next claims go from the just uninformed to the unbelievable:

Canada, which has repeatedly promised but so far failed to deliver on copyright reform, isn’t just out of step with the United States, but with much of the Western world.

This is simply untrue. Canada’s copyright law is actually quite in line with most of the Western world, no matter what the entertainment industry suggests (and, you might think that McKenna would ask someone other than the person representing the industry that benefits from this). Furthermore, the line that Canada has “so far failed to deliver on copyright reform” is either blatantly misleading or simply ignorant of rather recent history. Canadian politicians have tried to push forth copyright reform, but due to a massive public outcry from people who actually understand how things like the DMCA cause all sorts of problems — especially concerning free speech and consumer rights — those politicians were forced to back down.

That’s called informed democracy in action.

Oh, McKenna also claims that the last time the Canadian government tried copyright reform was in 2007. According to his bio, McKenna is based in DC, not Canada, but even down here in the States plenty of us were aware that Jim Prentice introduced copyright reform in 2008.

So, McKenna makes it out like Canada has no strong copyright laws (false), that it’s laws are different from most of the western world (false) and that it hasn’t tried to add more draconian copyright laws (false again). From there, he comes up with this bizarre justification for more draconian copyright law:

The world has gone digital. And there’s now an explosion of legitimate download sites in the U.S. and Europe, including ground-breaking music sites Pandora.com and Lala.com. But you can’t use them in Canada.

These and other businesses are choosing to bypass the market entirely, in part because of licensing problems.

And the creative industries that produce music, software and the like – industries that contribute significantly more to the economy than BitTorrent sites – may also shun Canada if nothing is done.

Actually, you have Canadian record labels like Nettwerk, that are doing quite well, even as its CEO has declared that copyright is obsolete and should be done away with entirely within a decade. And the reason that those services can’t be used in Canada isn’t because the law is too lax, but because the laws are too strict, in terms of figuring out special licensing setups in each country. It’s such a pain to get them licensed in a single country that the services have been forced — against their will in many cases — to block access in other countries like Canada.

Meanwhile, it’s telling to note some of the things that McKenna conveniently left out. Like how about the private copying levy system up in Canada, which has made blank media ridiculously expensive, and which is supposed to be paying for all that “piracy.” We don’t have that in the US at all. Or what about the weak fair use/fair dealing laws in Canada? What about an understanding of the value of the public domain or the value of fan promotions? What about new business models that have shown that copyright isn’t necessary to make money in the industry? What about the studies that have shown that file sharers tend to buy more music? All of that seems relevant… but when your only source is a representative of the industry looking to get laws passed in its own interest, is it any wonder they get left out?

Barrie McKenna got taken for a ride here by the recording industry. His writeup included multiple factual errors, significant errors of omission, and a gross misunderstanding of what’s actually happening in the music industry these days.

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