The following interface is inherited from IUnknown:)

"IUnknown"  wrote in message:
>Keep in mind that the word 'pirate' is thrown around a little to easily 
>these days.

Especially by foreign corporations as in trading beads for land to the 
savages. If a foreign corporation does not leave its proceeds in my country 
I would favour laws to nationalize their copyright or to put a copyright tax 
and a copyright rebate in place. Although I haven't participated in drafting 
federal legislation for about a decade now, I may break my hiatus from 
social engineering and  put a bill together that will make Sam Gibbon and 
the protectionism of the softwood lumber legislation in the US look like 
NAFTA without borders.

"Bill C666 - The Copyright Excise Tax and Consumer Copyright Rebate
Act" AKA 
"The Robin Hood Act"

An act to leave the copyright act intact but to amend the Canada Excise Tax 
Act and the Canada Income Tax Act and the Criminal Code of Canada

SUMMARY

An act to leave the copyright act intact but to require all foreign 
corporations and individuals whose goods are sold in Canada to; register 
with the Canadian government to do so;
pay regular post-sale excise tax to the Canadian Government or face criminal 
prosecution and extradition to Canada for the same; in lieu of criminal 
prosecution to allow their product to be copied and sold freely by all 
Canadians; track sales of all Copyrighted material from unregistered 
Copyright holders from foreign lands and to prosecute them one by one in 
absentia; to hold all individuals and holding companies who represent 
foreign authors responsible in-kind for their debts in the same; and finally 
to provide all Canadian INDIVIDUALS a rebate proportional to their purchases 
of registered Copyrighted Material in the form of a Canadian Income Tax 
Credit from their share (booty) from the pool of collections from penalties 
and taxes in all of this.



Needs work... tax incentives for purchases of registered foreign products 
could be expanded to domestic products and extended to provincial and 
federal sales taxes as well.

I remember circa 1990 the Software Publisher's Assocation (SPA) who 
represented Microsoft, Lotus Wordperfect, Autodesk (Autocad) and other 
foreign companies came to one of our Manitoba Software Association (MSA) 
Monthly Meetings and started spouting their verbal diarrhoea; "Keep Canada 
Clean!" they said (quote) and I scolded them; "How dare you
insult us in our 
own country!" and most of the members walked out of that meeting with me. 
The foreigners had suggested stickers and posters and had some slogans 
printed-out and everything.

>In my opinion, if a licensed publisher refuses to sell or support the 
>product, or is simply no longer in business... regardless of the 'legal 
>ethics' (oxymoron alert) , I tend to side with the 'pirates'.

I think Moral Rights should be on both sides and quite agree with the above. 
I also think that free market pricing is unfair and a price CAP should be 
placed on commodotized Software like operating systems or in fact anything 
that is required to use a class of computer; like device drivers, and 
hardware manufacturers should be required to offer all available 
alternatives.

Countries should favour, in law and practice, domestic alternatives to 
commodotized software, and in fact all domestic software that is of the same 
or similar nature and quality.

Bill
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