Canadian digital rights advocacy group OpenMedia is gearing up for protest.
The group was affiliated with the launch of Unfairplay.ca earlier this week, aiming to challenge and protest the FairPlay Canada coalition comprised of 25 Canadian media corporations looking to petition the CRTC to create an independent organization capable of extrajudicial website blocking.
According to OpenMedia digital rights specialist Katy Anderson speaking to MobileSyrup in a phone interview, Unfairplay.ca was created by volunteers in the community, as well as former OpenMedia workers. The site is hosted by OpenMedia.
Visitors can use the Unfairplay site to find a complete list of all the Canadian media companies involved in the anti-piracy coalition.
Unfairplay encourages visitors to tweet at these organizations and “demand they withdraw from FairPlay Canada,” according to the website’s text.
The Unfairplay site also provides users with a link to the CRTC’s comments site, as well as a built-in tool to easily write to the CRTC “with suggested language and talking points.”
Unfairplay is part of a larger network of sites aimed at protesting the Fairplay Canada coalition.
OpenMedia is currently gearing up for a day of action on February 28th, 2018.
The advocacy group’s goal is to submit at least 50,000 comments to CRTC to protest FairPlay Canada.
“On our site, we’ve already got 21,000 comments to the CRTC and the last time I checked, the CRTC website had more than 5,000 comments that were directly submitted, which is a bit of a miracle considering how difficult to navigate the CRTC site is,” said Anderson, in a phone interview with MobileSyrup.
According to Anderson, the solution to piracy in Canada isn’t website blocking, but through innovation and “[making] it so content is easy to get for people and available at a fair price.”
In an attempt to ensure that all interested parties have time to submit comments, the CRTC extended the submission deadline to March 29th, 2018.
Source: Unfairplay
