On their Tokyo Police Club has called on Canadians to fight the Conservative Copyright Bill, the band claims amoung other things that the bill is bad for both artists and fans. If all of the thousands of other people screaming about this bill that would make most Canadians into criminals has not convinced you to act, perhaps these guys will. The blog post in it's entirety is below.
"Hey Friends, Specifically, this is targeted at our Canadian friends. Not that we don't love the rest of you, because we do, but I wanted to talk about something thats of importance to Canadians. Its the new Copyright bill that was just tabled in Parliament. You may well have heard about it on the news or in the papers or on this fancy pants new "world wide web" that I keep hearing so much about. I can't explain it all that well myself because I'm not all that smart, but if you mosey on over to Michael Geist's informative and well written blog post on the subject you'll be able to read all about it.
Obviously, the bill is meant to protect people who make their money from intellectual property. As musicians, we're among those people. But I think it should be obvious to anyone that this is a law that would work in nobodies favour. I've talked before about the problems posed to us by illegal downloading, and I do think that theres a solution out there to that problem. But this legislation *is not* that solution. Its a big step backwards and will no doubt create more problems than it solves: its a law thats so seriously flawed and obviously ridiculous that it could well drive people to ignore copyright altogether, which would have a very negative result for everyone.
I know that its sort of a foreign concept for people around my age (or younger) to get involved in politics on this level. I've certainly never written to my MP about anything before. But this is a bill that, if passed, is going to cause a lot of problems for you and me, and I think its important that we stand up and make our opinion known. Mr. Geist outlines the actions that you should take and I would strongly urge you to take them. I know I'm going to.
And spread the word. This is being spun as a simple attempt to go after "pirates" and illegal downloaders, but its important that people realize the more sinister parts of this before its too late.
So yeah, thats me expounding about politics, even though I'm just a stupid musician. But its the musicians and the fans that are going to suffer from this! It is a big deal, and every voice counts!
Oh yeah, we also do music. And we're going to keep doing music and playing shows and stuff, so we'll see you soon.
xoxoxo Graham"
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