As noted before on Fauna Corporation, Michael Geist is more or less The Man when it comes to Canadian copyright and online privacy legislation.

A post from Geist on BoingBoing today points out that the Canadian music industry is about to lobby the Canadian government for more control and rights over what people post through blogs, social networking sites, search engines and video sites – including things intended for parody and satire – while putting liability on the sites and networks that carry the content. They also want a tax on new iPods, because, you know, that’s why Canadian records don’t sell. Insert incredibly loud sigh and mega-eye-roll here.

It all reminds me of when Canada Post tried to levy a 5 cent tax on every email being sent because people were sending fewer letters as email became more common. The result? Laughter, then even fewer letters being sent.

I would be surprised if the Canadian record labels that I actively support (and I mean actively support; I buy a lot of music) are amongst those lobbying government (ie: smaller, more interesting labels with more lateral business models), but at this point I don’t know enough about it. So we’ll see what shakes down in Parliament.

Either way, this is the kind of thing that often involves asking for the moon because, with concessions, you’ll probably get the sky. So it seemed appropriate to point some traffic to Geist’s post (via Cory Doctorow) on BoingBoing to raise awareness that this is happening.

Have a read, have a think, and then buy some wicked Canadian music directly from the artists that create it, because they are keeping up with the times and the choices consumers are making. And generally speaking, they’re not trying to control what you share.