David Lemetti, pro piracy law prof now Canada’s Minister of Justice.  Photo by Wikimedia commons. 

You can’t make this shit up.

In cabinet shakeup Justin Trudeau has appointed David Lametti as Minister of Justice and Attorney General. We are very familiar with Lametti and this dude is very bad news for artists, authors, filmmakers and performers.

Lametti isn’t just a copyright skeptic he is for the legalization of piracy.   A quote from his 2011 paper The Virtuous P(eer): Reflections on the Ethics of File Sharing

“Sharing is thus a key practice linked to virtue, and not necessarily to vice. I shall make an argument, again particularly with regard to music, that such a sharing ethos has always been part of the way that music has been written, performed and appreciated. Finally, I shall argue that current normative structures ought to be adapted to reflect this more profound understanding of the impulse to share music.”

What he means by that all this is

1. sharing is caring
2. we should change the law to legalize piracy cause that’s what the kids are doing.

Oh but there is more. So much more. In the same paper, after making a half assed economic argument that file-sharing doesn’t cause much economic damage,  he says this:

“In addition to these economic arguments, I wish to bolster the argument that the sharing of music files is – if not absolutely justified in all circumstances – at least justifiable in many circumstances.”

Finally I’ll leave you with this little nugget on the  ethics of copyright infringement:

“Indeed, there is a sense in which one can even disregard, in principle, certain rules while remaining faithful to the law.”

Remember this is the #1 law enforcement officer in Canada now. He advocates breaking the law.

“War is Peace”

“Freedom is Slavery”

“Breaking the Law is remaining faithful to the law”

What a train wreck.  I genuinely feel bad for all Canadian artists.