Well, you can bet that Canadians haven't forgotten the war of 1812. I would say the anexation attempt has been forgiven, but the average Canadian is probably annoyed that their counterparts in the U.S. don't even know about it.
Of course, back then most of my ancestors were either in Europe or the U.S. We're talking about who's ancestors fought who eles's ancestors on this one.
There are good points to the innacuracies taught in history class. Living in Quebec, it's very annoying to hear people talk about separation. They completely ignore the 400 years of building this country together and all the bonds that have formed. Bah!
Back to the main issue here: What's happening is something large. It's hard to put into specifics. People are sensing that the way things are going is against what they judge to be right. This is happening in many contexts, such as the degredation of civil liberties because of the fear of terrorism, all the way down to the degredation in consumer's rights in the name of fear of piracy. Making backup copies is a legitimate thing to do: I think most people will agree about that. However, the measures used in the name of preventing piracy means that I would have to break the law to back up my media collection (if I were a U.S. citizen, that is). Some people have no problems with this, or are completely willing to accept this kind of loss in the name of the cause. Others are more sensitive to any personal inconvenience (or, in other more important fields, loss of personal rights and freedoms). It is the general trend that people are sensing and feeling a response: it runs from complacent to concerned to outright furious.
To me, it seems that what's happened is that large corporate interests have too much influence over governments. Why are corporate donations allowed at all? Isn't the job of representative democratic governments to represent the citizens? I'm sure that common-sense will still prevail and citizens will see that they need to foster a strong economic environment in which their businesses will do well, but at least you won't have governments cranking out (or at least being percieved to be cranking out) legislation that takes from the poor to give to the rich.
Some people look at copyright protection and the legislation surrounding it more cynically, and see that the copyright protection schemes don't even slow down piracy. They also see that informed individuals would not reasonably expect copyright protection schemes, as they stand, to hinder piracy. I believe that copyright protection, in practicality, is at best successful in reminding people that the material is copyrighted, and may cause some people to think twice before choosing to pirate or not. Otherwise, I think these schemes amout to the following:
1) The content holders can sell you many copies of the same media, since it's been made illegal for you to play the same content in a CD player and your iPod and on your HTPC. It's also now illegal for you to share that music with everyone in your household if (in the case of iTunes) there are more than 3 people. This particular point has been argued to death and, in general, ticks off everyone who is pro-Fair Use.
2) The content holders maintain a lock over the distribution channel. Just as point (1) demonstrates how we are restricted beyond the traditional definitions of copyright in terms of use, we are becoming restricted in terms of how we can acquire the media in the first place. The latest move I've noted is how sale of used CDs in Florida is now more restrictive than the purchase of firearms.
Link.
3) The content owners are taking control over the playback devices we get to use in the home. At first, this point sounds like a re-iteration of point (1) above, but what I really mean here is that the RIAA/MPAA get to charge a royaltee fee on all HDCP compliant hardware. The new terms of the agreement are that these companies don't just own the content, for which you can pay for the right to consume, but they also own the technology behind how the content can be used. You're not just consuming a movie, you're consuming the right to use proprietary formats. Charging the consumer at both ends is annoying.
Again, to point 3), I'm sorry to say that I'm just going to have to forgo paying that royaltee fee since I insist on not buying Windows for my media centre. There seem to be only two ways I can exercise any personal choice in the current system: stop consuming the media, or break the law. Otherwise, you must do everything on the RIAA/MPAA's terms and pay them at every step of the process.
I think it's entirely logical that a certain portion of the citizenry is going to get annoyed. Some people are more sensitive to these kinds of issues than others. I would say that I'm probably in the former group.
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