[A2k] Lobby Groups Launch Full Assault For Canadian DMCA

[Janet Hawtin]

ianal imho

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Jeffrey A. Williams
<jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> Meanwhile, =A0http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3845/125/ the
> CRIA is preparing a grassroots campaign in support of new copyright
> laws, even claiming that the current rules are costing jobs to truck
> drivers delivering CDs and DVDs."

I guess I find it interesting that in effect the lobby groups
promoting copyright
are all in the business of delivery and packaging and that it is the
ability for the
artists and writers to publish for themselves which undoes their reliance
on industrial models of broadcasting their works.

It is interesting that this connection is made by the lobby groups themselv=
es
and that they are overtly seeing themselves as protecting the
traditional mode of
distribution rather than the act of creation or the livelihood of the creat=
ors.

imho This is because creators using post industrial means of distribution
are in actual fact the real threat to these industries and piracy is merely
a way to dramatise the issue in favour of the industrial mode of production=
.

Copyright law was crafted specifically for the emergence of the printing pr=
ess.
It is time that the law was reconsidered in light of new creative and
publishing realities
including 'living' creative works in ongoing development by fluid
communities rather than individuals,
and distribution methods which might involve investment by creators
and subscribers, but with
very little infrastructure cost. Accessibility and functional use of
information for
purposes including health, ecology, agriculture, cooking, crafts,
cultural expression and dialogue
all need to be engineered into the emerging models so that we do not
get foolish 'property' metaphors
effectively damaging our ability to function as a 'knowledge society'.

Copyright as it stands is a single point of value with a distributed cost.
I expect that emerging creative practice and publishing will need models
which are better able to support distributed and mutable points of value
which do not effect unreasonable social costs such as reduced access
to medical health,
risk to viability of agricultural species, inability to make effective
use of what we
know about our planet and its ecology and reduced ability to build on
our creative
heritage and shared expression.

Janet