Guest post by Michael McCarthy, of the SLAIS LIBR 561 Information Policy class

With those words, Doyen of the Digital Domain, Michael Geist, flew into town last Thursday (October 23, 2008) and, among other things, explained how digital advocacy played a pivotal role in mobilizing Canadians against Bill C-61.

Geist began by reminding us how last October’s Throne Speech said that technology, and this copyright legislation, would “ensure a prosperous future.” It wasn’t an easy sell for the government. Within days, Geist had organized a Facebook campaign to mobilize opposition. Fair Copyright for Canada’s Facebook network grew from one hundred members on the first day to 92,322 today.

YouTube also played a starring role in the campaign. A competition was organized, the self-explanatory “C-61 in 60 Seconds.” (See the winning entry). Twitter, Google Earth, and a host of other web 2.0 networks meshed to galvanize the opposition. As Geist said, before the campaign, “People didn’t think these things affected them on a day to day basis.” (BTW, check out our local grassroots coalition partner, Vancouver Fair Copyright).

Canadians connected on this issue. Torontonians took to the streets in protest. Pancake Protesters showed up at the Calgary Stampede. Thousands of hard copy protest letters arrived on Parliament Hill. All of this seems, well, somewhat unCanadian in a country presumed to be apathetic on such issues. In retrospect, the opposition to C-61 seemed vaguely reminiscent of 1960s-style activism overlaid with the instantaneity of the Internet.

In some ways, C-61 served as a test case for how the Internet will play its role in the future of citizen engagement. Geist’s final slide read: “SILENT NO MORE.” Opposition to the proposed bill also seemed to tap into a latent nationalism: it was US vs. the U.S. Yet, the bigger question remains: Are we, in fact, already the “51^st State”?

Geist stated that the Conservative government “had a pretty clear media strategy,” and that they were confident On June 12^th when C-61 was introduced. They were also “very happy with the [media] coverage” (no surprise there). However, a week later, with the grassroots’ focus on individual rights, things started heading south for the bill.

A key point made was that it wasn’t until the grassroots had done the homework that the mainstream media took up the issue. This culminated in a Globe and Mail article, “Ottawa accused of caving in to Hollywood on Copyright.”

At this point in his presentation Geist asked: “How did copyright become cool?” In a classic understatement, Geist said “I certainly blogged about it.” Copyright became cool in no small way due to his effectiveness as a change agent. Geist reminded us that “This [copyright law] is driven by political choices, not policy choices.”

As Paul Whitney told our class during his visit on October 8^th, the CLA, due to differences of opinion within the association, doesn’t do enough on the issue. Michael Geist, on the other hand, can make a definitive statement. And he has. I can’t think of anyone who has done more to further debate on Canadian copyright law than Geist. In many ways, he is the public face of the issue. His 60-minute presentation took us on a whirlwind tour of Bill C-61’s convoluted history and ended on an upbeat prognosis for the future, at least as far a social networking and political change are concerned. I particular liked his take on what’s at stake here: “our digital future is about our creative future.”

Guest post by Tim McMillan, of the SLAIS LIBR 561 Information Policy class.

I was fortunate to participate in the discussion of media concentration in Canada and North America at “Jumpstarting the Public Sphere.”  Our group was lead by Dr. David Skinner, a professor of communications studies at York University.  The other participants included students from the Langara College library program, a journalism student and community radio organizer from Simon Fraser University, a librarian from Vancouver Public Library (VPL) and yours truly: a graduate student studying library science at the University of British Columbia and a part-time reference librarian at VPL.  Sean Connon, the editor of the Vancouver street magazine Megaphone, moderated.

David began by noting the steep decline in Canadians’ belief in the credibility of traditional news media; only 1/3 believes it to be fair and balanced.  Instead, the prevailing opinion is that big news serves big business.  One of the participants noted that thirty years ago Vancouver sported three independent news dailies, whereas today the Vancouver Sun and the Province are controlled by the same corporation.

David traced the history of media concentration in Canada from the concern expressed in 1970’s Davey Report to the apathy of the mid 1990s when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) acquiesced to industry demands for cross media ownership.  With this latter decision, conglomerates could control media in a multitude of genres: television, radio, and newspapers.  This model made economic sense as resource pooling cut down on overhead and seemed to make Canadian media more competitive in a global market.  Of course the downside was the loss of a diversity of voices in Canada’s news media and a heavy blow to media democracy in the country.

While public advocacy groups and information policy watchdogs have pushed these negative aspects of media concentration to the CRTC and other policy-makers, the response has been that the commission is not in the business of putting businesses out of business.  As participants in our group noted, the government and its regulatory bodies shy away from restricting businesses’ rights to own private property and are all the more wary of interfering with opinion-makers for fear of creating a media backlash.

With this avenue for policy change seemingly blocked, our group looked at alternative methods for pressuring policy makers to step in and regulate the concentration of media.  It was suggested that the new media be utilized in order to draw attention to negative consequences of media concentration: the Micheal Geist Bill C-61 model.  This seemed a viable method, but complimentary action was needed as again and again the issue of financing cropped up.  In the USA, there are charitable foundations to be appealed to and media watchdogs are well represented in the public sphere on both the right and the left.  Here in Canada, there is less of a tradition for the former as the government has long taken the role of subsidizing Canadian media; media watchdogs are equally scarce.

One suggestion gained consensus as the most actionable: an online portal of alternative media outlets.  This would allow the multiplicity of independent voices to band together as a means of mutually increasing traffic to a variety of news sources.  Although this is a long way from counteracting the domination of a few media outlets, it represents a start in the right direction of encouraging media democracy.

I remember scratching my head, scrunching up my face, and muttering “I don’t get it” to myself when I first heard of Cory Doctorow making his books available for free download under a Creative Common’s license. He explains why he does this best in his own words:

I believe that we live in an era where anything that can be expressed as bits will be. I believe that bits exist to be copied. Therefore, I believe that any business-model that depends on your bits not being copied is just dumb, and that lawmakers who try to prop these up are like governments that sink fortunes into protecting people who insist on living on the sides of active volcanoes. Me, I’m looking to find ways to use copying to make more money and it’s working: enlisting my readers as evangelists for my work and giving them free ebooks to distribute sells more books. As Tim O’Reilly says, my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. Best of all, giving away ebooks gives me lots of key insights into how to make money without restricting the copying of bits. It’s a win-win situation.

Neil Gaiman will be doing a similar thing. Go and vote for what book you would like to access online for free.

Radiohead got a lot of press for releasing their newest album, In Rainbows, as a legal DRM-free download, allowing customers to decide how much they wanted to pay for it. This reminds me of the Australian restaurant, Lentil as anything, that allows customers to decide how much they want to pay for their meal.

Rhizome cafe in Vancouver has adopted this idea for a dish. Beside the box where you put your money is a description of the philosophy behind the lentils. There are a list of questions like: what is the value of eating in a place like Rhizome?, what is the value of the work that has gone into growing, transporting and preparing this dish, what is your economic situation? what does it feel like to participate in a system where food could be made available to everyone in a community?

I like Doctorow and Gaiman’s creativity in breaking from models that rely on DRM and exploring new distribution models. Who knows, I might even start reading science fiction.