p2pnet - rss feed: It’s the candidates, not the parties
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- Jon Newton has decided to come out in support of a specific party, namely the NDP, as the party people should support if the issues we cover on p2pnet are important to you. While I agree with some of the specific candidates he mentions, such as Timmins–James Bay candidate and NDP digital spokesperson Charlie Angus, and Vancouver Centre candidate Michael Byers, I believe it’s the candidates we need to concentrate on, and not the parties.
A little bit of personal political background for full disclosure. Like many people I started to get political when I was in University. I’m fiscally conservative, socially liberal, and an environmental conservationist. On many issues of the early 1990s I was in synch with the federal Progressive Conservative party, but disagreed strongly with them on the question of Free Trade vs. Fair Trade. I was introduced to the Green Party of Ontario around that time, and like a few other people who’s second choice would have been the PCs, I got involved in that party.
I didn’t always agree with the federal leader of this party who seemed a little too left-wing for me during the 1990s, and wasn’t involved with the party by the time past Progressive Conservative Jim Harris became leader. Since 2002 I’ve been officially non-partisan in order to focus on technology law policy. In recent federal elections I’ve held my nose and voted for Liberal David McGuinty because I’ve found him to be a good MP and agree with him on many things (including how to integrate economic and environmental policy), even if I don’t always agree with the party he runs under.
In a previous article titled Canada’s Copyright party is … the NDP I documented the transition that happened with that party. Prior to the 2004 election the party was relying on cultural critic Wendy Lill for direction on copyright and related technology law issues. In the 2004 election the NDP stated that they wanted to ratify the 1996 WIPO treaties immediately, and expressed views on copyright that are not all that different from what we hear from the Conservatives today. She was someone who saw modern citizen controlled communications technology as a threat to creators, and seemed lock-step with the foreign transnationals trying to put foreign digital locks on content and communications technology.
She retired, and in 2004 was replaced by current digital issues spokesperson Charlie Angus as their cultural critic. Mr Angus is someone who not only recognizes the benefits to Canadian creators of new communications technology, but also recognizes the democratic and other rights enhancing aspects of these technologies.
The NDP is fielding a number of other candidates that show up as gems in this election. I’ve interviewed and received great responses from Vancouver Centre candidate Michael Byers and Guelph candidate Tom King. Well known blogger, author and new technologies expert Cory Doctorow endorsed Westmount-Ville-Marie candidate Anne Lagacé Dowson.
While the party has a great digital spokesperson and has fielded some great candidates, I’m not confident enough to give an unqualified recommendation for the NDP. While there was a change of people in 2004, there was not a change in the underlying philosophy of the party. As easily as we saw great people come into the NDP caucus we can see political opponents join the caucus.
I gave a gave a talk about copyright October 1 at the University of Waterloo. A week earlier I sent questions to all the candidates in the 3 ridings closest to the University, and have thus far only received two responses.
The first response came on the day of the talk from Kitchener - Waterloo Green Party candidate Cathy MacLellan. She apologized for replying late, and sent me a copy of the Green Party’s candidate briefing on copyright. She also said she wanted to learn more, and would be planning on attending the talk. Since she was a candidate who was willing to attend the talk, I offered her some time to quote from that policy briefing. (Note: I’ll have more to say about that policy briefing in later articles.)
The second response was from Len Carter, president of the Kitchener Conestoga NDP Federal Riding Association. It was a very short letter which primarily said he and his candidate Rod McNeils believes copyright must remain with the creator of the work. The letter went on to document Mr McNeil is an entertainer and Mr Carter is a retired retired television director.
It seems Mr Carter confused a question about copyright with a question about the labour negotiations between creators and the entertainment industry. I asked for clarity, and in a followup letter Mr Carter referenced being President of the Toronto Unit of the Canadian Media Guild, and how they protected members in contract negotiations.
This worried me as the topic of contract negotiations and whether creators are able to retain copyright in those negotiations is largely outside of the copyright reform debate. The relative negotiation power is affected by copyright, and thus copyright wasn’t biased towards the entertainment industry would benefit creators.
My experience has been many creators don’t realize this. While the entire labour movement was founded on recognizing the interests of management isn’t always the same as those of workers, far too many creators mistakenly believe copyright policy benefits the incumbent entertainment industry will somehow benefit them.
The feeling I’m going in circles around the question of copyright with Mr Carter seemed familiar to attempts to have conversations with Wendy Lill in the past. I would try to ask questions and engage in conversations about the shape of copyright. I wanted to promote policy which helped the interests of all creators, and not just those who were effectively “employees” of the incumbent entertainment industry.
She didn’t seem to ever acknowledge in our conversations that these interests were different, and with new media they were diverging at an even greater pace than the past.
I hope people in Kitchener Conestoga will work to get some clarity from this candidate. All I know for certain is given what I’ve heard so far I wouldn’t assume this candidate would be helpful to the interests of independent creators and other Canadians. For all we know this person would be working to counteract some of the great work Charlie Angus has been doing with the current support of the NDP caucus.
This situation is quite similar for other parties. While I voted this election for a candidate who happens to be from the Liberal party of Canada, there are other people such as Pickering - Scarborough East candidate Dan McTeague who appears to be the MP most lock-step with the legacy entertainment industry. He has gone so far as to participate in a panel on “Copyright & Intellectual Property Rights and Protection in Canada” along with the recording, motion picture, entertainment software and related industry lobbiests.
In the last election there were many people online who exposed past Parkdale - High Park Liberal incumbent Sarmite Bulte for her unhealthy relationship with the foreign entertainment industry, and many believe this issue became the tipping point in a close race that allowed Peggy Nash to become the MP. It’s unfortunate, but thus far a similar campaign exposing the views of Dan McTeague wasn’t launched this election.
Just because I’ve had a bad experience with Sheila Copps, Sam Bulte and Dan McTeague doesn’t suggest I should write off the Liberal party. It’s quite possible for the transformation that happened with the NDP to happen with the Liberals, just as it could happen with the Conservative and Bloc parties.
What’s the message of this article?
While it would seem simple to endorse a party, I don’t believe that on Copyright or technology law issues in general that any of the parties are naturally better than the other.
It really comes down to the individual people who are elected to represent us in parliament.
The way parliament works, there will a committee which will study this issue when a bill is tabled. It would be far better for us if a majority of the members of the committee were fairly well informed and/or experienced with modern technology, and didn’t see it as a threat.
In my speech at the University of Waterloo, I said we really need to have at least one Charlie Angus type person in every party, and that this would be far better than to have a single party that dominated this area of policy.
It’s impossible for the NDP to form a majority government this election, so the majority of politicians in any committee will not be from the NDP.
Russell McOrmond - p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He’s also the CLUE policy coordinator.]
Los Angeles Times - , September , 2008
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