p2p news / p2pnet: The Bulte story is generating considerable media attention today (Canadian Press, Globeandmail.com, IT Business) as the "bloggers influence the election" angle is an attractive one.  This obviously continues the theme from last week when Macleans, Toronto Star, National Post, and Globe and Mail all discussed the same issue (as did Rob Hyndman

in an excellent post).  While the blogger issue should be highlighted,
we should not lose sight of the substance behind the Bulte story.

Examining the role of blogs is unquestionably interesting and
important.  It is difficult to quantify, but I’m fairly confident that
the online community had a real impact in Parkdale High-Park (although
I again hasten to add that without a strong candidate running against
Bulte this definitely would not have happened).  The voting shift was
fairly significant given that this was a rematch of the 2004 election
and no other Toronto riding in similar circumstances experienced quite
as dramatic a move toward the NDP.  This suggests that some new -
potentially the copyright issue – played a role. 

Moreover, from a distance it appeared that the copyright questions had
an impact on Bulte’s effectiveness on the campaign trail.  When she
first faced the issue, she focused on transparency and characterized my claims as "egregious."  I have the sense that it went downhill from there as she soon jumped to the infamous "pro-user zealot" remark, the claim that it wasn’t a fundraiser, the threat to sue, and then finally last night strangely responding to her defeat

by stating that she "had no thoughts", she didn’t care about a minority
government, and that "according to everybody, I did nothing."

I should also note that the way the story spread through the blogosphere – with high traffic blogs and sites such as BoingBoing, Larry Lessig, and Bourque; local blogs such as the Accordion Guy and Ross Radar; law blogs such as Rob Hyndman and Copyright Watch; political blogs such as Progressive Bloggers; industry blogs such as Quill and Quire; mainstream media blogs such as Dan Cook (Globe and Mail), Antonia Zerbisias (Toronto Star), Colby Cosh (Macleans), and the CBC’s Election Blog; online news sites such as p2pnet.net and ZDNet; along with dozens of other blogs and chat boards tells us a lot about how stories propagate online.  Further, the distribution of video, audio, parodies, bumper stickers, and a petition are all a fascinating part of the Internet story.

But they are not the most important part of the story.  More important
than the story about blogs, is the substantive lessons to be learned
from the past three weeks.  Building on a copyrightwatch post that mines the same theme, I offer three:

First, the recent events send a clear message that
Canadians want copyright policy (and indeed all policy making) to be
both fair and to be seen to be fair.  That means accounting for all
stakeholders and removing the lobbyist influence from the equation.  My
article on the role of the lobby groups

in the copyright process attracted considerable interest as many people
expressed surprise at just how badly the system is broken.  It was this
message that resonated with many people in the riding who may know
little about copyright policy, but can identify a perceived conflict of
interest when they see one.  Going forward, all parties must work to
clean up copyright.

Second, among the most important voices in the debate came from artists such as Matthew Good, Steven Page, and Neil Leyton. 
As groups such as CRIA were rightly identified as lobbyists who
represent predominantly foreign interests, Canadian artists and
Canadian interests began to speak up.  If (or more likely when) a new
copyright bill comes to committee, it will be incumbent on Canada’s
politicians to hear not only from the lobby groups, but also from the
creators and users, many of whom are singing a much different tune from
the lobbyists.

Third, this could have been about any issue, but it wasn’t.  It was
about copyright.  Copyright is often described as a fringe issue, yet
to millions of Canadians it has an enormous impact on their daily
lives, affecting education, culture, creativity, the use of personal
property, privacy, and security.  Labeling those concerned with these
issues as pro-user zealots or claiming that this is merely about music
downloading is to miss a much bigger story and to fail to connect with
a segment of the population. 

Six thousand votes, the shift in Parkdale-High Park, may not sound like much, but last night it would have been enough to alter the outcome of 123 ridings across Canada. 

Politicians should keep that in mind when the copyright issue once again takes centre stage.

Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 at 9:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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