Best-selling, award-winning, Canadian author Cory Doctorow has challenged Heritage Minister James Moore’s publicly expressed view that those who oppose proposed DMCA style digital locks (as part of Bill C-32 the Copyright Reform Bill) are nothing more than “radical extremists”.
Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing and ardent copyfighter writes:
Here’s what that means for creators: if Apple, or Microsoft, or Google, or TiVo, or any other tech company happens to sell my works with a digital lock, only they can give you permission to take the digital lock off. The person who created the work and the company that published it have no say in the matter.
So if you buy $1,000 worth of digitally locked books for your Kindle or iPad, the author and the publisher can’t give you the right to move those to another device. That means that not only are you locked into the Kindle — so is the copyright holder. Authors and publishers who decide to stop selling via a digitally locked platform have to take the risk that their readers will abandon their investment in proprietary books in order to follow them to the next device.
So that’s Minister Moore’s version of “author’s rights” — any tech company that happens to load my books on their device or in their software ends up usurping my copyrights. I may have written the book, sweated over it, poured my heart into it — but all my rights are as nothing alongside the rights that Apple, Microsoft, Sony and the other DRM tech-giants get merely by assembling some electronics in a Chinese sweatshop.
That’s the “creativity” that the new Canadian copyright law rewards: writing an ebook reader, designing a tablet, building a phone. Those “creators” get more say in the destiny of Canadian artists’ copyrights than the artists themselves.
You should read Doctorow’s complete post and then submit your own response to James Moore to let him know just how many “radical extremists” there are in this country.
Doctorow concludes his post asking Moore for both and apology and an explanation. I think we all deserve one.
My opinion? James Moore should wipe off that brown lipstick he wears to impress the U.S. media lobby and go fuck himself.
Cheers.
UPDATE:Michael Geist posted further reactions to James Moore’s douchebag comments, including Moore’s efforts to deny that he even said them despite the online presence of video footage which proves him to be not only deliberately misleading about Bill C-32 but also an outright fucking liar. What a dick.
I found this great video over Michael Geist’s blog who also links to a post by Sarah Bannerman. Created at the Vancouver Film School it’s an excellent primer about the impact of DRM on electronic books.
The Harper government is, once again, marching in lock-step with the US media lobby and will attempt to pass a copyright reform bill that echoes the worst parts of the failed US DMCA.
They held a public copyright consultation that garnered a lot of attention and a lot of input - which they have promptly ignored.
The consultations were obviously nothing more than an attempt at pacifying an obviously outraged public who howled in reaction to Harper’s blatant kowtowing to US big media lobby lies and deceit.
Combined with the ongoing ACTA negotiations this bill will put Canada on a path of locked down information and corporate controls over your free speech rights. It’s a fucking drag to have to go through all this again but I hope the anger that will erupt from this becomes an election triggering issue that finally provides the shot in those tiny Harper nads that sends him squealing from any position of public influence.
PMO Issues The Order: Canadian DMCA Within Six Weeks
Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister’s Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill. The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to reach consensus on the broad framework of a new bill. As I reported last week, Moore has argued for a virtual repeat of Bill C-61, with strong digital locks provisions similar to those found in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a rejection of a flexible fair dealing approach. Consistent with earlier comments on the need for a forward-looking, flexible approach, Clement argued for changes from C-61.
With mounting pressure from the U.S. - there have repeated meetings with senior U.S. officials in recent weeks - the PMO sided squarely with Moore’s vision of a U.S.-style copyright law. The detailed provisions will be negotiated over the coming weeks by the respective departments, but they now have their marching orders of completing a bill that will satisfy the U.S. that comes complete with tough anti-circumvention rules and no flexible fair dealing provision.
The bill is not expected until June, but it will have dramatic repurcussions once introduced. First, the bill represents a stunning reversal from the government’s seeming shift away from C-61 and its commitment to a bill based on the national copyright consultation. Instead, the consultation appears to have been little more than theatre, with the PMO and Moore choosing to dismiss public opinion. Second, after adopting distinctly pro-consumer positions on other issues, Moore has abandoned that approach with support for what may become the most anti-consumer copyright bill in Canadian history. Third, the bill will immediately impact the Canadian position at the ACTA and CETA negotiations, where the bill’s provisions on anti-circumvention and ISP liability will effectively become the Canadian delegation position.
For those wondering what can be done, my only answer is to speak out now. Write a paper letter to your Member of Parliament and send copies to the Prime Minister, Moore, Clement and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. No stamp is required - be sure to include your home address and send it to the House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6. Once that is done, join the Facebook group and the Facebook page and be sure to ask others do the same. You may spoken out before, but your voice is needed yet again.
Time to kick this arrogant dead-eyed fuck and his brown-lipstick cronies out of office.
What a goddamned disaster. The Tories have shown — yet again — their utter contempt for public opinion and Canadian culture and small business when these present an inconvenience to more windfall profits for offshore entertainment giants.
Remember: thousands of us responded to the Tory inquiry on copyright law, and overwhelmingly, we said we did not want a US-style copyright disaster at home. Remember: hundreds of thousands of us wrote and called our MPs. Remember: Canadian artists’ coalitions fought against the imposition of a DMCA in Canada. Remember: America’s copyright war has been an absolute trainwreck, with tens of thousands facing lawsuits, competition and innovation eroded by DRM, free speech challenged by copyright takedowns, and no improvements for creators or creativity.
There’s only one thing stupider than being the first country to enact the DMCA, in spite of its obvious shortcomings: enacting the DMCA after the first country has spent a decade showing how rotten and backwards this approach to copyright is.
Here’s a clever PSA from the folks at Rocketboom that shows exactly how to post your video works that are protected under Fair Use and prevent them from being arbitrarily removed from YouTube by ignorant dickhead ill-informed legal counsel of Big Media.
The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies explains how YouTube makes it easy to dispute a wrongful copyright claim.
For more information on the YouTube takedown process, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://meme.ly/DisputeYoutube
As reported earlier by the Open Video Alliance, the German film company Constantin Films AG has mis-used the DMCA provision of Notice & Takedown and YouTube’s ContentID system to have YouTube remove a huge number of parody videos that made use of a scene from the film Der Untergang(Downfall) featuring Hitler ranting in his bunker. The official website for the film is here.
The parodies all made use of sub-titles to put words in Hitler’s mouth allowing him to vent on everything from LOLCats to Michael Jackson and anything else imaginable. It was always great fun whenever a new one would crop up and some of them were piss your pants hilarious. It was perfect use of digital media to craft parody and satire. Be sure to read Alex Leavitt’s post on the whole Hitler Video Meme - it’s fascinating stuff.
Unfortunately Constantin Films used YouTube’s ContentID system which commits wholesale removal of materials identitified by the copyright holder without properly checking to see if copyright has indeed been violated. Under the dumbass rules of the DMCA, if a violation of copyright had been committed, YouTube would be obliged to act and remove the videos in question - unless, of course, they were clearly examples of Fair Use. While it is true Constantin Films controls the rights to the original film there are provisions in the DMCA that are supposed to protect Fair Use (also known as Fair Dealing here in Canada and India) which allows for the creation of works of parody and satire - but that rarely happens as large media companies continue to throw their weight around and just fuck everything up.
But why listen to me kvetch? Let Hitler explain it all for you.
Since YouTube has turned off embedding it’s no longer viewable through them except by going to their own pages here. But, since YouTube might take it down entirely - and since I see this as being a true case of Fair Use I fixed it so you can just watch it here:
Hitler Reacts To The Hitler Parodies Being Removed From YouTube
Constantin Films AG should really watch this one before they pull this or any others offline. And if you are interested in seeing the original film you can buy it here - and you do that you might also want to send Constantin Films an email telling them you did just that.
Cheers.
P.S. These video responses to Constantin Films on YouTube are also good:
UPDATE: Doctorow posted on BoingBoing on hw Google has responded to the outrage over the ContentID instant takedowns by highlighting the Fair Use button. Click the button and your video goes back up and the folks who submitted the takedown then have to take you to court to get the video off.
I spent a lovely two weeks in PEI this summer visiting with friends and family. When I returned I discovered that while I was gone the CRTC had made the willfully ignorant and insultingly dirt stupid decision to change the rules in how we are allowed to buy access to the internet in Canada.
“But, Robbo,”, I hear you ask, “What does that have to do with me?”
It means that Bell will be allowed to impose ridiculously low limits on how much you are allowed to download per month and charge you excessive overage fees for it, even if you are using someone else’s Internet service that operates on a Bell line. The motion they filed asks for a 60 gigabyte (GB) per month limit with a fee of $1.125 per gigabyte for overages. 60GB is an incredibly low limit and is unrealistic given the amount of rich content (such as video) that permeates the web today. Even non-enthusiast users can easily exceed that by things as common as frequent YouTube usage and of course, more techie people like myself go higher than that still. Bell already has a fee structure like this in place for their own customers but now wants to extend that to cover all third party Internet providers that are forced to use their lines. For many customers, it could mean their cost for Internet service could more than double and for no extra speed or quality of service.
What makes this bad? For starters, most third party Internet providers don’t buy their bandwidth from Bell, they buy it from other companies and already pay for usage, an average of which is factored into their monthly fees that you pay as a customer. Secondly, Bell has consistently claimed that they need to do this in order to deal with congestion and overcrowding on their network. This has been demonstrated as an outright lie by not only outside analysis but often by Bell’s own submissions to the CRTC. Aside from the fact that bandwidth cost is the lowest it has been in history, their network is simply not as overcrowded as they say and the cost of keeping up with demand is already covered in what they charge people now, as is demonstrated by Bell’s continuing profitability. Bell is essentially using false information to charge us all significantly more for a service that already makes them a tidy profit.
This move is blatantly anti-competitive and Bell’s only motivation for it is that they also provide TV and phone service, both of which are losing numbers to cheaper, more consumer friendly solutions provided online. Severely low limitations like these stifle Canada’s ability to innovate and are quickly taking us from a position as a world leader in Internet penetration to a laughing stock. Other countries around the world are now offered speeds multiple factors higher than what we get here and with much more reasonable download limits, if any at all. Simply put, Bell is trying to control how we use the Internet in order to protect their failing traditional business models. The CRTC (which is staffed largely by former big telecom executives) is complicit in this and is now consistently ruling in Bell’s favour despite all evidence clearly demonstrating their true intentions. This organisation is either incompetent, corrupt or both. Their mandate is to ensure a fair, competitive environment for Canadian consumers and in this, they are an utter failure to us all.
It’s as if the decision was written by the representatives of Bell itself - just as the infamous copyright reform Bill-61 was so obviously written by the U.S. Ambassador and the U.S. media lobby.
We must remember this is consistent behaviour from this current incarnation of the watchdogs of the public airwaves (and other forms of communication) in this country who no longer act as servants of the citizens but as the intentionally ill-informed and weak-kneed mouthpiece of the Harper government and the corporate toads who hold the leashes of our elected representatives.
It’s all part of the same steaming pile of crap as the decisions involving the formation of the New Media Fund - burdening any investment in innovative new forms of online content with required partnerships with the dying business models of broadcast television (an act akin to tossing an anchor to a drowning man) and establishing a board stacked with representatives of the cable industry thereby letting the groaning bloated giants of media retain their role as gatekeepers, jealously guarding their entitled turf by wedging their smug pimpled haunches firmly in the doorway that leads to the future, piling their dung upon the steps for us all to wade through and thereby guaranteeing any growth or success to be had in this country will surely be pissed away in yet another series of meaningless and wasteful gestures. Oh sure, a few good things will come from some of those who have the stomach to swim through that rising fetid tide - the industry itself will stall whilst desperate independent creators will have no alternative but to seek opportunity outside our borders.
It’s the same old sad fucking story.
All this has, without a doubt, occurred under the direction of the Harper government who have made it clear they want the CRTC to take a more lax attitude to regulating the internet - all in the cause of letting the marketplace take its course and to foster increased competition.
Criticisms of the CRTC in online message boards and in comments on CBC stories have been building since it was ordered to proceed with a “light regulatory touch” in 2006 by then industry minister Maxime Bernier.
“Canada’s new government has again furthered its ambitious policy agenda for the telecommunications sector by issuing the policy direction to the CRTC,” Bernier said at the time. “Our plan will increase competition in the marketplace, which ultimately will have a positive effect on the consumer who will benefit from greater choices and improved products and services.”
Bullshit.
The old media retain control of the purse strings thereby thwarting any threat of competition to their rotted zombie-like economic models. Access to content is now beholden to the pricing schemes of a monopolistic telco who will pursue its own best interests and seek to limit the growth and viability of any alternative carriers.
In October the CRTC will render its decision on Net Neutrality and if, as it now seems very likely, they will once again kowtow to the wishes of the Harper government and effectively give away control of what we are allowed to see and say in our internet to the same dickhead greedy fucks who claim to own the internet.
Keep your hands off my thoughts and words, buddy. You don’t own me.
I’m with McLuhan on this one.
“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.”
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964
Now there is a movement afoot to have the CRTC disbanded. You can sign the petition here. I did. I did it even though I know it won’t make a lick of difference. You should sign it too.
“But, Robbo,”, you ask, “Why bother signing if it won’t change anything?”
Think of it as sticking a finger in those dead-eyes of Harper.
A new government, with a decisive, informed and pro-active agenda to keep access to the internet open to true competitive practices is really the only way to get through this. Even then we’ll still be subjected to the same damnable dance of lobbyist monkeys and back room corporate pressure to wrest the choices of the citizens from their grasp and place them firmly in the pockets of the broadcast and telecom industry.
But go ahead and sign - if only to speak up publicly and say: “Yo - yeah you - you with the half-digested wad of my cash sticking out of your poop hole. Yeah you. I’m talkin’ to you. can you hear me? Good. Fuck off.”
Now these are not terribly civilized words to be tossing around on the internet, I know that, but I have never claimed to be a paragon of civilization. If I offend anyone with my vitriol that’s just too fucking bad. I’m a pissed off citizen who also happens to work as an independent in the same industry that is continually being fucked up the arse like some orphaned child in the basement of a Victorian workhouse. I feel I have a right to bitch and complain.
Back in 1993 I was asked to give an address at a gathering of the Alliance For Children & Television. Alan Mirabelli very kindly introduced me as being a vertically integrated individual in reference to my wearing of many hats as writer, producer, director, performer, designer, code monkey, chief cook and bottle washer. Vertically integrated was a hot buzz word of the day applied to major entertainment companies as they took increasingly orgasmic delight in absorbing each other like some corporate version of The Blob.
In my talk I spoke of a very near future where the internet would be more powerful, more pervasive and capable of carrying more content and exchange of ideas than anything we had ever known before. Most of the folks there had barely heard of the internet, let alone the world wide web, and they shook their headsin disbelief and chuckled at my naive optimism. A very few of the folks in the back - you know who you are - nodded, as if to say: “Good, I’m not the only one who sees this happening.” The folks from the CRTC who were in attendance, sitting at the front tables, merely leaned back with scowls on their faces as I pressed home the point that their position would soon become undermined and eventually irrelevant as the power to become a broadcaster moved from the monopolistic uses of the public airwaves to the individual uses of countless members of the public itself. That the internet would replace television and ignore borders. The role of the CRTC as guardians of Canadian culture in media would inexorably and inevitably dissolve away to nothing. The CRTC reps didn’t like being told they would no longer fulfill a necessary function.
I probably didn’t endear myself with anyone in the crowd by finishing my talk with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson’s Generation Of Swine:
The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.
I thought it was funny.
16 years later …
Perhaps this group of willfully ignorant and dismally pliable bureaucrats were listening to my words after all. Perhaps they went ahead and took my advice and found a new relevance for themselves. Perhaps they have moved on and defined a new role for themselves in 21st century.
Old rules need to change. New rules need to be applied. All of this must be in the service of the needs of the people and not the needs of a few grotesquely self-interested business turds. It’s just a fucking pisser that we have to needlessly claw our way through this steaming deluge of horseshit to get there.
So . . . Sign every petition you can. Join every Facebook group you can. Attend every rally you can. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell them again and again. Make them so sick of hearing about it they actually do something to make it stop so that at the very least you’ll finally shut the fuck up about it.
Most importantly - Vote.
Vote the fuckers out who give your power to the corporations.
Vote the fuckers in who will eventually become corrupted themselves but who maybe - just maybe - will be able to effect some change for at least a brief window of time.
They do not own the internet and they do not own culture.
You do.
It is a part of your nervous system.
Don’t let anyone sell, own or control that which belongs to you - that which is you - that which is all of us - together.
P. P. S. That’s it for venomous rants for now. Only happy happy joy joy from now on - until they really piss me off.
AND NOW . . . - just cuz I always like to leave you with something upbeat - here’s Felicia Day and the cast of The Guild in their amazing hit music video Do You Want To Date My Avatar?, which yesterday topped 1 million views on iTunes. That fucking rocks, @feliciaday!
What does any of this have to do the CRTC and Bell and all that crap I was ranting about? Only that merely watching stuff like this is now going to cost you more - for no reason other than Bell wants more of your money and there aint jack shit you can do about it.
UPDATE: As mentioned in the earlier version of this blog post, Michael Geist will launchhas launched the Speak Out On Copyright website and you should go there now.
I’ve been bleating for some time now about how the Harper government was trying to jam through Bill C-61 in the hopes of looking good in that particular shade of brown lipstick the U.S. media lobby loves so well, and how in the well-intentioned but malignantly misguided efforts to reform copyright law in Canada the people most affected by these changes - the people of the country - were not consulted.
Here’s your chance.
Michael Geist reports on the launching of the Copyright Consultation Website where you - and everyone you encourage to go there - can let the government know exactly what you feel and think about copyright law and how it affects you, this country and the world.
There has been some criticism over the past week about perceived “A” lists for those invited to roundtables and those excluded. My view is that the only list that really matters is the list of people who take the time to make a public submission. That process is open to everyone and this is the ideal opportunity to ensure that Canadians voices are heard. The government has not consulted on copyright since 2001 and this consultation represents both a crucial opportunity and a potential threat. While Canadians can ensure that the government understands that copyright matters and that a balance is needed, some groups will undoubtedly use the consultation to push for a return of Bill C-61. Indeed, the recording industry has already said that that bill did not go far enough. That means we could see pressure for a Canadian DMCA, a three-strikes and you’re out process, and the extension of the term of copyright to eat into the public domain.
Countering those calls will require broad participation. To help foster that participation, tomorrow I will be launching a new website geared specifically to the copyright consultation along with my short form response to these questions. I plan to blog a long form response throughout the summer.
Geist will soon have his own site up to help organize voices that can speak just as loudly as the favoured elite who get to sit in on the roundtable discussions and twist the government’s ear. This is important shit that will affect everything from the public domain, the DMCA, that fucking ACTA bullshit, Net Neutrality, Freedom Of Speech, government transparency, open culture and more.
I’ll be sure to holler about it when the other site comes online.
In the meantime visit the consultation site - tell your friends - talk about it - think about it and be sure to give Geist’s latest post a read since it really distills the issues to the core points that will affect everything we will do for the rest of our lives.
Everything? Really? Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration? Indulging in hyperbole, perhaps? Not when you give it even just a moments thought.
Here’s Geist’s thoughts on Why Does Copyright Matter?
For me, copyright matters because I am a professor and my students need access to copyrighted materials and the freedom to use those materials. It matters because I am a researcher who needs assurance that as materials are archived they will not be locked down under digital rights management. It matters because I am deeply concerned about privacy and fear that DRM could be harmful to my personal privacy. It matters because I have created videos and need flexibility in the law to allow for remix and transformed works and do not want my content taken down from the Internet based on unproven claims. It matters because I am a writer and I need certainty of access to speak freely. It matters because I am a consumer of digital entertainment and I want the law to reasonably reflect the right to view the content on the device of my choice. It matters because I am a parent whose children have only known life with the Internet and I want to ensure that they experience all the digital world has to offer. It matters because I live in a city with a strong connection to the digital economy and we need forward-looking laws to allow the next generation of companies to thrive. It matters because I am a proud Canadian who wants laws based not on external political pressure, but rather on the best interest of millions of Canadians.
So think about it. Read about it. Talk about it. Visit the site(s).
And then speak up.
Cheers.
P. S. Muchos gracias to Jimmy Kayak(aka Jim Taylor) for his shout out about this post and the issue at large. Thanks, man!
It seems apropos of current events to re-post this remarkable piece of writing, originally composed back in 1996 by John Perry Barlow.
The Declaration Of Independence Of Cyberspace, crafted as a response to America’s Telecommunications Act of 1996, still resonates very strongly today as we see corrupt governments and grasping corporate authority from all around the world attempt to assume ownership and control of cyberspace. As various laws are passed at the behest and urging of dying media monopolies, designed to shape and constrain the flow of information throughout the internet, depriving citizens in the real world of their basic rights and freedoms, we also see an increasing outrage and awareness on the part of the citizens who inhabit both the real world and cyberspace.
If you are reading these words you are a citizen of cyberspace.
Keep reading.
Three strikes laws that would give corporations the governance under law to decide who is allowed to have access, punitive lawsuits to enforce proscribed consumer behaviour, control of information access through filters and firewalls, disabling entire systems to prevent free speech and informed discourse, unwarranted and unlimited spying on all communications - all these affronts to the democratic rule of law are happening right now and they affect you directly.
There are numerous groups and individuals working on your behalf and you should certainly support their efforts but it also helps when you yourself know what the hell is going on and why these issues are so important.
Read this declaration with a mind to our current events. Maybe even print out a copy and stick it on your wall. Slap your favourite passage on a t-shirt. Share it with friends. Help in whatever way you can to ensure the continued evolution of Cyberspace, the new home of Mind.
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
They held a public copyright consultation that garnered a lot of attention and a lot of input - which they have promptly ignored.
I’d like to add the words of 
