cosy industry-only roundtables replaced by 600 citizens roaring : digital concerns heat up

a cross-post from the Arcadian Recorder:

Looming Digital Copyright/DRM/Net Neutrality/Privacy Law changes have a way of making all of Canada's citizens feel a bit like a criminal, if they dare try anything out of the ordinary on the internet.

Citizens , 'voters' in politico-speak, want their say on these issues - in person and in depth, just like 'the suits' are used to.

By and large, they aren't getting that chance.

The government's claim that it would be more open on this round of proposed amendments to the Copyright Law finally boiled down to a total of two token town hall meetings with the public.

The two, one in Montreal and one in Toronto, only drew flies - and were designed to do just that.

Halifax got only a particularly one-sided private industry roundtable with Industry Minister Clement.

Now the Dalhousie Student Union and the local access-for-all internet provider, Chebucto, are about to hold a real town hall in Halifax.

The keynote speaker is Pippa Lawson of CIPPIC, who some have called 'the citizen's bulldog' , because of the David versus Goliath stand she and her little band of law students have taken against the federal government time and again to force them to do what the law demands they do.

It was Pippa and CIPPIC students whose complaint to the federal privacy commissioner forced the commissioner to move against Facebook over privacy concerns - a case that had had global implications.

DSU and Chebucto expect 600 to attend - not bad considering the GTA of Toronto is about twenty times as big as metro Halifax and Clement's own town hall in Toronto only got 300 people out and the town hall in Montreal drew 100.

The venue is the Dal Student's fabled McInnes Room, a hall that has hosted just about every PM and political leader in Canada at some time or other over the last 41 years.

If an election call does happen in the next little while, the date of their town hall, October 26th,could fall right in the election period .

Interesting, because if any one issue is likely to get the non-voting youth out in droves at the ballot box, it would be the thought that the government is about to make it easy to send young people to jail for downloading tunes off Bit Torrent.

Critics charge that the Harper Tories are choking innovation and any chance at creating new interesting jobs for young people when they propose regressive copyright changes that only shield dinosaur industries from having to face new digital realities.

Just imagine : an election fought over fostering innovation, with the Conservatives on the 'nay' side.

Could be interesting...

a town hall without the TOWN, isn't ( a town hall)

(If it wasn't for Michael Geist, I'd never even have heard of this marvel of mental furniture - a round table that is one sided, -------now read on:)

''Tony Clement - as only he can do it - in the role of the legendary Hank Williams - in ' The Halifax Town Hall He Never Gave ' ''

The October 26th Town Hall at the Dal SUB's fabled McInnes Room, over citizen concerns that the direction the Internet is heading towards is 'away from them', is a chance to address a great wrong.

On August 10th this year, federal Industry Minister Tony Clement slipped into Halifax to conduct a private, invite only, roundtable over the direction any amendments

to its existing copyright law should take.

{ A note aside: the Big Lie in Canada's copyright debate is the century old constant refrain that our copyright law is hopeless 'out of date' and needs urgent updating (so let us not waste time with needlessly public discussions), so we will no longer be the laughing stock of the civilized world.

Actually we have always been talking-about and changing-about our copyright laws since the day they were first created. But all that change supposedly 'due to changing circumstances' , has in fact been exclusively in one general direction.

Always the rights of the creators and their publishers has been expanded and always the rights of the consumers of creativity has been reduced.

Remember how artificial and society-slash-government-created copyright law actually is: the makers of machine tools don't have a government law requiring the purchasers of those machine tools pay them further every time they use the tool - but radio stations pay every time they play a record they paid for.

Copyright Law is supposed to balance the interests of creators and consumers , not be the lap dog of creators and publishers.}

On his trip to Halifax, Minister Clement didn't try to hold a dangerous open,public, advertised, Town Hall ; as he might if he actually wanted 'consultations' with' the public'.

Town Hall always represent the danger that masses of real live unpaid consumers might overwhelm the voices of the handful of paid lobbyists arguing for more money for creators & publishers.

And 'public' means all this ends up happening on the TV sets of millions of other ordinary consumers as they watch the evening news.

Worse, he went on to do in Halifax what he won't have dared to do in bigger cities like Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal.

His invite-only roundtable excluded representatives of ordinary consumers, of libraries and of teachers.

If a 'round' table can ever be 'one-sided' the Halifax roundtable was just that. For some lucky invitees, (industry invitees of course) this was their second invite to this exclusive soiree.

Clement figured Halifax would take it.

It didn't and it won't.

Chebucto Community Net and the Dal Student Union decided to do it up right.

On October 26th, even Tony Clement in Ottawa is going to hear this city and this region roar.

In all likelihood, five hundred and seventy ordinary consumers will be there,to contrast with perhaps only thirty lobbyists for the creators & publishers, and it will all play out in front of the TV cameras, microphones and reporters' notepads.

In the cosy world of industry-to-government lobbying this is sort of like Balloting Day in a goneral election.

You know, that rare one day every four years, when the vote of a homeless person weighs in just as heavily in the minds of Official Ottawa as does that of multi millionaire like Conrad Black.

Oops !- maybe more so...

Mark 7pm Monday october 26th, Dal SUB McInnes Room on your calendar - this should be fun.

"Just who is SHAPING your internet future ? : digital concerns in a digital age"

Keep free Monday evening, 7 pm, October 26th 2009.

The place is the Dal Student Union Building's storied McInnes Room (capacity 600), a favorite place of choice, for the last 40 years, whenever Canada's PMs and other heavyweights deign to address Canadian students and academics.

The event is an overdue Town Hall on citizen concern over the direction the Internet is going, in Canada and around the world.

Its all part of the DSU's (Dalhousie Student Union, University Avenue, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) Annual Speakers Series -- part of the DSU's outreach to the broader community .

This town Hall/Panel discussion is co-sponsored by Chebucto Community Net - one of Canada's oldest free-access-to-all internet providers.

Chebucto has always been concerned about citizen access to an increasingly commercially-controlled internet - that is the very reason they were formed.

Students, like those that the DSU represents, are leading users of the internet in just about every possible way - from downloading songs to searching for information to complete a term paper or thesis.

Various international bodies this year have revealed that Canada pays more for less service right across the gambit of internet and cell phone services.

HALIFAX: ONCE A LEADER, NOW A LAGGARD

Closer to home, Halifax and Nova Scotia - believe it or not - were once leaders in internet usage - now the city and province even lag behind the smaller and poorer sister province of New Brunswick and its tiny capital Fredericton.

The troubles citizens face on the commerce & government heavy internet are too numerous to begin to list .

Perhaps the most eye catching recently has to be this summer's 'Big Brother-like' secret removal of the e-book "1984" off of the Kindle e-book readers of Amazon customers (after they had paid for them and the e-book), all without telling them !

If Hollywood dared put this in a movie, we'd snicker at the implausibility and the sheer PR-stupidity of going Big Brother on Orwell's book, of all books, - but fact , again, out-trumps fiction...

Mark down the date/ be there....

Tando departs - who will run for Greens in E. May's old bailwick ?

Angus 'Tando' MacIssac, the longtime Tory MLA for Antigonish has suddenly resigned, citing urgent family matters.

The former deputy premier did seem to be running this last time just for the sake of the party, in the eyes of one observer who watched him during the all-candidates debate at St Fx in June's general election.

Who will the Greens run in the by-election to be held in about seven months time, max ?

It is E. May's home turf and she polled very well in Antigonish town, the core of the riding.

But this hasn't helped the local provincial Greens - the two provincial candidates have both been parachutes, albeit that the 2009 parachute, Rebecca Mosher ,(Ms 'Evergreen' herself !) was born and raised and holds land in Antigonish.

She publicly decried the weakness of the local greens in Antigonish - asking why a university town and home to the Antigonish/Coady Movement should be about the weakest riding out of 52 in all of Nova Scotia.

Disgraceful !

And Antigonish hasn't exactly lacked money and staffers from the Ottawa offices of the GPC in recent years.

We'll see.

Webber finds while Libs bled to NDP in last week of election,Green vote went up

New Brunswick historian and political scientist Patrick Webber who has an abiding interest in the smaller/newer parties of Atlantic Canada (he has an article in the current issue of ACADIENSIS) has done a riding by riding study of the advance polls results a week before the June 2009 election in NS.

He finds, overall, that the Libs bled 10% of their support to NDP between then and election day, while Green vote went UP not down - a total surprise, as tiny parties traditionally lose half their support as polling day approaches.

Looking at it on a riding by riding basis, he found the Liberal loss of support to the NDP, in that last week, moved a few seats to NDP from PCs, so ironically the Liberals got what they felt they badly needed - to come out slightly ahead of PCs to become the Official Opposition.

But being the Third Party in the House never hurt John Hamm in 1999 though....