Over the Christmas holiday, an online movement developed that is attempting to significantly affect copyright policy development in Canada. And it is blazing a new trail for how the public seeks to influence policy development in the federal government.

Michael Geist, the lightning rod for the latest opposition to a copyright regime with significant similarities to the U.S DMCA regime, has long argued for copyright and patent reform on his highly popular blog. Lately, he has been gaining a lot of traction for his Fair Copyright for Canada Principles. And by traction, I mean 38,000 members for his Fair Copyright Facebook group - in a month.

The Copyright Act has long been a bugbear of a handful of academic and legal specialists, with some interest from that part of the general public. Attempts to amend the Act have come and gone over the past four years, with proposed legislation dying on the order paper, or suddenly pulled back before actually being tabled in the House of Commons.

This latest effort by Professor Geist appears to have broken through the staid and static process that has dominated the discussion of copyright legislation in Canada. (Static, but for the histrionics and outrageous claims of the recording industry, and the posturing of a DMCA-obsessed United States)

We haven’t seen or heard of a change in direction on copyright policy, but the bare fact that 38,000 people signed their name to an effort to force change in the system must prompt policy makers (and politicians) to question whether their traditional tools for consultation are actually working.

After all, we’re talking about 38,000 USERS, not stakeholders.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Stakeholders, Messaging. 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.