Access Copyright, a group that collects copyright fees for things like textbooks, put out a curious statement earlier this month in the midst of the latest debate over copyright reform.
"It's a simple fact that users outnumber us," it read, sounding a bit as if the writer at the keyboard was peering anxiously over his shoulder. "But Canadian users involved in the online debate are so adept at leveraging the Internet and social networks to their advantage, there's a danger that your voices as Canadian creators and publishers will be drowned out by the chatter."
Never mind the retro oddness of calling people who consume culture "users." And never mind the double oddness of a group representing writers getting jittery about the presence of too many readers.
If one message came through, it's that "users" are out in force, and that's going to change the equation in ways that still aren't clear.
The Tories are gearing up to release another copyright-reform bill, and they seem determined not to spark the same public-relations debacle that ambushed them in 2007.
At the time, when word spread the then-Industry minister had cooked up a new copyright act behind closed doors, the Internet caught fire and a very well-publicized outcry ensued.
The lack of consultation was one bone of contention; another was the perception that the bill was unduly restrictive, especially for the tastes of those "users." (Cultural groups, on the other hand, generally quite liked the protections it afforded.)
The bill eventually died on the table when the last election was called, and the debate's key questions are up for grabs again. Should people be allowed to break digital locks, even for completely legal purposes? Should "fair dealing" be expanded to give users broad freedom to copy for purposes like satire and reporting? Should the government compel online companies to take down content as soon as someone makes a claim of infringement?
Now the government is talking copyright again, and two interesting things have happened. First, new ministers have taken over the copyright portfolio. (The responsibility is somewhat awkwardly shared by the ministries of Industry and Heritage.) The new guy at Heritage, James Moore, is especially interesting, since he's young - all of 33 years old - and, by all appearances, jacked in.
You might remember him from 2007, when an excitable NDP MP raised a ruckus upon spying Moore looking at pictures of a young woman on his laptop, in parliament. The pictures turned out to be of his girlfriend. This is not a strike against him: It shows that he understands at least some of the important applications of digital technology.
The man was a webmaster before he was an MP, and he tweets like a pro, which is as good as a secret Masonic handshake in certain circles.
In June, Moore stepped up to deliver a speech at a digital economy conference in Ottawa, in which he roundly lambasted older MPs for being out-of-touch with the digital age, and spoke about converging technologies with the kind of glowing generalities that make the digerati's socks roll up and down.
"The old way of doing things is over," he said. "These things are all now one. And it's great. And it's never been better. And we need to be enthusiastic and embrace these things… The opportunities are unbelievable and unparalleled in human history."
Old things out! New things in! This kind of talk was especially unusual to hear coming from a Heritage minister, who's responsible for - and beholden to - Canada's panicky cultural sector.
The question is whether these progressive signals will amount to anything when it comes to updating Canada's antediluvian copyright laws. This brings us to the second interesting development: the full-throated public consultation that's been grinding its way across the country all summer, and is now entering its home stretch.
It's not the first time that a government has consulted the public on copyright, but it's the first time it's done so since twin revolutions of high-speed Internet and digital music tuned the general public into the issue.
The consultations consist of a series of invite-only copyright roundtables with concerned parties, along with a handful of public town halls, and a hearty online discussion on a site run by the government.
The roundtables have brought together the usual suspects in the copyright debate: the academics who want looser copyright, the cultural groups who are worried that their livelihoods are being undercut, the Internet giants who crave more traffic and less liability, the videogame makers who are trying to stamp out piracy, the law-and-order types who sound like they just want to make the freeloading hippies pay. We've heard these tunes before.
But the public town-halls and online forums have let more citizens in, and their perspectives don't always line up with the institutional voices. The online discussion forum - unlike most government-run websites - has been boisterous, attracting more than 800 comments so far. (In a concession to our expectations of federal websites, the forum is at least impossibly awkward to use.)
Most significantly, the whole thing has been conspicuously documented online. All the town halls have been webcast, and the hundreds of written submissions can be browsed on the consultation's website. This has allowed activists like the ever-vocal Michael Geist to aggregate and synthesize the data, compiling public opinion in chart form on a site he's set up to track the hearings. To the surprise of nobody, his charts show that Canadian users are not, in fact, demanding that the government crack down on their ability to copy files, share media and pick locks.
Canadian users, on the whole, seem to feel that they should have the right to do what they please with goods they've purchased, that draconian fines for sharing files don't make sense, and that a liberal license to adapt copyrighted works for "fair dealing" uses like reporting and parody won't put the cultural industry out of business.
It's not that the consultation hasn't been greeted with some skepticism. More than one critic has asked whether there's enough time for the government to write a copyright bill for the fall that takes the consultation fully into account - or whether the bill is already being written behind the scenes, with the consultation as window-dressing.
It's easy to be cynical about public consultations, but the Tories are doing something worthwhile here. They've given those uppity "users" an opening, and with help from agitators like Geist, users have taken it.
With their contributions logged and visible, they won't be so easily ignored when it comes time to write the law. Those who might be inclined to adopt a bunker mentality where it comes to copyright have good reason indeed to be skittish.