Mike Masnick notes that a grassroots coalition seems to have killed Canada’s version of the DMCA. Of course, legislation backed by powerful interest groups is never dead for good, but for now, it looks like Canada will be DMCA-free for the foreseeable future.
It’s worth remembering that when the actual DMCA was passed here in the US 10 years ago, it faced very little serious opposition. Part of that is probably because Slashdot and the rest of the tech blogosphere was still in its infancy. But I think it’s also a sign of how much progress has been made in spreading awareness about copyright issues and getting non-geeks interested and engaged. I remember organizing an anti-DMCA organization at the University of Minnesota in the wake of the 2001 Sklyarov arrest and struggling to explain to non-techies what the DMCA was and why they should care about it.
The DMCA still isn’t a household concept yet, but knowledge and understanding of the DMCA and other copyright issues is a lot more widespread than it was a decade ago. And at least up North they’ve figured out how to translate that broader public interest into effective political advocacy. If the copyright reform movement continues growing over the next decade the way it has over the last decade, I think there’s a real chance that we’ll be able to stop the otherwise-inevitable Copyright Term Extension Act of 2018. I had sort of resigned myself to perpetual copyright extension, but ideas have consequences, and the debate may become so lopsided by 2018 that even the copyright industry’s millions may not be enough to buy them another 20 years of monopoly rents.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.