Earth: Mostly Harmless

The Parallel Politics of Copyright and Environment

October 13, 2006 on 11:04 pm |
Categories: copyright, culture, law, politics
Tags: copyright, culture, drm, environment, geist, law, michael, michael-geist, politics, slashdot, youtube

Picked this up on Slashdot today. Is copyright, and perhaps digital rights issues in general, creeping up on the back of the environment as a major political issue? For my part, I hope so.

Traditionally, copyright has been firmly in the realm of ’stakeholder’ politics, but in an age where ’stakeholders’ include 15-year-olds uploading videos to SueTube (explanation), multi-billion dollar ‘content’ companies and the quasi-corporatist non-governmental organisations, isn’t it time for a proper debate?

The Parallel Politics of Copyright and Environment:

zumaya100k writes “In recent months, Slashdot has covered the rise of the Pirate Party and the battles in Europe over iPod interoperability. Canada’s Hill Times has an insightful column from Michael Geist that links these developments as the growing importance of copyright as a political issue. He argues that copyright is now tracking the environment as a mainstream political issue.” (Geist is talking about Canada here, but much the same can be said about the U.S. and other places.)

(Via Slashdot).