On 13-09-02 03:46 PM, Scott Elcomb wrote: > I'd like to comment on the line "It needs to be drilled into the heads > of politicians," > > There was a similar conversation on the Digital Copyright Canada mailing > list years ago[1] in which I made my choice. We can try to educate the > politicians in a non-partisan manner [which I whole-heartedly support > btw!] or bring that knowledge into the system ourselves.
While I will personally be sticking with the first option for my own advocacy work, there are of course multiple ways to take the second option. One is to become a candidate for a party that is more focused on related issues, such as Scott's involvement with the Pirate Party. There is also nothing inherently opposed to technology property rights (the term I use for the war against general purpose computing) in any of the other parties. We have parties like the Conservatives who list "property rights" as a founding principle who *should* (if they understood the issue the right way) be totally behind us, and we also have a "mistrust large corporations" left (NDP) who should mistrust handing the keys to *OUR* technology to those untrustworthy technology transnationals. Being a candidate, or possibly an MP, is also only one route. Parties have political staffers, and internal policy people. If you feel aligned with any of the existing parties on other issues you can become active and transform those parties to be supportive. I believe it is a general lack of technology knowledge, not ill intent towards our interests, that has caused the backward-facing policies from various parties/governments/etc. The non-partisan work also doesn't need to be focused on MPs, or even parliamentarians. As we saw with the anti-competitive push from various unions inappropriately claiming incumbent telecom companies should be protected from "Verizon" (even though Verizon was never the issue), there is a need for technology and related education within Unions, professional associations, and so-on. Sometimes we need to remind even ourselves that "copyright" is only one of many issues abused to attack technology property rights, and there are many others (and thus other political opponents such as BellUsOgers). I guess I just wanted to remind people that there are many options under the non-partisan and partisan umbrellas. And it is always a good idea to keep the conversation going so we'll be aware of what each other is doing, and can help even if we haven't chosen that particular path. Hi everyone, and glad someone sparks these lists back to life every once in a while! -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://l.c11.ca/ict "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!" _______________________________________________ fsfc-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfc-discuss
