A Good Day.

The Canadian DMCA will be on the shelf until at least the end of January. I trust that the energy and passion that was brought to bear on the corporate legislation will carry over. We'll make damned sure that our elected representatives don't soon forget that they are responsible to us, the citizens. And now we have found our voice, we won't stop shouting. All of the news pieces I've read tonight indicate that the government was "freaked out" by the surge of interest, community and condemnation. Golly. Who'd have guessed that an intelligent, tech-savvy population wouldn't respond well to having their digital rights snuffed for the sake of foreign profiteers?

I can't begin to say how proud I am of all of the people that I've never met, my many unknown new friends, who all got up on their hind legs and told the powerful and wealthy industry lobbies that no, you can not fuck with us by the power of the cheque book. We staged something of a miracle and I'm sure we won ourselves some potent enemies. To those companies and associations, to those that believe that the consumers and citizens, their own customers, are their enemies, well screw you. The RIAA, CRIA, SOCAN, MPAA and ACTRA and the rest of the alphabet soup just got put on notice. What has been an ugly and foolish strategy in the States will be fought here. You are not welcome to purchase laws and use the courts to declare financial war upon us. You are not welcome to snoop through our drives. We do not want your broken wares and crippled machines. If we are your enemies it is because you have decided to make us so.

This week, a rag-tag assemblage of bloggers and ordinary folk lit up the government, knocked them on their heels and forced them to pull a piece of legislation. The next step is to force that government to review that legislation and bring us to the table. Today's victory is an empty one if it does not result in any prospective draft of the bill taking fair dealing and consumer protections into account. We're going to have to keep up the pressure. We're going to have to offer some concrete proposals and demands. Over the next days and weeks, a lot of very clever and motivated people will be hard at work trying to cement today's victory with long term, substantive policy gains. And a lot of wealthy, influential people will be trying to cut our legs out from under us. I hope that the many people that got involved, stay involved. And I'd very much like to see a positive contribution from the online politicals. I challenged the Blogging Tories and extended that challenge to the Liblog folks. This is an issue that effects all of us, regardless of ideology. Repression doesn't care what colour your hat is.

I'm looking forward with some optimism. If we keep pressing, we can no longer be ignored. I have a lot of letters to write, a lot of people to win over and inform and a lot of posts to come. Today the battle was ours but the war is not over. We will fight like only pixel stained techno-peasants can fight, one byte at a time, with potty mouths and keyboards.