In the United States, meanwhile, I find that in general that if someone takes the cream before you at starbucks you can call them an “attack dog” and that’s about par for the course.

Maybe my standards are too low, but I wasn’t “amazed at the rhetoric”. Not that it was *nice* – but they didn’t even compare him to the Boston Strangler. Much less call him a criminal, or submit pages and pages of character assassination as part of official proceedings (which is how I’ve seen civil-libertarian programmers treated in the US, self included).

Wow. Don’t get me wrong. I think Michael Geist is a great guy too.

But it’s culture shock to me when it’s considered noteworthy when the opposition does some mildly nasty name-calling.

What is unusual, however, is that he has a forum in a major newspaper. There is not a lot of support in the traditional press for open content and open access. That’s why you haven’t heard a lot (but what you should know is that Canada is a hotbed of open content and open source activity).

The attack by CRIA is, as another commentator noted, an unusual breach of what we would consider normal decorum and not very representative of how the debate has been aired in this country.

There’s also good work being done at CIPPIC.

MPs are aware that this isn’t something they can just sneak through. The NDP (one of the four major parties) broke ranks with the other three parties about the necessity to give the music industry what they want.

It’s a long, uphill, struggle, but we are making progress. I believe that the Bill that we’re soon going to see will be a lot better than it would have been without these efforts – still bad, but not terrble.

Now if only the US would stop pressuring Canada to follow its lead. That would make a huge difference.

One would hope that other Canadian stakeholders would tell their side of the story to parliament too. Any word on whether that’s happening?

Prof. Geist holds one of the most prestigious academic positions in Canada — a Canada Research Chair. These positions, funded by the national government, are given to people widely recognized as the top in their field.

People in Canada believe public figures like this are open to criticism in a professional way, but not in a personal way. The CRIA has stepped over that line, and I believe hurt their cause in the current debate on copyright reform.