The legal system in Canada is beginning to make it clear that sharing music for personal use is indeed legal in Canada. This is great, but it also means that these laws are about to come under threat. There seems to be very little pressure to keep the laws the way they are. The prime minister is on the side of record labels. Most of the media seems to indicate that Canada is the land of copyright violation, and fail to mention that we pay a levy on media to compensate copyright holders.
My friend and I were talking and he said it would be great if every MP could read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. Then they could understand how the current system of essentially unrestricted copyright prevent the creation of derived works and stifles culture.
I suggested that even if we gave them a copy of the book, they would never read it. He said that the book is available in audio, so they wouldn’t have to read it. This seemed like a really good point.
We could make a CD with about an hour’s worth of audio excerpts from the book. We could stick the entire book in HTML and PDF format onto the CD in case they want to read the whole thing. We could mail the CD with a cover letter to every MP in parliament
The CD and envelope would probably only cost a dollar or so. Assuming the postage is free, that’s about $300. Split amoung several friends, the cost is quite reasonable.
Anyhow, the first thing I need to do is finish reading Free Culture. I’m only on chapter 2.