I Want My Own Lobbyists

Jay Currie has a good post up at BlogsCanada on the introduction of Bill C-60, which is officially titled, 'An Act To Give More Rights To The Recording Industry At The Expense Of Giving Citizens Of Canada Fewer Rights While At The Same Time Trying Not To Step On The Toes Of Powerful Internet Service Providers'. OK, technically it is titled, 'An Act To Amend the Copyright Act' but I think my title gives more insight into the bill.

I won't get into all the details of the legislation here (if you want the details your best bet is to read Michael Geist (holder of the Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-Commerce Law) who's been following this as closely as anyone) but the general impression I'm getting so far is that, while more balanced than the U.S. legislation in this area, the new laws are basically there to protect business from the effects of new technology by making many of the uses of this technology illegal (or making it illegal to circumvent limitations deliberately built into technology to make it less functional). For example, from Geist,

"Therefore, Canadians may be asked to pay several times for the same work as they may pay once for the CD, once for the digital download, and once through the private copying levy for the blank CD. Attempts to circumvent protections on the CD in order to make a personal copy (a copy already paid for via the levy) will now constitute infringement in Canada."

It doesn't seem like a wise approach, or one which was crafted with my interests (as a citizen of Canada) in mind.

Stepping back from the actual legislation (which we can at least hope doesn't pass before parliament is dissolved and we head to another election), I was struck by this line from Geist,

"There is simply no denying that the lobbying efforts of the copyright owners, particularly the music industry, have paid off as they are the big winners in this bill."

This, I think is the root of the problem. The battle over copyright involves balancing the interests of artists, the industry of copyright holders, communications companies (such as ISPs) and individual citizens. Everyone on that list has lobbyists working the government to get their side a good deal - everyone except for the citizens. In theory, of course, the Members of Parliament themselves are supposed to be lobbyists for the citizens of Canada, but in practice, it seems that MP's have trouble remembering that this is supposed to be their role, especially when it comes to issues in which there is not a big public interest factor (i.e. over 99% of all issues).

What we need are citizen lobbyists who can keep getting in MP's face and reminding them whose interest they were elected to serve. Blogs are a decent start, and indeed when Geist is listing the 'reactions' to the bill, his only source for reactions of 'individual Canadians' is to mention blogs. But I don't think blogs are good enough - we need someone who will stack panels for presentations to MP's, someone who can finance user-friendly studies and reports, someone who can get MP's on the phone or go to lunch at a nice Ottawa restaurant and bend their ear a little bit. We need people with media clout who can get fawning coverage of their every word and make well publicized (even if poorly substantiated) claims about the needs for better protection for citizens. In short, we need our own lobbyists to take on the industry lobbyists.

So here's my proposal. For the next election we should get two ballots. One will be the standard ballot for electing MP's and the second will be the lobbyist ballot. The lobbyists will be elected by some sort of proportional representation and people will be able to vote for lobbyists to represent citizen interests on the issues that are important to them. People concerned about digital rights could vote for a digital rights lobbyist, people worried about health care could vote for a health lobbyist and so on. With luck this would ensure the election of a broad cross-section of lobbyists to represent the public. The number of lobbyists elected would have to be calibrated to the number of lobbyists other interest groups have working for them - I'm sure we could work out a formula. The lobbyists would have to be well paid to avoid the incentive for them to be bought off by private interests, but I'm guessing that the refreshing feeling of working for, rather than against the public interest for once would compensate for a somewhat lower salary than industry lobbyists get. A salary (and benefits) similar to what MP's get now should be sufficient.

OK, I know what you're thinking: if the current group of people we elect to parliament fails to consistently represent our interests, why should this second group be any different? But MP's are charged with the job of drafting legislation, which is a tricky business and requires a balancing of many interests. Since they are already considering various interests, it is relatively easy to tip them towards considering the distant public a little less and the up close and personal industry group a little more. But LP's (Lobbyists of Parliament) wouldn't have to give any weight to the interests of other groups at all. Just like an industry lobbyist they would only care about their clients (the general public) and everybody else be damned.

Who's with me?