A: YES!!!!! Or...wait. No.
Boing Boing, the "directory of wonderful things," is one of the world's finest blogs -- if not the finest -- for the huge output of consistently cool stuff it showcases every day. But one post yesterday, by Boinger Cory Doctorow, struck me as uncharacteristically dumb: Canadian Heritage Minister Oda in the pocket of recording execs, pulling from this piece by Canuck blogger and University of Ottawa professor Dr. Michael Geist. This is the BB post, in its entirety:
Michael sez, "Following a debate on CBC Radio with Canadian Recording Industry Association President Graham Henderson, Michael Geist is reporting that according to documents recently obtained under the Access to Information Act, last year eleven professional organizations representing most Canadian copyright holders in the music industry, including songwriters, composers, performers, record producers, and publishers, wrote to Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda and Industry Minister Maxime Bernier to reject CRIA's new opposition to the private copying system and to 'express their reservations concerning the legal protection of technological measures used to limit access to, or reproduction of, musical works.'
"Moreover, the government documents reveal incredible access for CRIA to the highest levels of the Canadian government. CRIA was busy arranging an event for government officials within days of the election which led to a sponsored lobby session on March 2nd that included a government-funded lunch and a private meeting with Minister Oda. New documents reveal that this was merely the tip of the iceberg. Four weeks later (on April 1st), CRIA hosted a private lunch at the Juno Awards for Bev Oda featuring Henderson and the presidents of the major music labels followed by an artist roundtable. Six weeks after that (on May 16th), Graham Henderson was granted another meeting with Bev Oda, this time to counter the news that the indie labels had left CRIA and that the CMCC had launched." Link (Thanks, Michael!)
Doctorow seems to have just cut and pasted an emailed press release from Dr. Geist. While that's not a problem in itself -- sometimes, posting a dozen+ daily missives to your blog means not having time to add insightful commentary -- does the text itself even close to justify the conspiracy implied in the alarmist headline?
Take note: X-Files was filmed in Vancouver, not set there.
The entire first paragraph can be summed up as,
Last year, eleven representatives for the music industry wrote letters to the Canadian Heritage and Industry Ministers. Um, so the fuck what? Individuals and organizations write letters to government officials all the time. It's usually more a formality than anything else, as most government officials don't have time to read their mail (although this
is quaint, adorable Canada we're talking about, so maybe things are different).
The second paragraph reports that the CRIA (the Northern equivalent of the
RIAA) has "incredible access to the highest levels of Canadian government," indicating a lobby session, luncheon and private meeting with Oda. OH MY GOD! CALL
OLIVER STONE! Or...no, wait, that sounds like standard operating procedure for a governmental official's dealings with a large corporate body; big business does have better access to government than the average citizen. We knew that already.
But wait! "New documents reveal that this was merely
Take note: Iceberg big, tip small.
the tip of the iceberg"!!! The rest of the iceberg? Another luncheon the following month. And another private meeting six weeks later. Hey, isn't the iceberg supposed to be bigger than the tip of the iceberg? Either Geist is on very thin ice, or these luncheon involved a lot of iceberg lettuce. Which would indeed be a disgrace, as
iceberg lettuce offers very little nutritional value.
Look, it pains me to offer a defense of the greedy Luddites of the recording industry, who are no stranger to alarmist declarations themselves. And I was greatly amused by Boing Boing's Monday post providing photographic evidence of
just how backwards the industry can be.
I also understand that it must be very tempting to rush such material to one's blog, if only because attacks on record moguls, the Bush administration, the PS3 and/or the Zune greatly improves one's chances of hitting
the front page of Digg.
Maybe Oda really
is in the pocket of the Canadian record industry; maybe the recording industry controls the cabal of Jews who, of course, control all the world's governments. But if the record industry is calling the shots, our governments make for a terrible lapdog, because piracy is as rampant as ever.
So maybe we should stop making paranoid claims under the guise of breaking news, and start kicking back and enjoying
that new Andrew Bird album.
