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Election 2006 (and beyond): Digital Copyright Canada
From: russell_-at-_flora.ottawa.on.ca (Russell McOrmond)
Date: 20 Nov 1999 12:35:32 -0500
Another 'controvercial' one? I tend to agree with this one, although don't blame the medium (The internet) on the privatization of public inforamtion. --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://russell.flora.org/work/> http://www.wtocaravan.org/ The Canadian WTO Caravan http://www.flora.org/flora.action-forum/758 (From: The Hindu) Cyclone tragedy should be a lesson in humility ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 14:18:09 -0800 From: Donald Gutstein <gutstein@sfu.ca> To: Mailinglist-cpi-ua@list.techbc.ca Subject: e.con: How the Internet Undermines Democracy Hello CPI-UA list members: Some of you may be interested in my new book, e.con: How the Internet Undermines Democracy, which was published in September by Stoddart and should be available in most book stores as well as chapters.ca and amazon.com. I'm pasting a brief description of the book in this message. Thanks for your attention. e.con: How the Internet Undermines Democracy Donald Gutstein Stoddart, 1999. Canadians are losing access to the information they need to operate as citizens, consumers, workers and members of communities. And surprisingly, this trend is happening as a result of the wide-spread use of the Internet, which, even a few years ago, promised to empower people and usher in a new era of electronic democracy. e.con, the new book by Donald Gutstein, explains how the Internet was developed through the initiative, financing and risk of publicly-supported universities and government agencies, then turned over to the private sector with little compensation to taxpayers. The book also explains how our public information commons is being enclosed through the unprecedented expansion of intellectual property rights (copyright and patents), which benefit mainly huge global corporations like Disney, News Corp. and Microsoft. Once they've perfected electronic payment systems, corporations will start charging for information that is freely available today. e.con documents the consequences for Canadians: · taxpayer-funded university research is being handed over to the private sector, so that the benefits flowing from inventions and discoveries accrue to shareholders, not citizens. · the public library, the most democratic of our institutions -- providing free access to information on all sides of issues to everyone -- faces government-imposed funding cuts and has turned to the commercialized Internet as an alternative. The inevitable result is an increase in fee-for-services, which is creating two classes of citizens -- information haves and have-nots. · public schools are being dominated by initiatives to hook our children up to the Internet, creating a new market to be exploited by the information industry -- all at taxpayer expense. What should be done about these threats to democracy? Clearly we cannot rely on government, at least not recent federal governments, to look after citizen interests. To reclaim public information and re-invigorate democracy, citizens need to become aware of these developments and then pressure government to back off from its ill-advised ventures. * * * Donald Gutstein is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and teaches in the areas of information policy, journalism studies and documentary research. He can be reached at (604) 526-1956 or gutstein@sfu.ca.
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