EU copyright regime drops pretense of democracy

Earlier I wrote an article prophetically titled "Due process not destroyed by media lobby yet" (emphasis added), praising the EU parliament of their decision not to allow cutting people's internet connections based on vague infringement accusations and without due process.

Thanks in great part to French president Sarkozy's great desire to lick big media ass as well as the spinelessness of the EU telecoms ministers in general, that's off the table now. I'm not an expert in EU law, so I don't know how final that is, but sheesh, people. We got 88% of the EU parliament behind sanity this time, but their will was summarily thrown out because we can't have big media have to go through courts to harass our citizens.

Can anybody claim with a straight face anymore that the copyright regime is maintained in a democratically sound fashion, or something even remotely resembling it? Anyone?

And what the hell are they even thinking doing things like this? Indeed, do the ministers have a secret agenda to completely destroy the little legitimacy copyrights still have in the minds of the people? 'cause that's what's been happening for a while now, and rampant copyright fascism does seem like the best way to speed up the process.

Oh, and artists, if you're smart, you'll disassociate yourselves as best you can from any media industry representative groups and their policies. Due to the stubborn unwillingness of big media to live in the 21st century and rather bring forth the Digital Dark Ages with their French Inquisitions, and due to the refusal of the politicians to actually serve the public interest instead of these money-grabbers, any controlled copyright reform towards sanity is getting less and less likely. So, unless we all lose and end up in a Big Brother society with the media companies watching our every move, we're headed towards a significant backlash to the wholesale destruction of civil liberties that's going on in the name of the poor starving artist. The more high-strung the fascist policies have gotten at that point, the more violent the backlash.

And here's what's bad for artists: the big business wants to associate you with them in this conflict. Some of you may think this is a good idea; if so, please feel free to dig your own grave. However, such a backlash is rather liable to take with it much of the public respect for artists who've been on the fascist side of the issue. More alarmingly, though, through these people the respect for artistry in general may suffer.

See, being Against Intellectual Monopoly, I'm all for a backlash that might even abolish copyrights altogether. They're a remnant of darker times, of control of culture by the few, of privilege to decree "no, you may not help your neighbor". We as a society don't need them, but rather are shackled by them in our shared cultural endeavors.

But I do hope the artists of the world to be savvy enough not to go down with that ship, to retain respect for your profession, because that respect, not copyrights, is what ultimately pays your bills.