“How did copyright become cool?” is perhaps one of the most well-informed and thought-out articles in the mainstream press on the subject. Sadly, it appears to be web-only, so I guess it didn’t make it into the real paper. But this is a start!

The Globe and Mail is, essentially, Canada’s New York Times. It’s based in Toronto, but available throughout the country. The fact that such a major source has, not only covered the issue, but considered it, is something of a big deal, web-only or not.

“Maybe he just didn’t think that copyright legislation could capture the public imagination. It would be hard to blame him if that were the case; at politician school, they don’t teach you to watch out for that third rail of Canadian politics, “anti-circumvention legislation.”

Suddenly, though, circumvention is a word that people are getting hot and bothered about. As anyone who has bought music from Apple has learned the hard way, companies are in the business of putting technological locks on their content. The classic example is songs bought on iTunes, which have built-in limits on where they can be played (iPods only!) and how they can be copied (hardly at all). The happy euphemism for this technique is Digital Rights Management, or DRM.”

But it’s not just the technological side that they cover properly, they understand the underlying issues of our Canadian society and culture that have aided in the anger:

“Indeed, it’s hard to underestimate the streak of anti-American sentiment that runs beneath this debate. Critics are labelling the bill the “Canadian DMCA,” after the Americans’ despised Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted by the Clinton administration – an act that contains many of the same provisions that Canadians are up in arms about. Among them are the laws that have enabled the U.S. music industry to launch its well-publicized plague of lawsuits against individuals who share files.
[…]
With every iPod that Apple sells, another consumer gets educated about the realities of DRM. Throw in some talk of criminalizing any way of thwarting it, mention the term “American industry executives” – and voilà, a made-in-Canada furor.”

Positively brilliant.

via Michael Geist