More Right Minded Wisdom

There's been another libertarian shot at the DMCA, suggesting that the neither the French approach nor the American approach are right, as it were.

I doubt that I was the first to use the phrase "French Revolution" to decribe what is now happening over there, but I'm obviously not the last.

Here's a piece in the National Review from Peter Suderman who is assistant editorial director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Suderman concludes:

Somewhere in between the U.S. and French approaches to DRM lies an appropriate middle ground. The DMCA makes DRM far too strong, but the French proposal renders it nearly useless. Individuals ought to have control over their media, but digital-music vendors like Apple ought to be allowed to protect and control their property. Vive la (digital) revolution!

This follows another highly pedigreed libertarian comment from Tim Lee that I noted earlier from the CATO Institute.

And an important op-ed from Canada's influential Prof. Tom Flanagan and Gemma Collins in the Ottawa Citizen, March 18, 2006 - widely blogged about and now fortunately available online. (Read it while you can!)

It is ironic and very important, but not so strange, that the "left" and the "right" seem to be more frequently meeting full circle on copyright issues.

Governments, particularly Canada's newly elected Convervative government, may wish to take note.

HPK