DIY Copyright Act

“Draft it yourself,” that is, using the wiki set up for that purpose by McGill University’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy (cipp).

It’s interesting to see the points made by the cipp folks to try to get the wiki to work for such a serious and exacting project:

• Like any wiki, justify your comments, add links, etc.
• Let’s be serious. If we want this to be an alternative piece of legislation, we have to be balanced. (David Lametti, for example, would personally like to see copyright’s term reduced radically and the re-imposition of a registration requirement, but he appreciates that that will not be in the short-term so he won’t suggest it… this time around at least!)
• Let’s be respectful: all sides will have something to say here.

I wonder whether inviting the public to draft — “No good faith participant will be refused entry.” — and asking for good political judgement at the same time isn’t asking for too much. It seems that they’ve seeded things with their own “revised versions” of sections, though because I haven’t obtained the necessary account I can’t see the discussions that would tell me better what’s going on.

Vous pouvez participer au projet dans l’une ou l’autre des deux langues officielles. Nous traduiront les propositions d’articles, mais pas les discussions.

[via Digital Koans]