Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get us. Anyone who has any lurking rational doubts about the ambitions of corporates to pervert copyright toward their own ends needs to look toward the bigger picture as a reality check. Copyright law is under intensive revision to deal with the internet age around the world, and the US is determined to establish lebensraum.

US attorney William Patry's latest article 'The Anti-piracy scam : Canada insulted again' is a must-read critique of how the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is enabling corporate interests to drive broad political agendas that extend far beyond US borders. Canada has recently found itself shit-listed by the US for failing to implement laws that are sufficiently DMCA like. Patry goes on to examine the subtexts and who is writing US IP policy, and it is not the legislature.

There is a very real danger that the false use of piracy as a stalking horse for the DMCA will succeed, and that of course is precisely why it is being employed. Members of Congress and parliaments (including the well-meaning members of the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus) are of necessity generalists. They rely, of necessity, on specialists, both inside the government and in the private sector, to provide them with an honest presentation of the facts, the law, and the policies involved. This is why the misuse of language, the mischaracterization of international obligations, and the false association of DRMs and TPMs with piracy is so deadly, and why I complain about it so loudly and frequently. I support fully efforts to combat piracy in the usual sense of that word, in the sense the members of the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus understand that word: the massive, commercial, unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works. But this is not the sense in which U.S. corporate interests are now using the word; instead piracy has become a synonym for our DMCA, and on that score, I object. Let U.S. corporate interests make their case for our DMCA honestly, on the merits, without falsely impugning the state of the law in other countries with the scare tactic of piracy. If they have a good case, they can make it, but let's at least be honest about what is on the table.

Unless I am very much mistaken, the Orphan Works Act 2008 similarly promotes hidden corporate agendas. All this evolution of copyright law is slanted in the same direction, the enclosure and control of copyright as a corporate property : an aspect of what photographer Chris Floyd refers to as 'the absolute subjugation of the individual to the corporation'.

And check the absolutely wonderful comment left by 'anonymous', which elegantly summarises what is going on here, what is driving the Orphan Works Act 2008 in the USA, and what was so wrong with last year's Gowers Report:

What artist or author would be remotely interested in the level of control that copyright aggregators have bought for themselves in Chapter 12. It's not just users v. owners. Somewhere in the middle, like the small child watching parents argue, stand the disassociated human authors for whom this entire structure was raised with a notion of incentivizing his or her creative work and contributions to culture. It is so ugly to watch the aggregators trounce around and so ironic that their wealth and power come from people largely devoted to creating beauty.

As William Patry says 'Well put indeed, anonymous'.