Elizabeth EdwardsNeither John Edwards nor John Kerry can summon up the courage so far to oppose the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

Stealthily passed in ’98 when the press was fixated on the Clinton impeachment controversy, the act will transfer billions over the years to Hollywood and the rest of the copyright elite from schools, libraries and consumers.

Bono is why American students today can’t read The Great Gatsby for free via the Net–just one of many outrageous examples of greed prevailing over the needs of cash-strapped schools and libraries. Alas, however, Edwards and Kerry, the two leading Democratic candidates, have yet to speak out on Bono or the DMCA. And this despite Edwards’ statement that “Strengthening public schools is my top priority”?

Perhaps Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth, a law graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, can take a little interest in these matters. The March 1 Newsweek says:

Her mother put out a [military] base newspaper and organized a thrift shop to raise money for charity, then late in life went back for a master’s degree and became a librarian. Elizabeth also loved books and wanted to teach American literature. “What I really wanted was to teach people to love to read.”

What she says about her favorite writer, Henry James, probably explains the Edwardses’ consistently long-view attitude toward an awfully short campaign season: “You’ve got to have patience, but if you’re a reader and you love baseball, you love James; it’s a little play here and there, not constant scoring. The truth of most anything is not in some big statement but in small things, and that’s what James recognized. That and the fact that we’re constantly making moral choices.”

Such as on copyright laws? Even a modicum of guts would help defuse the issue of an Edwards PAC having received more than $900K in soft money donations from Hollywood producer Steve Bing, who, like the Edwards campaign, is exceedingly uninformative about the circumstances associated with the contributions. Just why did a freshman North Carolina senator’s PAC draw big money from a West Coast movie guy as early as 2002 when Edwards’ presidential efforts seemed far more quixotic than now? Remember, in contexts not involving Bing’s generosity to Edwards, questions have arisen about campaign donations in both Bing’s case and Edwards’. Bing even had to pay a $25,000 fine as part of a settlement with California officials. He said he was ignorant of California election law, an interesting excuse considering his access to high-priced legal help.

The Bing donations to Edwards won’t be as important an issue if the Senator, who sits on the Judiciary committee, overseeing copyright law, will show independence of Hollywood. Ideally Mrs. Edwards can successfully appeal to the Senator’s better side.

Edwards visiting schoolsBut what if Sen. Edwards, shown here in his pro-education mode, keeps dodging questions about Bono and a compromise originally proposed by law professor Larry Lessig, who teaches at Stanford, where, coincidentally Bing’s father is a trustee, and which Bing attended before dropping out for a movie career? Then the press badly needs to pressure both Edwards and Bing, in a conspicuous way, for some substantive answers. In fact, even now, this ought to be fodder for Meet the Press and the like. After all, Sen. Edwards has depicted himself as a populist on education matters. Just which America does he live in–the copyright gentry’s or everyone else’s? Bing went to an elite private school to prepare for an elite university and perhaps can be somewhat excused for ignorance of the needs of schools and libraries, but Edwards, a millworker’s son, is completely a creature of public education and should know better.

Especially in crucial primary states like California, parents, teachers and librarians should appeal to Edwards through his wife to make the right “moral choices.” Given Ms. Edwards’ legal training and her admirable interest in schools, libraries and literature, it isn’t as if these matters are outside her area of expertise or influence. Newsweek even alludes to “The Firm of Edwards & Edwards.”

About Kerry: He, too, is worthy of efforts to persuade him to speak up on Bono and the worst elements of the DMCA. But unlike Edwards, he does not have the Bing question hanging over him, nor does he serve on the copyright-related Judiciary Committee.

Differentiating the Dems from the GOP–or vice versa: The Bono Act, signed in ’98 by Bill Clinton, was a bipartisan outrage. But it’s the future I’m interested in. I’d welcome either party showing some moral leadership here and admitting the mistake. Yo, Laura Bush! You don’t have to be a law graduate to tell the President what a bad law Bono is. Even pro-business economists like Milton Friedman hate it.

Suggestion to educational groups: Bono needs to be added to the list of issues by which you grade candidates on future votes. Both the National Education Association and the Children’s Defense Fund rate Edwards 100 percent, according to his Senate site. How can this be when he won’t speak out against a multibillion-dollar copyright grab? Simple. Because Bono was passed stealthily and was off the radar of the people who would normally notice. Besides, Edwards wasn’t even a Senator at the time, and anyway, the final bill passed without any need for Hill people to record their individual votes.

Related–just posted: Libraries as test-score boosters.

Reminder: No right-wing conspiracies here. I’m a lifelong liberal Democrat interested in seeing the party come up with an electable candidate. I voted for Clark in the Virginia primary but might well have voted for Edwards instead if he’d addressed the net.copyright question. My goal isn’t to destroy Edwards, just to persuade him to make a “moral choice” on copyright law.

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