Would John Kerry and John Edwards have won if they had taken a gutsy, populist stand on copyright? Consider:
–“Today, more US citizens use file-sharing software than voted for President Bush” in 2000, according to Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
–Ohio, perhaps the decisive state in the 2004 election, is exactly the kind of place where pro-school, pro-library arguments against the copyright elite might have flown.
–The DMCA still threatens to be a monopolist’s friend and could jack up the price of goods and services if court decisions go the wrong way. You’re GM and don’t want small guys to work on your heavily computerized cars? Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt, argue it’s necessary, and use the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.
–The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act–yes, Sonny Bono Act, not the JFK Act–was and is a systematic transfer of future wealth from society at large to an entertainment elite. Bill Clinton signed it. But a Republican Congress passed it, and clueful Democrats could have said, “Look, we’re the party that admits its mistake and lives for the future.”
I know: The Dems relied on Hollywood money to pay for much of their advertising. But I doubt that the liberal studio bosses could have brought themselves to support Bush, whose claimed values clashed so directly with theirs. A less tainted Democratic party would have worried less about kowtowing to Hollywood elitists and more about looking for support elsewhere.
Simply put, while copyright could never have been among the most important issues, nothing compared to Iraq or the economy, it might have made a difference in such a hard-fought, narrowly decided election. One frustration is that Kerry actually may have been on the verge of doing the right thing in regard to some intellectual matters. Imagine if he had acted for real, all the way, and in time.
Detail: TeleRead itself is nonpartisan, with some Republicans among its most ardent supporters and no shortage of complaints in this blog against Democratic copyright sleaze. I myself am a lifelong liberal Democrat. I’d love for the headline of this post to be wrong and for Kerry to emerge victorious in the best Truman tradition, but, even after possible court fights, the end results will most likely go against the Democrats. To reach the White House, Kerry would have to win too high a percentage of the contested votes.
Beyond copyright: This eventually could well be the ’60s and ’70s redux, given the intense hatred of Bush among action-minded kooks, not just the tweedy set. Will we see assassination attempts from Squeaky Frome-style imbeciles and domestic terrorism even without the threat from Osama? I hope not. If it happens, then the Patriot Act could be mild compared to what follows. Should the economy worsen in a serious way, we could also see urban riots. What’s more, while the military might hate it, Bush’s foreign adventures could leave no other choice, and we could witness a return to the draft and the resultant radicalization of some young people. Bush’s hard-line abortion stand, and the resultant selection of Supreme Court justices, also will inflame many. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the ballooning deficits. Maybe black-suited investment bankers and other harmed by Bushnomics will man the protests marches along with the draft protestors and abortion rights advocates (hyperbole alert). Wait: there’s more. Perhaps Bush can make the U.S. even more Republican by letting global warming raise sea levels and do away with Manhattan, thereby ridding us of some bothersome members of the liberal media as well.
More on the overseas angle: Would that this headline have applied to a real-life election: John Kerry storms to victory in virtual vote. It did not because the “virtual vote” included “more than 113,000 people from 119 countries.” Not surprisingly, they voted 77 percent for Kerry. Bush does not care as much as Kerry would have about popularity overseas. Osama types may well take note of this and feel more eager than ever to commit yet another 9/11–with repeat efforts against New York, Washington, or both.
Related: Declaring Victory in Dan Gillmor’s blog. Quote of the hour: “We will not recognize America in four more years. That will make half of America giddy. It will terrify the other half.”
