You know, Cory is very polite and ernest but then again so is David Frum, another global Canadian. They both suffer, however, from lapses. Frum forgets that anything bad of any sort ever happened under a Republican administration and Cory forgets that he should not covet his neighbour's ass...as it were. Consider this otherwise very balanced post this morning on Boing which, other than its title, asks us all nicely to get our opinions to a government body considering policy on copyright. That is excellent. But look:

The US Copyright Office is holding its third set of hearings on anticircumvention exceptions. This is something you -- and everyone you know -- can participate in, submitting written petitions for exemptions for personal backup; for fair use remixing, criticism, and education; for providing assistive information to disabled people, etc.

By sliding the illegal misuse of the work of others - aka "remix" - in with topics of an entirely different and already legally recongnized nature such as access for the disabled, criticism, eduation, backup it makes it appear that remixly taking is like these things. It is not.

It is beyond question that advocating for something new in law is a good idea and we should all encourage speaking up for adding the things you want - and not just what you are told you want - added to society's rules. But it has to be recognized as an additional principle and the contextual implications of that new principle have to be worked out. That in substance there is actually nothing even new in this in a world that has seen Picasso's collage work for almost a century is besides the point. The principle has to work in any medium unless you were satisfied with with the integrity of 1990s new e-conomy thinking and, despite that bubble's burst, want to apply the same principles to other aspects of the community in a new e-law kinda way.

Won't it be nice when the next pop era arrives?