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A Wikileaks Cable to Call My Own

Among the Wikileaks cables released on Canada, is one devoted to summarizing a meeting I had with embassy officials in April 2007. At the meeting I noted the shift away from DRM, doubts about camcording claims, and calls for fair use.

9 Comments

  1. David Allsebrook says:

    Changing thte system from within
    You can be proud of the leadership you provided in the copyright debate and the impact that it had and has. There was no voice for content consumers, and no apparent means of gaining traction for such a voice, and you provided both. Your expertise and reason set you and your followers apart from the true believers and created a political price for Canada blindly being bullied by the U.S. and the pro-copyright lobbies. It is a remarkable achievement.
    Myself, I think that we should consider adopting U.S. copyright demands at the same pace at which the U.S. adopted the Berne convention.
    Best regards
    David

  2. Jocelyn Herbert says:

    The great impression the cable-writing embassy-official had of you, despite the fact that he clearly does not agree with the points you made, speaks very highly of the value you place on well-articulated and researched arguments. You are an inspiration to supporters of copyright-reform, so thank you for your intelligence, your passion, and your sanity!

  3. Take everything John D. thinks of you and accept the inverse from the rest of us 😉

    Good Job!

    Now do you think I can get my initials monigramed on my Robe?

  4. I think Michael Geist is a tall, handsome, reasonably intelligent man.

    The funniest part of the cable is the bit about Geist’s views being “taken seriously.” That’s high praise indeed.

    I’m sure it helped that “Geist claimed that his views were becoming more popular…”

    No press is bad press.

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  6. Good work on this Michael. The world needs more people like you. Rational, well argued and standing up for common sense rather than being ignoring the ridiculous approach the industry takes to protect it’s parlous state.

  7. Un-Trusted Computing says:

    Excellent work indeed
    I’m glad to see that although the embassy staff clearly views you as a dissenter your views are taken seriously and you’re regarded as well spoken regarding these issues.

  8. In some ways you could take the embassy comments as “Michael Geist represents what Canadians really want” versus what the US wants the Canadian government to adopt. Canada will benefit immensely in the future by staying outside the US IP “firewall” they are building. Innovation will eventually shift to outside this wall, IMO.

  9. broken link
    the wikileaks.fi link is broken, but wikileaks.ch works