A Wikileaks Cable to Call My Own
April 29, 2011
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Law Bytes
Episode 272: Build Canada’s Lucy Hargreaves on Canada’s AI Strategy and the Need to Shift From Being Users to Builders
byMichael Geist

May 25, 2026
Michael Geist
May 11, 2026
Michael Geist
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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
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!
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?
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.
http://www.acerlaptopbatterycheap.com/
Pretty good post. I just found your site and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your posts.
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.
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.
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.
broken link
the wikileaks.fi link is broken, but wikileaks.ch works