As sent to several Canadian politicians:

I was shocked to find out that our Conservative government plans on reforming copyright law without any having made any attempt at public consultation on the matter. In an era of rapidly changing technology, how we modify the law to reflect the realities of fair-use and copyright are terribly important.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States has seen far too much abuse by corporations bent on controlling even the pettiest of "violations" by everyday citizens. A mother, for example, being harassed by Universal Media Group after she posted a video on YouTube of her toddler whimsically dancing to a Prince song. This qualified as "unlicensed use of media". Do we truly want media to have this kind of stranglehold on our day to day lives?

Engineers have always had the freedom to take things apart to discover how they work: it's one of the fundamental processes of learning engineering. But as soon as the device in question is a computer or a software program, reverse-engineering becomes unacceptable. Why? Potential copyright infringement aside, why does the simple act of learning need to become a crime?

We are entering an age where the internet and other tools allow mass collaboration and instant dissemination. It's allowed everyday people to build a full-featured operating system, Linux, from scratch. It has allowed independent artists to disseminate their art, writing, films and music worldwide without the need for media or publishing companies. These are incredible abilities, and large corporations feel threatened by them. They feel threatened because they don't understand the technologies or because they don't want to adapt to integrate with this new digital culture.

A new, grass-roots digital community is forming, and if we want our culture to evolve we need to take a very pragmatic approach to how we deal with copyright reform. Public consultation is essential. And reformed copyright law needs to protect the young mother (and her homemade music video of her dancing toddler) as much if not MORE than it protects the media company which owns the song.