Like the ever-vigilant watchman who rarely comes down from his tower, even to take a piss, the unblinking Michael Geist observes our government until it twitches enough to issue the rallying call: "TO ARMS! TO ARMS!"

And so he has. Once again rumours of a revised Canadian DCMA are circulating, indicating that our Conservative government may try to ram the legislation through parliament before the summer break. If this is true, it means that Industry Minister Jim Prentice has no intentions of pursuing any public consultation regarding new copyright legislation.

For those of you who are not already furiously banging out an e-mail, let me explain why this issue is so important by giving you a draft version of the letter I intend to send to select government officials:

UPDATE: I've fixed some things and added a fourth point of concern.

Dear Honourable ____________,

I am writing to you because I wish to express my opinions on upcoming copyright reforms that the Conservative government cited in this parliamentary session's throne speech. Copyright reform is a sensitive issue. We live in an era where information can be copied (legitimately or illegally), many times, over great distances, almost instantaneously. As a creative person who authors music, fiction, and websites, I have strong feelings about how my work is used by others.

That said, I feel much more strongly about making sure that the rights of ordinary Canadians are protected when any new legislation is introduced. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States has been a disaster for civil liberties in that country. Copyright reform in Canada can and must take the following considerations into effect:

Fair Use of Purchased Intellectual Property: Transferring a DVD movie or a recorded TV show onto a video iPod is becoming a regular activity for technologically savvy Canadians. The media industry would like to force us pay again and again for the right to use the same movie, music, or book in different digital environments. Copyright reform must protect the right of consumers who have legitimately purchased content to use said content for private viewing on different platforms.

Reverse Engineering: Scientific ideas are already very well protected by international patent law. Engineers have for quite some time learned about things by taking them apart. Not to copy them and find themselves at the receiving end of a patent lawsuit, but simply to learn: This is a fundamental principle of engineering. The act of studying or dismantling any software or technology is no different than reverse-engineering. Patents already protect ideas. Banning reverse engineering revokes the right to learn.

Satirical Derivation: Our culture of comedy thrives on the practice of imitating popular media for satirical or parodic humour. The rights of a comedian to harmlessly satirize must be protected in a free and open society.

Protection of Privacy: Now that personal information is stored on computers more often than it is stored on paper, we must now more than ever be sure that the average Canadian's privacy is protected. Giving police broad powers to search people's computers, or allowing ISPs to watch what each and every one of us download is not only unsettling, it sounds like a police state. Any extra powers granted to law enforcement must be tempered by stringent judicial oversight.

The concerns I have raised today are by no means new ones. They represent the very foundation that liberal democracy is founded upon. Laws protect the people at large: not the powerful, not special interests groups. Most importantly, the law assumes that we are innocent until proven guilty. The law assumes that a Canadian is ripping a DVD he owns to watch it on his iPod; not that he is a pirate intent on mass distribution. The law assumes that a reverse-engineer wishes to educate himself; not that he intends to steal ideas or commit sabotage.

As new technologies rapidly transform the very fabric of our society, we, the citizens and lawmakers, must be ever vigilant to make sure that the laws introduced to regulate these new mediums favour freedom of expression and ideas, not the heavy-handed control of them. Otherwise, we risk dismantling the very tenets of democracy that we hold so dear. This is not alarmist, nor exaggeration. This is our future.

Thank you for your time.

Feel free to copy and modify my verbiage for your own e-mails/letters as you see fit. You see, as far as I am concerned:

"Human knowledge belongs to the world."