The world spins and we change
Slowly, ever so slowly, over the last year or so, I've seen the dialogue on copyright changing from one that's all about protection and how we can protect our 'stuff' ever more tightly (with little thought given to the effect on fair use and first sale and other traditional liberties) to one where balance of rights, the public good, and who should control speech and creativity are finally also on the table. It has changed too from one where all opponents of copyright extension were characterized as 'information wants to be free' fanatics, where the only choice was between greater and greater copyright protection and no copyright at all. Fair use and first sale and using things you owned in ways that worked well for you were barely even on the table.
A year or more ago I 'listened' to an online conversation where the only person talking about the balance of rights between creators and citizens was shouted off the table. This year--last month, in fact--people stood in line all night to hear Eldred v Ashcroft argued before the Supreme Court. It was a dry, non-sexy subject--no blood, no guns, no gore--and people are talking about it and caring about it and insisting that the complex pieces of a fundamental issue be included in the conversation
My vague sense of the world, the thing in the back of my head that reads articles and listens to people and notes the direction of the wind, tells me that the same thing is starting to happen with democracy. People are starting to talk about what democracy really means, what our place in it is, how we can be active citizens and not just consumers and people who vote once in awhile. I believe (and this is just beginning) that we're getting into the nitty-gritty, past the notion of 'majority rules' and into basic freedoms and Constitutional rights and the need for citizens to speak and to be heard.
Kevin Rayboud at Lean Left says (talking about the 2000 presidential election and why people keep talking about it):
It is not a feeling one lets go of, and it is not a feeling one gets over. Elections aren't a game, regardless of how the press covers them. They are the central feature of a democracy, they are how we decide our collective fates. To have one perverted, and perverted in such a blatant fashion, is not something easily forgotten.
At a meeting at work this week a colleague of mine said in response to a question about the future of our organization that we ought to be about increasing civic capacity and social capital.
It's a small thing, talking about democracy as if we're entitled to it. But I believe that it will grow.
Comments
I am a bit more cynical, and agree with Lewis Lapham's tirade against things being spoken and nothing be said, understood or asked--from November's Harper's:
...[I]f it is no disgrace for any country at any particular time in its history to rest content among the relics of of a lost language and imaginary past, it is a matter of some interest in a country that possesses the power to poison the earth without possessing either the means or desire to knows itself.
Though there has been a newfound interest in fair voting and fair use, this has been very much been pushed by a few people with immediate stake in the issues. It is sad, our country rarely stands with quorum, but usually rests on the most vocal minority.
Posted by: Ry | November 2, 2002 09:59 PM
We have a long way to go. When I talk to people about democracy and what it means I get a lot of blank looks. And some days I feel like the guy in the Twilight Zone whose neighbors gradually began speaking a completely different language--like i'm not living in the same world as other people, especially some of the people currently serving in or running for elected offices.
But I hear more talk these days about democracy than I used to.
Not, unfortunately, more than I hear about politics as a game played for sport by journalists and rich guys, but some.
Plus, of course, we all have a stake in fair voting and fair use and the Constitution.
Posted by: debco | November 2, 2002 11:06 PM