The Power of Backroom Lobbying: How the Music Industry Got a Copyright Extension

An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian government's unexpected budget decision to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings came as a surprise to most copyright watchers, but not the music industry lobby, which was ready with a press release within minutes. How did the industry seemingly know this was coming? Michael Geist reports that records show the extension is the result of backroom lobbying with monthly meetings between senior government officials and music industry lobbyists paving the way for copyright term extension without public consultation or debate.

Comments

The lobby's doing its job

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a disgusting, dirty, sordid job, and deserves all the contempt it gets.

But the real traitors are the politicians in bed with those lobbyists. Supposedly representing the greater interest, in reality just serving their own greed.

Those should go to jail, no less.

Re:No surprise

[Immerman]

How about mandatory 24-hour surveillance on all politicians, publicly live-streamed? Sure it's an invasion of privacy, but it's an invasion of privacy that could be mandated as the price of wielding the power we grant them. They want to watch us - who can individually do so little of significance, we should be able to watch them *MUCH* more closely.

Of course there's a bit of a "can't get there from here" problem, but periodically opportunities for major revisions do arise.