There’s been lots of talk recently about Canada’s soon-to-be-proposed copyright law, and like many people, I’m annoyed. Of course, I’m not really worried. This sort of law has been proposed in Canada in the past, and has been quickly shot down. I agree that we need to fix our copyright laws, but nobody in their right mind thinks the DMCA is the right direction to be heading.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of the “intellectual property is evil” zealots. Intellectual property laws exist for a very good reason. These laws help society by providing an incentive for content production, by giving producers a temporary license to exploit it for profit. As somebody who enjoys content, I think this is a wonderful idea.

Unfortunately, current IP laws are broken in many different ways. I’m not going to bother listing them here, because it’s already been explained many times. I’m more interested in the underlying causes of these problems, one of which is that none of this legislation was created with any understanding for digital media or the computer industry. For example, without any requirement to eventually release source code, software companies are free to exploit most of their intellectual property indefinitely.

In an attempt to fix this, clever people came up with the idea of free software, and decided to wage war on the commercial software industry. The problem is that no matter who wins this war, society loses. If commercial software wins, we’re stuck with perpetual exploitation of intellectual property, and if free software wins, content producers lose much of their incentive to innovate.

Both sides will try to tell you that their solution is less harmful for society. I don’t know which side is right, and frankly, I don’t care. This is a false dichotomy. The right way to solve this problem is to fix intellectual property laws, not fight over which way of exploiting existing laws is better. Unfortunately, this is a problem that can’t be fixed until politicians start to understand the digital age. Lobbying doesn’t seem to be cutting it, which means that people from our industry are going to have to go into politics.

I know none of us want to do this, but let’s face it. It has to be done.

We’ll all appreciate your sacrifice for the greater good.