Copyright or Copyleft: when is a dissident just a cheat?

And why does the Left seem to love self-proclaimed rebels with anti-social or even larcenous tendencies?

The Straight Goods Cyber Forum
with Larry Solway

Commentary:

  I am not so bound up in the politics of the left that I believe it's always "us against the evil Establishment." That's just too easy. In fact, it is so easy that the Left tends to embrace every kind of dissension, no matter how wacky, no matter how ultra-left, as worthy activists.
  Example. The other day on TV it was announced that the parking lots run by the City (Toronto) would raise prices. One young "rebel" went on camera to deplore the "rip-off." In Toronto we have an eminent (and lefty) councillor who regularly takes up the cudgels for people who park in private lots where the spaces are clearly marked and warnings about towing are posted.
  Break the law. Buck the Establishment. Fight City Hall. All are clarion calls to "get" the Establishment. And they stink.
  Last week we had another ringing example of a little man against the mighty. A man named Viktor Golub had run up an apparently uncollectible $800 in fines for non-payment. (He might not qualify as persecuted because he drives a $40,000 BMW.) He simply did not, and would not pay. He says since he got all those tickets he pays - most of the time.
  People who cheat have dozens of excuses. They do it because "everyone else" does it. People who cheat on income tax make the same claim, people who avoid consumer taxes use their avoidance as a platform for a political statement and the word "rip off" appears again.
  The all-too-clever Ontario Tories, quick to spot a juicy political issue, campaigned on the "rip-off" theme when they stopped photo radar. The fact that people who drive too fast are a danger to everyone is lost on the people who see the radar only as a way to pad government revenues.
  The latest attack on scofflaws comes from record producers who have applied to the Copyright Board of Canada for permission to raise royalties paid on blank CDs by an extra $3 and on some MP3 players an extra $100. Once again the thieves who help themselves to music on the Internet present themselves as poverty-stricken music-loving Davids pitting themselves against the money- grabbing Goliaths of the music industry.
  I know, I know - "everybody" does something like it. There are people whose music collection is made up cassette recordings they have made off the radio. There are people who videotape instead of buying the tape at a video store.
  But what is most irritating is that some of us espouse their cause. Some of us see them as dissidents, rebels against The Establishment.
  That's the operative word. Rights of the persecuted, the hungry, the needy, and the downtrodden are all subsumed under the rubric of fighting The Establishment.
  Why does it bother me that little guys fight against big guys, that people who feel put upon do what they can to ease the pain? What bothers me most is that we of The Left have taken some of these social rebels into our bosom. Not all of them of course, but most people who can claim to be victims of Big Business can get a sympathetic hearing. They have no interest in real causes like Social Justice.
  We, in our rush to justice, have embraced too many unusual causes. We have sheltered too many rebels simply because they don't want to belong to polite society.
  If the people who download music want to kill the music business, they are doing a good job of it. The only defense comes from many struggling artists who use the Internet to let people hear their music and perhaps get those same people to buy a ticket to one of their concerts. And they will, unless they can figure out a way to sneak into the concert hall.

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