When I was 19 just over a decade ago and the music industry was just catching onto CD burning and MP3s, I wrote directly to some Canadian lobbyists. At the time

When I was 19 just over a decade ago and the music industry was just catching onto CD burning and MP3s, I wrote directly to some Canadian lobbyists. At the time they were pushing for levies on recordable CDs. Considering CDs ran almost a $1 per disc and I was a university student, this hit home. I told them that they just didn't understand the situation, that the Internet changed everything, and that they wouldn't be growing their revenues with this CD levy because distribution would move away from physical media anyhow. I also called shenanigans on how they would actually distribute the proceeds to Canadian artists seeing as how most of the pirated material was from non-Canadian artists. The organization appeared to be a one man show for the most part, and that gentleman wrote back to me, disagreed, and suggested that I could meet him in Ottawa because they were going to lobby until they got their way. Lobbying is frustrating because it works. A lot of legislation is essentially drafted behind closed doors by special interests, then revised within a particular ministry before getting a seal of approval vote by the legislature. In fact, that's probably how just about everything short of a private members' bill is done these days. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. There are businesses and individuals that have interests which will be harmed by these laws. What this group needs to do is hire its own lobbying group. Otherwise, the debate is being framed in terms of "Canadians are pirates" and "Canada needs to get with the program and adopt laws that other countries have". Michael Geist has probably single-handedly done more to thwart these laws than anyone else. But I'm sure that the other side has full time consultants on hand. The lobbyists have a lot more energy only because the opposition has not figured out that if they band together under an umbrella, their focussed energy is much greater.