by Rob Cottingham
If you're wondering whether blogs had any influence over Monday night's results, you might want to talk to now-former Liberal MP Sarmite Bulte.
After eight years, the voters of Parkdale-High Park turfed her out, looking instead to New Democrat Peggy Nash to represent them in Ottawa. And while it was a hard night for Liberals everywhere, Bulte's riding saw the biggest vote swing in Toronto — 5722 votes, according to law professor (and blogger) Michael Geist.
Prof. Geist was watching the riding closely. As one of Canada's leading voices for limiting the reach of copyright restrictions (that is, allowing you to do more with everything from music CDs to movies), he blew the whistle on Bulte's cozy relationship with the media industry.
In May 2004, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Heritage — chaired by Bulte — released a report that represented a massive rights giveaway to giant media. Prof. Geist wrote a column at the time questioning Bulte's acceptance of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from organizations representing copyright holders. He suggested MPs should avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest.
Bulte responded defensively, but there was little media coverage. The issue simmered away quietly, even after the federal government introduced Bill C-60, embodying the same bias as Bulte's report.
Then two unrelated events happened.
First, Sony tried to restrict music copying by secretly embedding a computer program in its music CDs that would install itself on a user's computer. There was a flurry of outrage, especially once users learned that the program had a pretty serious security flaw that exposed their computers to potential mischief. News spread quickly, both in the mainstream media and on blogs, and Sony was faced with a PR fiasco. The company backed down, but the issue of copyright — and the unsavoury practices copyright holders were willing to adopt — was suddenly high on agenda of many bloggers.
And second, the Liberal government lost a non-confidence vote, and the 2006 election was on.
Prof. Geist had once again engaged the issues around Bill C-60, and his concerns were beginning to be echoed among some Canadian bloggers. But it wasn't until he visited the Sarmite Bulte campaign web site that things really got going.
Her campaign calendar included a $250-per-plate fundraising dinner, held for her campaign's benefit by what the Globe and Mail described as "the who's who in the Canadian music, publishing and film communities."
Prof. Geist blogged it on Dec. 22, acknowledging there was nothing illegal about the fundraiser but asking, "with the public's cynicism about elected officials at an all-time high and Canadians increasingly frustrated by a copyright policy process that is seemingly solely about satisfying rights holder demands, is it possible to send a worse signal about the impartiality of the copyright reform process?"
That got the attention of bloggers — including the 900-pound gorilla of Canadian blogging, Cory Doctorow. As the rest of the country nursed New Year's Day hangovers, he posted the story to the massively popular site Boing Boing: "Sam Bulte, the Canadian Liberal Party MP for Parkdale/High Park is having her election campaign bankrolled by the Canadian entertainment cartel. Bulte previously authored a one-sided report proposing crazy, US-style copyright laws for Canada, and now her pals from the Canadian Recording Industry Association are throwing her a $250/plate fundraiser — just the kind of high-ticket event that the poor artists Bulte claims to represent can't afford to attend. Instead, expect this dinner to be stacked with industry fat-cats."
Prof. Geist blogged the next day that this was the tipping point, and he proved to be right. Bloggers across the country took up the cause, and so did the mainstream media. Outlets from the CBC to the National Post covered the story; with Peggy Nash now taking the issue on, Bulte officially had problems. And they got worse.
Popular blogger Joey DeVilla (known to his fellow bloggers as Accordion Guy) lives in the riding, and he threw himself into the melee with relish. At first he published parody images, but then came an all-candidates' meeting where Bulte was asked to take Prof. Geist's copyright pledge: a promise that, because of the contributions she'd received, she wouldn't sit on the heritage committee or serve as the heritage minister. Her over-the-top reaction was captured on videotape, and that video found its way onto DeVilla's web site.
By election night, Canada's fractious community of bloggers was united in at least one respect: an intense interest in the results from Parkdale-High Park. That interest paid off with Bulte's defeat.
There were other factors at play, of course. Mayor David Miller endorsed Nash as someone who would work hard to advance Toronto's interests. Nash ran an impressive campaign, and few people would seriously suggest that copyright reform itself was on the minds of very many voters when they unfolded their ballots.
But integrity and accountability were. "It would probably be wrong to declare that 'The Internet' or 'The Blogosphere' was the sole factor in Ms. Bulte's ouster, but it probably helped get the word out," Accordion Guy blogged today.
Bulte emerged as the poster politician for inordinate corporate influence over the parliamentary process: "Hollywood's MP," as she became known in the blogging world. (That moniker stuck so well that if you search Google for the phrase "Hollywood's MP", Bulte's own campaign site is the third result.)
Could it happen again? A lot depends on whether campaigns draw the right lessons from Bulte's defeat. (A little engagement with bloggers might have gone a long way, for example.) And it remains to be seen if an issue that isn't as traditionally tied to online culture as copyright could catch fire in the same way.
But blogs, and the growing universe of citizen media, that surround them, show no sign of going away. There is a growing, networked community online: disparate, diverse, often dyspeptic and occasionally devastating. Cross them, and you'd better be ready to pay the price.
Rob has served as a strategic-level communications professional for more than 18 years.
Related addresses:
URL 1: www.robcottingham.ca
URL 2: www.michaelgeist.ca
URL 3: www.boingboing.net
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