A legal scholar has investigated the past fundraising of a Canadian politician who was recently outed for taking campaign contributions from the copyright cartel and delivering restrictive copyright laws in return. He concludes that while the Member of Parliament claims that funding doesn't influence her politicking, it wasn't until the campaign contributions began to roll in that she took any interest in copyright law.
Sam Bulte is the Canadian Liberal Member of Parliament who takes big campaign contributions from the entertainment cartel and then proposes Draconian, US-style copyright laws. Throughout her first term, she was nearly silent on the subject of copyright. In her second term, however, Bulte received substantial funding from entertainment and pharmaceutical companies and introduced a number of overbroad copyright proposals.
Bulte claims that she can't be bought and sold, but the numbers tell another story:
Ms. Bulte claims that "Nobody influences me. Nobody can buy me." I'll take her at her word. But I am concerned at Ms. Bulte's recent fascination with copyright law. Ms. Bulte was first elected in 1997. According to Elections Canada's candidate contributions and expense reports, her campaign contributions totaled $67,423. Corporate sponsors aplenty, but no big copyright. And, interestingly, I cannot find reference to Ms. Bulte even uttering the word "copyright" until the dying months of that Parliament, when, as a member of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, she asked a few questions in a working sessions on a study of the Canadian book industry. She'd have to have slept pretty hard to avoid talking copyright there.
In the November, 2000, election, Ms. Bulte had managed to scoop up over $81,000 in campaign financing. And now some of the big copyright names are there: SOCAN, the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, Alliance Communications Corporation, Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc., Epitome Pictures, Chapters, CanWest Global, CTV, Rogers Communications, Baton Broadcasting, Good Earth Ventures and the Astral Television Network. Interestingly, there are a number of other IP intensive industries represented: beer (Molsons), wine (Pilliteri Estates Winery) and pharmaceuticals (Pfizer and Apotex – makes you wonder what she said to these two!). And when the 37th Parliament began on January 29, 2001, voila, Ms. Bulte began publicly uttering pro-copyright platitudes. By April 2, 2001, Ms. Bulte stood in the House to "applaud" the initiatives of "the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and its partners, the Canadian Independent Record Production Association and the Canadian Recording Industry Association". By December 6, 2001, Ms. Bulte was announcing to the House the imminent tabling of a copyright bill. And, on June 18, 2002, Ms. Bulte spoke on third reading of Bill C-48, the Internet retransmission exemption won by broadcasters. A Canadian copyright politician is born.
Link,
Link to Digital-Copyright.ca's Wiki for Parkdale organisers,
Link to campaign site for Peggy Nash, Bulte's NDP opponent
(via Michael Geist)
