If you want to see where a candidate stands on one of the most important issues of the day, an umbrella-type issue under which all the others may be said to fall—Iraq, healthcare, the environment, campaign reform—ask them what they have done and what they plan to do about the copyright law fashioned over the past decade in service of corporations and at the expense the public good. So many smart people have made compelling arguments about the way these laws hobble the flow of ideas and mock the key technological developments of our so-called information age, that any candidate who won’t come out in favor of rewriting them is tipping us all off that they are and will be a tool of corporations and that they will not act in our benefit.
John McCain, who is becoming perhaps the strongest advocate of copyright reform, is using Fox Network debate footage in campaign ads, raising the ire of Fox execs, who are now going after McCain with the usual battery of attorneys flush with all the confidence that comes with the super powers granted them by today’s corporate-constructed copyright law.