Private Industry: 1 - General Consumers: 0

Michael Giest has blogged this story as has BoingBoing.

Personally, I find this very disturbing. From Boing Boing:

"The supposedly non-partisan Public Policy Forum is holding a major, one-sided IP symposium on Monday. Invited are the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, former head of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Association, and other big-stick-swingers for American-style copyright disasters. But when copyright lobbyists discovered that noted copyright scholar Howard Knopf would appear on just one of the panels, they went berserk and pushed successfully to have Knopf removed, ensuring that dissenting voices would be minimized on the day.

I certainly understand that it's the prerogative of the Public Policy Forum as hosts of the panel discussion to invite those individuals that they wish; However, this move is in direct contradiction to their own policy and mission statement, which reads, in part:

"The Public Policy Forum's mission is to strive for excellence in government - to serve as a neutral, independent forum for open dialogue on public policy, and to encourage reform in public sector management."

Unfortunately, this decision to exclude a speaker who publicly planned to specifically speak on Canada's current policies on fair copyright, and moreover, planned to demonstrate where Canada had opportunities to improve its own standing in this regard, was bullied from the podium.

I'm not really surprised, just disappointed that a real debate seems unlikely. These actions on the part of both the other panelists and the PPF are endemic of the sort of one-sided bullying that has characterized so much of the net neutrality and fair copyright issue.

As an educator and a media producer myself, I'm deeply concerned with how my IP is used; However, with that in mind, I also want a free and open discussion and a debate that supports all sides of this issue, not one that can produce talking-points-inspired spin that can be fodder for pundits and news outlets alike.

Links:
Michael Geist
BoingBoing
Howard Knopf
Public Policy Forum