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Video Surfaces of Moore's "Radical Extremists" Comment

By Michael Geist

Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore's "radical extremists" comment yesterday generated considerable attention, though he privately denied saying it in some correspondence (one DM: "Not what I said. Not even close").  New video has now been posted that confirms the comment and further attacks on those supporting fair copyright.  The latest comments:


With regard to the legislation, we really did try to strike a balance with this legislation. You'll notice, I think, we're now three weeks into the public consideration of the legislation that we tabled.  There is a lot of commentary out there on this online and I think the response that we're getting is that that generally is the case.  The only people who are opposed to this legislation are really two groups of radical extremists.  In the continuum of political ideaology, if you go really extreme to the right or really extreme to the left it actually swings back around.  That is sort of where we are.

There are those that pretend to be for copyright reform.  But they don't believe in actual copyright reform.  There are those that are cited as experts by the media endlessly who are not in favour of copyright reform.  They favour only weakening legislation, only in gutting tools that would allow those who are actually investing in jobs to have those jobs.  I think we give them far too much voice.  If you look at the balance, anyone who is truly objective, looks at this legislation will realize that everyone has a little water in their wine with this legislation because it requires that kind of balance. When we started off our copyright proposal, the Prime Minister said, he was a staffer back in the 1980s in Brian Mulroney's government, he said since then until now this has been an ongoing issue.  Good luck with that. Because there are people with such divergent interests.  With this legislation, if you do not have an absolutist view, if you are open minded, if you want to ensure that the whole of Canada and the greater economy can move forward you can strike the right balance and I think this legislation does that.

But don't let those some of them are out there, who as I say are cited endlessly by the media, who pretend to be experts on copyright reform, who put up a smiley, shiny, cute face on what is actually a pretty disingenuous campaign to undermine the rights, the property rights of individual citizens,  to invest in their creative goods.  That is what a lot of people do.  We can't listen to those voices. If they do speak up, we need to confront them.

Full post as published by Michael Geist on June 23, 2010 (boomark / email).