Hill Times journalists Abbas Rana, Simon Doyle and Harris MacLeod have assembled a list of 57 ridings in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, where the parties won or lost by a margin of about five per cent or less in the last federal election. This is a superset of what Michael Geist called the Copyright MPs which won their riding by 10 percent or less in the last election and their riding is home to a university.
I recently forwarded a message about Hamilton home-town hero Bob Young speaking out on Copyright to the Hamilton area MPs. I sent 4 letters, and received 1 reply from the 3 NDP MPs suggesting they had forwarded the letter to Charlie Angus, the NDP Spokesperson on Digital Issues.
From a staffer in Conservative MP David Sweet's office I received the common message that he can't comment on a bill that hasn't been tabled yet.
Michael Geist has identified a group of 27 MPs (nine percent of all MPs) who share two key attributes - they won their riding by 10 percent or less in the last election and their riding is home to a university. The combination is important since it is these MPs - not the very safe Jim Prentice - who will face the consequences of the Prentice bill that will harm a generation well versed in digital technologies, social networks, and the Internet.
q&a The Red Hat founder launches a local version of Lulu.com while discussing content management, copyright and the Microsoft-Novell deal. Plus: The Tiger-Cats connection
The evening ended with a call to everyone who cares about free and open source software to speak to their local politicians and share their views on patents and copyrights. By sharing the practical reasons to support patent and software reform, friends also could be convinced to talk with their politicians. As Young said more than once during the evening, "Votes trump money."
Peter Salus, Bob Young, owner of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Lulu.com digital publishing, founder of The Center for the Public Domain, and co-founder of Red Hat Software, and EFF's Policy Coordinator, Americas, Ren Bucholz will be the guests at the Hamilton Linux User Group on February 1st. The topic of the panel discussion will be Linux v. SCO and the relevant freedom issues and legalities.