If cyberspace is boundaryless, how can the US government shut down BlackBerry?

Following along the same line of thought, if it is right for BlackBerry to comply with (good? bad? dubious?) American law in the United States, is it wrong for Google to comply with (undoubtedly bad) Chinese law in China?

It is increasingly obvious that the rule of law does and will apply to the net and the web and digital communication generally. And law is still mostly national law. And the complications of that are still being worked out.

But the fact that the rule of law does apply is important. We still see theories of digital communication presented to us that say, in effect, if users don’t get the laws they want, they will simply pirate everything anyway, so the law must surrender to reality. But in the end that’s the claim of force, not the rule of law. The need to sort out what constitutes good law for digital communication remains.

The blog run by This Magazine has been running a lively and often thoughtful discussion about copyright and copyleft, creators, access, and Access Copyright. It’s at blog.thismagazine.ca. Started about Feb 10 so you may need to scroll back a bit.

Rumours from Ottawa: Heritage Minister Bev Oda wants a new copyright bill and she wants it soon.

Factor this statistic into the discussion about digital communication. Worldwide, it’s estimated people will spend $9 billion in 2006 for cellphone ringtones.

Copyright debate often sets up a polarity between rightsholders and rightsusers. Creators, perhaps more than most people, have a foot in both camps, and they constantly deal with producers and publishers who are themselves users of their work.

Media corporations that seek to assert their own copyrights while appropriating creators’ rights have soured a lot of creators on copyright in general, not without cause. But lots of creators still believe they need to be rewarded for the value of the work they provide.

One new wrinkle on that: an effort to launch a Canadian Freelance Union in association with the CEP, one of Canada’s major media unions, to extend collective bargaining to freelancers as well as staff writers, in order to give self-employed writers improved clout, including on copyright matters.

Follow up at www.cep.ca/freelance .