I hope you were able to attend our Copyright Alliance Exponential Thursday in the House Cannon Caucus Room. We blogged live from the event in summary format, but I wanted to share some impressions of the day.

One, I was grateful for House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers for helping us secure the room and for coming to speak, even when they had cancelled votes that day and he could have been off in Michigan. He is a true believer in artists and copyright, and he is to be commended for his work in this area. He said that he wished the entire general public could see the dynamism and energy being exhibited by artists and copyright holders in the room. It was of course a public event and I saw many people not affiliated with Capitol Hill in attendance, but he's right, it would be nice to have a roadshow. Let me catch up from my loss of sleep putting together this one first, though!

Two, I was grateful for all of my 42 members who assisted with the event in different ways, particularly the 15 or so who exhibited. They showed how broad the creative community really is, with exhibitors from songwriters, recording artists, software, magazine and book publishers, photographers and graphic artists, motion pictures and television. We saw classic performers showing their support for copyright, and new business models being exhibited. This contradicted one copyright opponent who told the L.A. Times that our members should not support the Copyright Alliance but should instead pursue new business models; anyone following this debate or attending our public Exponential knows our members are doing both. Sorry to disappoint you, but we're not going anywhere!

Three, I was grateful to the hundreds of people who attended. The Cannon Caucus Room is quite large but it was standing-room only on Thursday (except for the set of white sofas we had grouped into a Copyright Alliance Lounge, which was quickly filled with reporters typing away on laptops while enjoying the free food). It's great to see so many people curious about ways the creative community is embracing the digital economy, and embracing each other in standing together for copyright.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 11:51 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under blogging, copyright opponents, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.