I think that most Canadians, regardless of political affiliation, would see intellectual property that is free of copyright as a good thing. We can all celebrate content creators that, out of the goodness of their heart, release their works into the public commons for everyone to use. Where the issue becomes sticky is how much should content creators be allowed to copyright and how restrictive those copyrights should be.

On the one side we have people that believe that new media is only created because self-interested creators can protect their works and enjoy the fruits of that protection. They see copyright as a way to encourage the creation of new works. Artists either have a profit motive and create works out of this motive or they simply create for its own sake and require the profits from the works to survive and keep creating. Among those people who see copyright this way there might be disagreements over how restrictive those protections should be. Perhaps some people believe that copyright is a good way to foster cultural innovation but we should not limit the constitutional freedoms of people for the sake of intellectual property. While others take pride in their monetary support of Canadian culture and they want to see intellectual pirates stopped regardless of the cost to our personal liberty.

On the other side of the spectrum we have people that believe that copyright is bad for cultural innovation. These people believe that intellectual property is necessarily put into the public commons. That content creators draw upon the inspirations of others and thus should 'pay it forward' by allowing their works to be used and built upon by others. Among these people we might see disagreements over how 'free' cultural innovation should be. Some might believe that all works can be used in any manner by others, even wholly sold for a profit without any compensation to the creator. Other believe that while blatant plagiarism is wrong, copyright should not prevent others from 'remixing' or appropriating the intellectual property of others to create derivative works.

Lastly you have the distinction between copyright as a means to protect ones work from being sold or plagiarized by others and copyright as a means by which to protect your investment from consumers that might obtain reproductions of your work from some other source. Some believe that copyright should apply to those who view or consume the intellectual property as entertainment, education or utility. This idea suggests that copyright is meant to not only protect a person's works against unauthorized production but also unauthorized consumption.

This is perhaps the most radical view of them all. This view sees copyright as a means to control who sees or hears the creation rather then just a means to control the reproduction. Here the consumer is the subject of the copyright rather then the creator. A copyright becomes a right not just to copy but a see, hear, taste, touch or interact right. Suddenly one no longer has the right to see a painting merely because it is before them, they cannot view a movie or hear a song simply because that piece of cultural is available on the internet. They must first apply for the right by way of monetary exchange. If an artistic work is copied unlawfully, we as consumers should take care to ensure that have the rights to see that work in it's unlawful state.

In this view copyright is a form of information control, a far perverted notion from something which is meant to foster cultural innovation.