Micheal Geist’s latest column in the Toronto Star tells of the merits of slow regulation.

He mentions that the meme was (or still is) that government are too slow for the rapids advancements of technology while the private sector is best suited to adapt rapidly and provide effective auto-regulation.

Yet, privacy regulation by the private sector has gone nowhere in the US. Internet governance by ICANN, instead of the ITU (which was apparently the « obvious alternative ») has not been a stellar success either.

He goes on praising the regulatory approach of the the Canadian government, which I think can be summarized as « yeah, were working on it ».

Other obvious examples: the DMCA, first implementations (I think) of the TRIPS protection requirements, and the various post 9/11 knee-jerks, rushed regulatory processes .

So basically, the private sector should move fast while the administrations should move slowly. Fair enough but I’ll reserve my opinions when we see the results of our own copyright reform process.

Chi va piano, va sano apparently.

Thanks Cla