I have a story in this week’s Straight Goods on the Sarmite Bulte affair, where bloggers turned a Liberal MP’s cozy relationship with large media rights-holders into an election issue:
There were other factors at play, of course. Mayor David Miller endorsed Nash as someone who would work hard to advance Toronto’s interests. Nash ran an impressive campaign, and few people would seriously suggest that copyright reform itself was on the minds of very many voters when they unfolded their ballots.
But integrity and accountability were. “It would probably be wrong to declare that ‘The Internet’ or ‘The Blogosphere’ was the sole factor in Ms. Bulte’s ouster, but it probably helped get the word out,” Accordion Guy blogged today.
One of the little nuggets I turned up researching the article:
Bulte emerged as the poster politician for inordinate corporate influence over the parliamentary process: “Hollywood’s MP,” as she became known in the blogging world. (That moniker stuck so well that if you search Google for the phrase “Hollywood’s MP”, Bulte’s own campaign site is the third result.)
Straight Goods wasn’t able to list all of the URLs I’d included for folks hoping to learn more, so here you go:
- Prof. Michael Geist’s blog
- Boing Boing
- Accordion Guy
- Online Rights Canada
- The best history of this around
