"I think that the balance needs to be restored, and I would note that in the camp in which I am in, one finds libraries, universities, the Internet industry, the manufacturers of digital media, and consumers"
About this Quote
Notice the staging. “The camp in which I am in” signals partisanship while softening it with a folksy metaphor. Then comes the roll call: libraries and universities (public virtue, knowledge), the Internet industry and digital media manufacturers (innovation, jobs), and finally “consumers” (democratic mass legitimacy). It’s a rhetorical power move: align yourself with education and everyday people, then treat technology companies as natural allies rather than self-interested lobbies. The subtext is that the opposing camp, left unnamed, belongs to entrenched rights-holders: studios, labels, publishers - the old gatekeepers. By refusing to say it, he lets the audience fill in the villain, which keeps the tone “reasonable” while still drawing a bright line.
The context is early-2000s policy warfare over DRM, file sharing, and the scope of the DMCA, when “digital media” stopped being a product category and became an ecosystem. Boucher’s sentence is really a map of power: he’s betting that cultural authority (libraries) plus economic momentum (the Internet industry) can outmuscle legacy copyright maximalism, and he’s laundering that bet through the language of restoring fairness.
Quote Details
| Topic | Internet |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Boucher, Rick. (n.d.). I think that the balance needs to be restored, and I would note that in the camp in which I am in, one finds libraries, universities, the Internet industry, the manufacturers of digital media, and consumers. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-that-the-balance-needs-to-be-restored-and-157097/
Chicago Style
Boucher, Rick. "I think that the balance needs to be restored, and I would note that in the camp in which I am in, one finds libraries, universities, the Internet industry, the manufacturers of digital media, and consumers." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-that-the-balance-needs-to-be-restored-and-157097/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I think that the balance needs to be restored, and I would note that in the camp in which I am in, one finds libraries, universities, the Internet industry, the manufacturers of digital media, and consumers." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-that-the-balance-needs-to-be-restored-and-157097/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
