Michael Geist reports that the Canadian copytright bill is expected to rise from the dead: There are rumours in Ottawa this evening that Industry Minister Jim Prentice has decided to forge ahead with the Canadian DMCA with the bill to be introduced tomorrow morning. I have two model letters that you could send (along with [...]
Boing Boing reports that Industry Minister Jim Prentice is having an open house about copyright tomorrow (Saturday). If you are in calgary, head on over, if you are not in Calgary, then why not send an email that says this: Dear Minister Prentice: I don’t like your copyright legislation. You are making a big mistake. [...]
Sent, via email (letter is better, but what can you do?), to a number of people, including Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry, responsible for the Copyright Act in Canada, and my MP – Thomas Mulcair NDP – Outremont. Please feel free to use, adapt, copy etc this letter and do with it what you [...]
Michael Geist keeps fanning the important flames of dissent on this new copyright bill that the Conservatives are to table in December. Geist’s main complaints (slightly edited) include: The bill is likely to include …anti-circumvention provisions … [ed: digital locks on your machines so that using the things you buy the way you want to [...]
Check out the comment section of CBC’s Search Engine show on the Feds’ expected copyright proposal.
From Boing: The Canadian government is about to bring down Canada’s version of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and it promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world. It will contain an “anti-circumvention” clause that prohibits breaking the locks off your music and movies in order to move them to new [...]
Democratic legislators have introduced a bill that will tie university financial aid funding to universities imposing stiff penalties for file-sharing, and to universities subsidizing student subscriptions to failed DRM-based systems like Napster and Ruckus. This is about as ugly as pork-barrel politics can get: politicians are so in debt to four of five ailing giants [...]
I was on a panel about copyright at the media and democracy conference, with Tina Piper and Owen Chapman. Someone asked about Public Domain music, and I said, yes there is a site, but I can’t remember what. Well, via Geist, it appears the International Music Score Library Project, a volunteer, non-profit public domain music [...]
I will be on two panels for the CKUT conference, Redefining Media: Media Democracy and Community Radio, this weekend at McGill. My sessions are both on Sunday: Copyright And Community Radio Sunday, Oct 21st, 2007, 12:30pm – Shatner Ballroom, 3480 McTavish, 3rd floor How does intellectual property law affect what you hear on your radio [...]
I’m as much of a copyfighter as the next guy, and have some street cred in public domain, free culture circles. I think that big companies abuse copyright, and that draconican copyright systems stifle innovation and creativity, and further are no good for artists and creators. But I’ve never argued that copyright should be discarded, [...]