It’s one stop shopping at BoingBoing today.

Here’s a whack of links I found on their site to keep you busy while I go waste my time doing something else:

EFF: DeepLinks has an article on how copyright “watchdogs” and other scurrillous cretins (ie. lawyers) abuse and offend music fans:

No artist would talk to a fan like this (and if they did, they should be ashamed), to the person who just bought their forthcoming album. But the copyright enforcement lawyers are on auto-pilot, without any accountability to the artists or to the fans, threatening people, suing people, and all the while insisting that this is just how copyright law works.

Pardon my French, but that’s bull****.

Which makes me wonder: am I the only blogger who doesn’t give a fuck about spelling the word “bullshit”? Hmmm.

Fair Use Day! While the legal concept of “Fair Use” is more of an American thing (here in Canada we have “Fair Dealing” which is sort of the same but different just like Canadians are sort of the same as Americans but different … oh nevermind, just enjoy our beer) it’s a good day to celebrate our freedom to use copyrighted materials in the various ways still allowed by law; even though the Big Media companies would prefer to eradicate those freedoms and make us pay for every breath we take.

Well it’s that time of the year again so get out and celebrate your rights. We have had a big fairuse year to date. With EMI dropping DRM from their music catalog and Apple agreeing to sell it, the take down of AACS protection and its continuing battle against ‘the bad guys’, to the still ongoing debate over net neutrality. It has been a turbulent year with many small victories along the way. There is still a long way to go to ensure that our rights remain with us as the recent stories about ATT with their claims that a non-neutral net needs less bandwidth have shown. So keep copying, keep making parodies, and keep expressing your rights.

Anti-DRM T-Shirt Contest Winners! Sponsored by TorrentFreak, the winning designs are available to order … you can even get the designs to print your own shirts!

DRM is doomed to fail. Unfortunately, the majority of the movie companies and record labels still think it’s the best way to “protect” their media. By wearing these shirts you can show them it’s not and that it only hinders honest customers.

Access2Knowledge. The A2K Treaty holds great promise in the preservation and enhancement of our rights to access knowledge. As Cory Doctorow said in his post on BoingBoing:

If you want to do something to preserve the public’s side of the copyright bargain, check out the Access to Knowledge Treaty, a proposed treaty that the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization has recently green-lighted

So that’s enough of me pilfering from other people’s blogs.

Go copy something. Write a letter to a politician or an artist you are fond of. Talk to your friends. Just reading blogs doesn’t make change. Talking to each other is a start. Actions, of course, speak louder than words.

Cheers.