Posts Tagged ‘copyfight’

The Power Of The Mash-Up

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

I present this as an example of the power of the mash-up to comment, contrast, parody, satirize and otherwise take the piss out of anyone or anything which affects us all.

Removing the power of the people to speak back through culture only serves to give power to assholes like this funky jerk with a great set of pipes. Support fair copyright reform, like Net Neutrality it is a vital component of Free Speech.

Cheers.

P.S. In Finland Broadband Is A Legal Right - tell your phone & cable companies and their big media lobbyists to fuck off.

Cory Doctorow Challenges Moore On “Radical Extremists” Perspective

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Best-selling, award-winning, Canadian author Cory Doctorow has challenged Heritage Minister James Moore’s publicly expressed view that those who oppose proposed DMCA style digital locks (as part of Bill C-32 the Copyright Reform Bill) are nothing more than “radical extremists”.

Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing and ardent copyfighter writes:

Here’s what that means for creators: if Apple, or Microsoft, or Google, or TiVo, or any other tech company happens to sell my works with a digital lock, only they can give you permission to take the digital lock off. The person who created the work and the company that published it have no say in the matter.

So if you buy $1,000 worth of digitally locked books for your Kindle or iPad, the author and the publisher can’t give you the right to move those to another device. That means that not only are you locked into the Kindle — so is the copyright holder. Authors and publishers who decide to stop selling via a digitally locked platform have to take the risk that their readers will abandon their investment in proprietary books in order to follow them to the next device.

So that’s Minister Moore’s version of “author’s rights” — any tech company that happens to load my books on their device or in their software ends up usurping my copyrights. I may have written the book, sweated over it, poured my heart into it — but all my rights are as nothing alongside the rights that Apple, Microsoft, Sony and the other DRM tech-giants get merely by assembling some electronics in a Chinese sweatshop.

That’s the “creativity” that the new Canadian copyright law rewards: writing an ebook reader, designing a tablet, building a phone. Those “creators” get more say in the destiny of Canadian artists’ copyrights than the artists themselves.

You should read Doctorow’s complete post and then submit your own response to James Moore to let him know just how many “radical extremists” there are in this country.

Doctorow concludes his post asking Moore for both and apology and an explanation. I think we all deserve one.

My opinion? James Moore should wipe off that brown lipstick he wears to impress the U.S. media lobby and go fuck himself.

Cheers.

UPDATE: Michael Geist posted further reactions to James Moore’s douchebag comments, including Moore’s efforts to deny that he even said them despite the online presence of video footage which proves him to be not only deliberately misleading about Bill C-32 but also an outright fucking liar. What a dick.

Electronic Books and the Canadian DMCA

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

I found this great video over Michael Geist’s blog who also links to a post by Sarah Bannerman. Created at the Vancouver Film School it’s an excellent primer about the impact of DRM on electronic books.

terms&conditions from mediamold on Vimeo.

Pass it on.

Cheers.

Canadian DMCA In 6 Weeks

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

The Harper government is, once again, marching in lock-step with the US media lobby and will attempt to pass a copyright reform bill that echoes the worst parts of the failed US DMCA.

They held a public copyright consultation that garnered a lot of attention and a lot of input - which they have promptly ignored.

The consultations were obviously nothing more than an attempt at pacifying an obviously outraged public who howled in reaction to Harper’s blatant kowtowing to US big media lobby lies and deceit.

Combined with the ongoing ACTA negotiations this bill will put Canada on a path of locked down information and corporate controls over your free speech rights. It’s a fucking drag to have to go through all this again but I hope the anger that will erupt from this becomes an election triggering issue that finally provides the shot in those tiny Harper nads that sends him squealing from any position of public influence.

From Michael Geist’s blog:

PMO Issues The Order: Canadian DMCA Within Six Weeks

Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister’s Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill. The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to reach consensus on the broad framework of a new bill. As I reported last week, Moore has argued for a virtual repeat of Bill C-61, with strong digital locks provisions similar to those found in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a rejection of a flexible fair dealing approach. Consistent with earlier comments on the need for a forward-looking, flexible approach, Clement argued for changes from C-61.

With mounting pressure from the U.S. - there have repeated meetings with senior U.S. officials in recent weeks - the PMO sided squarely with Moore’s vision of a U.S.-style copyright law. The detailed provisions will be negotiated over the coming weeks by the respective departments, but they now have their marching orders of completing a bill that will satisfy the U.S. that comes complete with tough anti-circumvention rules and no flexible fair dealing provision.

The bill is not expected until June, but it will have dramatic repurcussions once introduced. First, the bill represents a stunning reversal from the government’s seeming shift away from C-61 and its commitment to a bill based on the national copyright consultation. Instead, the consultation appears to have been little more than theatre, with the PMO and Moore choosing to dismiss public opinion. Second, after adopting distinctly pro-consumer positions on other issues, Moore has abandoned that approach with support for what may become the most anti-consumer copyright bill in Canadian history. Third, the bill will immediately impact the Canadian position at the ACTA and CETA negotiations, where the bill’s provisions on anti-circumvention and ISP liability will effectively become the Canadian delegation position.

For those wondering what can be done, my only answer is to speak out now. Write a paper letter to your Member of Parliament and send copies to the Prime Minister, Moore, Clement and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. No stamp is required - be sure to include your home address and send it to the House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6. Once that is done, join the Facebook group and the Facebook page and be sure to ask others do the same. You may spoken out before, but your voice is needed yet again.

Time to kick this arrogant dead-eyed fuck and his brown-lipstick cronies out of office.

Make a noise. Tell your friends. Shut them down.

UPDATE:
I’d like to add the words of Cory Doctorow about this news from his BoingBoing post:

What a goddamned disaster. The Tories have shown — yet again — their utter contempt for public opinion and Canadian culture and small business when these present an inconvenience to more windfall profits for offshore entertainment giants.

Remember: thousands of us responded to the Tory inquiry on copyright law, and overwhelmingly, we said we did not want a US-style copyright disaster at home. Remember: hundreds of thousands of us wrote and called our MPs. Remember: Canadian artists’ coalitions fought against the imposition of a DMCA in Canada. Remember: America’s copyright war has been an absolute trainwreck, with tens of thousands facing lawsuits, competition and innovation eroded by DRM, free speech challenged by copyright takedowns, and no improvements for creators or creativity.

There’s only one thing stupider than being the first country to enact the DMCA, in spite of its obvious shortcomings: enacting the DMCA after the first country has spent a decade showing how rotten and backwards this approach to copyright is.

Amen to that.

Time to get loud and nasty, folks.

Cheers.

Challenging A YouTube Take Down With Fair Use

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

Here’s a clever PSA from the folks at Rocketboom that shows exactly how to post your video works that are protected under Fair Use and prevent them from being arbitrarily removed from YouTube by ignorant dickhead ill-informed legal counsel of Big Media.

The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies explains how YouTube makes it easy to dispute a wrongful copyright claim.

For more information on the YouTube takedown process, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://meme.ly/DisputeYoutube

For more on Fair Use in Online Video see the Center for Social Media at http://meme.ly/KnowFairUse

To read more about the Hitler Finds Out meme, see the meme entry at knowyourmeme.com

Protect your works. Protect the interwebs. Tell Big Media to fuck off.

Cheers.

When Copyright Goes Bad

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Found this over on BoingBoing where Cory Doctorow sez:

Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch’s “When Copyright Goes Bad” (from Consumers International) is a great, 15-minute mini-documentary on what copyright can do, what it is doing, and what it needs to stop doing. Appearances by Fred Von Lohmann - Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist - University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock - Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee - Co-founder of Public Enemy.

It starts out kinda kitschy but then gets into the meat of the discussion and interviews. Definitely worth watching and sharing.

Cheers.

P.S. I am still recovering from yesterday’s 420 celebrations. I must be getting old.

Copyright Consultation Numbers

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Michael Geist has posted the final tally of numbers based on the responses to the infamous Bill C-61, which was intended as copyright reform but which was so obviously an attempt to cram US-style DMCA laws on Canada.

The copyright consultation concluded last fall and it seems worth reminding Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement what Canadians had to say when they asked for their opinion on copyright reform. It has taken some time to calculate the final numbers as the government conducted a review to ensure that all were properly posted. There were ultimately more than 8,300 submissions - more than any government consultation in recent memory - with the overwhelming majority rejecting Bill C-61 (6138 submissions against, 54 in support), while thousands called for flexible fair dealing and a link between copyright infringement and anti-circumvention rules.

Go read the full post to see how the numbers break down across the full range of concerns raised from the massive number of submissions.

As the UK goes full bat shit crazy with it’s incredibly undemocratic Digital Economy Bill it’s good to see we in Canada have at least a veneer of public input into a process that has been, and continues to be, corrupted by the media industries. As for anyone in the government paying attention to this input I don’t trust those fuckers to ever do the right thing and they should continue to be watched closely and lead by a firm grip on their nuts to ensure they do pay attention to what the citizens of Canada want in any copyright law.

Cheers.

Download Disobedience

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Nifty little info comic courtesy of the InfoAnarchy Wiki. Just cick on the image to see it full size.

Download Disobedience

Pass it on.

And while you’re at it - go sign the Public Domain Manifesto. As blogged on BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow:

The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception. Since copyright protection is granted only with respect to original forms of expression, the vast majority of data, information and ideas produced worldwide at any given time belongs to the Public Domain. In addition to information that is not eligible for protection, the Public Domain is enlarged every year by works whose term of protection expires. The combined application of the requirements for protection and the limited duration of the copyright protection contribute to the wealth of the Public Domain so as to ensure access to our shared culture and knowledge.

Read it. Sign it. Talk about it.

Cheers.

P. S. Thanks for the comic link, Fred!

P. P. S. If you want to get really fucked up squirrely ass mad about all this corporate ownership of the entire fucking world bullshit be sure to drop by Michael Geist’s blog where he looks at the secret ACTA negotiations that start today in Mexico where this agreement is being designed to extend far beyond counterfeiting and how it will reshape domestic law in many countries, including Canada.

Will Copyright Laws Stifle Creativity?

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

There’s been a lot of bullshit happening in Canada as the Harper government does its best to look pretty whilst wearing the brown lipstick of the U.S. media industry. You can find out more about the pitiful shenanigans of the music industry, blatantly stacking town hall meetings to discuss copyright reform, and the suppression of alternative voices at these so called “open and public discussions”, on other blogs like Michael Geist and Jill Golick or P2P.net and BoingBoing. I’ve ranted and raved about it before - and doubtless will again - but right now it’s the weekend and I’m lazy and I’m gonna go lie down and read a cheap mystery novel.

In the meantime, here’s a short video of Prof. Lawrence Lessig giving a talk this past February at the New York Public Library (along with Steven Johnson and Shepard Fairey) addressing the very real concerns that our copyright laws are being hijacked by dying media industries to support a failed and archaic business model and in those efforts to stem the inevitable tide of technological and cultural progress they are stealing our voices, stealing our right to speak and hear about our world.

Will copyright laws stifle creativity? If the major media companies are allow to corrupt our elected officils and subvert our democratic processes to assert their right to define what culture is - as in: whatever they sell us and nothing else - then Yes the laws of copyright are a threat to creativity and freedom of speech as well as freedom of thought.

Make noise. Kick these fuckers in the nuts.

Cheers.

P. S. Actually the mystery novel is not cheap, it’s Dashiel Hammett’s classic “The Big Knockover” - in case you were wondering.


Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada