It's been tried, according to Rick Falkvinge, who begins a seven-part history of copyright today. Moneyquote: The copyright industry has tried the same tricks and rhetoric for well over 500 years, and they are also keen on trying to rewrite history. But the tale of the history books differs sharply from what the copyright industry is trying to paint. When the printing press arrived in 1453, scribe-craft was a profession in high demand. The Black Death had taken a large toll from the monasteries, who were not yet repopulated, so copying books was expensive. Obsoleting scribes was not a popular development with...

20 February, 2011

Our old friend Ivan Smith's ears perked up at our mention of an independent advisory panel to offer suggestions on how to improve a government website. He wonders if anything similar is planned in Canada. Smith points to copyright activist Michael Geist's interesting testimony March 25 before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (available, sigh, not on the committee's website, but on Geist's.) Moneyquote: In recent years, many countries have embraced open data initiatives, including both the U.S. and U.K.  Others, such as Australia, have adopted open licenses to make government content more readily usable and...

04 April, 2010
CopyCon Ministers - cropped
Why is Canada's news media doing such a shoddy job covering the copyright consultations now taking place in select cities across part of Canada? At the heart of the consultations on planned changes Canada's copyright law lies a fundamental question: Should the law protect authors of creative work, or corporate intermediaries who traditionally profited from the massive effort formerly required to reproduce and distribute them? Thanks to digital technology, the cost of copying and distributing works is rapidly approaching zero. Naturally, those who once profited from copying and distributing creative works are frantically trying to stem the flow of creative works, advocating ever-lengthening copyright protection,  and mandatory enforcement of consumer-hostile technologies that prevent all copying, legal or otherwise. In many cases, they have co-opted creator organizations to their cause. Not surprisingly, news organizations tend to view this question through the lens of corporate intermediaries. With exceptions, they frame the debate in terms University of Ottawa law professor Jeremy De Beer describes as, "the caricature of toiling creators vs. freeloading pirates."
02 August, 2009