Copyright News and Activities

Even if you're an avid follower of the news, you've probably missed it. Buried beneath the Pickton trial, Aqsa Parvez's murder and Schreiber vs. Mulroney, was a very important story: the Canadian version of the DMCA... it wasn't released to Parliament.

As a refresher for the uninitiated, the DMCA is essentially a copyright bill that runs things in the US. It's designed mostly to keep the copyright holders in power and keep those of us who would use "their" intellectual property to create our own art from doing so without permission. It's used as the backbone in lawsuits when the RIAA sues 12 year-olds for file sharing, and it prevents you from ripping CDs and DVDs or from doing research into important stuff like cryptography.

Anyway, until now Canadians haven't had to worry about this sort of bad policy, but today the Conservatives were supposed to unveil their new, even more restrictive version of the DMCA for Canada... but they didn't. Most likely due in large part to the major public outcry orchestrated by copyright activists like Michael Geist who understand the importance of copyright law.

This stuff is very much worth educating yourself about. Check out Geist's site and if you're interested, there's also the Facebook group, Boing Boing and of course, a Youtube video to show you what you can do.

Disc Drop

On a related subject, you might want to check out a new project by CBC's The Hour called Disc Drop. Here are the details taken straight from the site. I'm gonna get right on this. Anyone else interested?

There's nothing more satisfying than sharing the joy of music. Disc Drop is your chance to turn a total stranger on to the tunes that changed your life. Who knows? Maybe you'll change some-one else's life while you're at it.

• STEP 1: Make a mixed CD of your favourite tunes. Somewhere on the disc write: DISC DROP - cbc.ca/thehour. Be sure to include a track-listing so people can track down more music by the artists on your disc.
• STEP 2: Drop off your disc in a random public place.
• STEP 3: Go to the I Dropped a Disc - What Now, click on the comments, and write down where you dropped off your disc and the track-listing. Check back later to find out who picked it up, and where it's heading next.