The NFB is branching out from Hinterland Who’s Who (actually, I have no idea if they have anything to do with HWW, I just love the music at the beginning of the mini-films) and other cold Canadian fare to present RIP: A Remix Manifesto. It looks like an interesting take on the copyright battle, though unfortunately there’s no way (as of yet) to view the whole film online. Here’s the trailer…
Rather than give you a ham-handed attempt at an explanation, I’ll let these notable personages take a crack at it..
and you can get much more information at the Creative Commons website.
Here’s some video from the House of Parliament where Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry and the main force behind the pending copyright atrocity known as Bill C61 gets smacked a good one.
And here’s a link to an interview from Search Engine, CBC’s internet culture show, where Prentice fails to defend C61 and hangs up on the host.
By the way, Search Engine will not be back in September. As usual, the CBC has produced something of value and decided not to do anything with it. Clap clap…clap. Here’s some reaction from blogs and the Globe and Mail.
Well, thanks, Gene Simmons, now we have a terrible TV show AND your idiocy and ignorance regarding the digital age with which to mock you. Apparently, according to Gene, the music industry is dead and it’s all the fault of the fans. It couldn’t possibly be that the old model Kiss rode to fame and fortune on isn’t valid anymore, or that maybe nobody wants music from a bunch of aging rock-dorks. No sir, couldn’t be that at all.
This one’s more ranting about the proposed Canadian DMCA. Also, on a technical note, it looks like video hosting sites don’t ike something about the end credits, so I guess I’ll have to tweak that for further episodes.
The Canadian DMCA has just been tabled by the House of Commons, and from what I can tell (gleaned from Michael Geist’s excellent blog post) it’s a complete and total ruinous mess for the future of electronic media in Canada. Let’s, just for a second, get past the spectre of evil pirates stealing content from hard-working, impoverished studios and record companies. This bill makes it illegal for anyone to transfer music they bought off a CD and onto their own iPod. It also makes it illegal to unlock an iPhone or other locked digital devices, to the tune of a $20,000 fine. So the fact that I’ve been carting around said iPhone for the last six months is apparently more important than the fact that our representatives in Parliament consort with gangster molls or that the Alberta tar sands are an ecological disaster area. No, people downloading the latest Coldplay album is what our law enforcement services should concern themselves with.
The real irony here is that the studios are the authors of their own destruction. If these laws are actually enforceable, all that will happen is that people won’t bother to watch copyrighted material anymore. The means of production are cheaper than ever, and more and more people are watching amateur video, citizen journalism and other user generated content. The drive for self-preservation will actually accelerate the decline and fall of big media, by its own hand.
And the potential damage from this bill doesn’t just affect individuals. Companies in the business of moving and storing content, like Domain7, have already expressed concerns (check their news section for their take on the bill).
What can you do to voice your concerns about this bill? Email your member of Parliament (I just did, for the very first time), join online groups like the Fair Copyright for Canada group on Facebook, and join the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, and other groups advocating for digital rights.
Crazy talk, you say? Maybe not. Doctorow compares the reproductive system of dandelions, which consists of “show up everywhere = success”, to free propagation of content on the net. Though many people hew to the old model of trying to get people to pay for content, Doctorow asserts that for most people creating copies of their stuff is a massive money-sink, and that the best way for their work to survive is to let it spread…like dandelions. Neat.