How porn parodies avoid copyright restrictions

By Peter Nowak - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 12:24 PM - 0 Comments

Wednesday, January 18, 2012 marked an intriguing confluence of events. No, it’s not some sort of Mayan end-of-the-world situation, but it is the day on which Wikipedia, Google and a number of other big websites posted the Stop Online Piracy Act. It was also the day on which the Adult Entertainment Expo kicked off in Las Vegas.

How on Earth are the two related? Bear with me.

I’ve written before about how SOPA has the potential to kick off the equivalent of an Internet Cold War. If enacted, the legislation would give U.S. authorities power to block certain websites. The target would be file-sharing enablers such as the Pirate Bay, but could also encompass other undesirable websites, which historically has meant porn. But that’s not the tree I’m barking up today.

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SOPA critics are ready for a showdown

By Jesse Brown - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 0 Comments

americancensorhip.org

For background on this potentially Internet-breaking bill, see my last post on the subject. 

How much does the Internet hate America’s proposed Stop Online Piracy Act? A LOT.

In anticipation of a congressional hearing on the bill on Thursday, online activists are mobilizing in a big way: Continue…

America’s war on blogs

By Jesse Brown - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 2:44 PM - 0 Comments

Hip hop, being a genre borne of copyright infringement, has always had a less tortured relationship with intellectual property than the rest of the music industry. Piracy and commerce coexist peacefully. The release of free street tapes and deliberately leaked singles are common teasers for an upcoming album. These “grey market” tactics have been absorbed by the rap hype machine to the point where they’re just another part of the product supply chain. It’s not some hippyish “free culture” thing either, but an effective form of marketing. In the lucrative world of hip hop, piracy is all about the Benjamins.

Try telling that to the Department of Homeland Security. Their Immigration and Customs Enforcement wing started seizing dozens of domains a year ago, wiping entire websites from the Internet based on ongoing (and unproven) copyright violation investigations (I wish I could explain to you what copyright has to do with Homeland Security, but I cannot).

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Freedom to hyperlink has copyright consequences

By Jesse Brown - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 4:27 PM - 6 Comments

The Supreme Court of Canada gets the Internet.  This week, it unanimously ruled that linking to libelous or defamatory content is not the same thing as publishing libelous or defamatory content. The case involved a former Green party campaign manager, Wayne Crookes, who wanted one Jon Newton to remove links from an article about Crookes on his website. While Newton’s article was not libelous, Crookes felt the material he linked to was. Publishing the link, Crookes’s attorneys argued, was no different than publishing the material it linked to.

The Court did not agree.

First of all, there’s an unsolvable technical problem involved in deeming linking and publishing to be the same thing. Unless I’m linking to my own content, I have no control over what lies at the other side of my link. The page I link to today may change tomorrow. If linking in Canada were to be considered publishing, then publishing would instantly become too risky to pursue for anyone with assets to protect. It would be like telling a cookbook publisher that the latest tome about cupcakes they just sent to the printer may or may not hit stores with images of child pornography included.

The effect on the Internet in Canada, the Court ruled, could be “devastating.” Continue…

Canada to U.S.: please blacklist us!

By Jesse Brown - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 5:15 PM - 30 Comments

Hyper-vigilant Internet Law Prof Michael Geist seems to be the first to have combed through the latest batch of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables, searching for any document containing the words “Canada” and “copyright.” And guess what he found?

• In a 2006 cable, Industry Minister Maxime Bernier promised to leak a copy of his Canadian copyright reform bill to U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins before it was introduced in Parliament.

• In a 2007 cable, the Privy Council Office disclosed to the U.S. details of confidential mandate letters Harper had sent to new ministers, demanding that they get copyright in line with U.S. demands as soon as possible.

• In 2009, Industry Minister Tony Clement’s policy director asked U.S. officials to add Canada to their Special 301 Priority Watch List—also known as the Copyright Blacklist and the Copyright Hall of Shame. They did, placing us alongside China, Russia and Pakistan as one of the world’s worst nations when it comes to piracy and bootlegging. Continue…

Just because it should be free, doesn’t mean you can steal it

By Alex Derry - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 4:56 PM - 11 Comments

Photo by Chris Devers c/o Flickr Creative Commons

Aaron Swartz was arrested last week after allegedly breaking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s computer network to play Robin Hood—stealing academic journals from the ivory tower and making them available for free online. The 24-year-old online activist and then-fellow at Harvard now stands accused of fraud. The prosecution, led by U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Carmen M. Ortiz, alleges that between September 24, 2010 and January 6, 2011, Swartz repeatedly broke into M.I.T.’s restricted computer wiring closet, accessed the network using an anonymous email address (at one time shielding his face with a bicycle helmet to hide his identity from security), and illegally hacked his way into the school’s JSTOR account to download 4.8 million articles. At one point near the end of his heist, according to the indictment, Swartz fled M.I.T. security officials attempting to question him.

Swartz, an early contributor to reddit and the co-founder of Demand Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization specializing in online campaigns for progressive causes, including protecting internet freedom and protesting the Patriot Act, may have disclosed a possible motivation behind his alleged actions three years ago. In his “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto,” released in 2008, he rallied against what he saw as the private monopoly of public culture:

“We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks.”

Open access ‘hacktivists’ like Swartz argue that academic journals constitute open data that should be freely available for the benefit of public knowledge. As Matt Blaze, a computer scientist at Princeton University, puts it, expecting authors to release their intellectual property to copyright is “quaintly out of touch with the needs of researchers and academics who no longer expect the delay and expense of seeking out printed copies of far flung documents.” The New York Times even lauded Swartz for a similar hack in 2009, when he and “a small group of dedicated open-government activists teamed up to push the court records system into the 21st century,” by downloading and releasing to the public over 19 million pages of court documents from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, described as “cumbersome, arcane and not free.” While government officials were beside themselves, Swartz and his crew had broken no laws.

Matt Ingram of Gigaom.com finds Swartz’s recent indictment disturbing, and argues that what the online activist did was no worse than when Mark Zuckerberg downloaded photos from Harvard’s network to create the beta version of Facebook. “It’s certainly nowhere near the kind of espionage that the government is alleging occurred in the case of WikiLeaks and the diplomatic cables it published, or the hacking that groups such as Anonymous and Lulzsec are accused of being involved in. What could possibly [be] gained by going after a young programmer for trying to liberate academic research from a library?” In a statement, Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal said that Swartz’s indictment was “like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”

But in reading the indictment, “liberating academic research” is not the charge he is facing. The four counts leveled against Swartz are for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. Timothy B. Lee of Forbes.com also notes that M.I.T. students’ access to JSTOR was cut off for several days following the Mission Impossible-inspired data breach, no doubt providing students much-needed fodder for the old “hacker ate my homework” excuse. Like the comedian who threw a pie at Rupert Murdoch and succeeded only in victimizing a man who was doing just fine making himself look bad, such actions make JSTOR “look like an injured, even magnanimous, party and gives them an excuse to make their policies more restrictive.”

Swartz wasn’t arrested for reading under the covers with a flashlight after bedtime. He faces allegations of deliberately breaking into someone else’s bedroom and re-wiring the lighting completely before even getting under the covers, all while wearing a mask. While the purpose of distributing JSTOR’s content for free on file-sharing sites may seem bizarre grounds for federal charges, fraud and trespassing aren’t.

Whether Swartz should be facing felony counts that could bring him up to 35 years in prison for actions, which while perhaps brazen and illegal, harmed no one, is another question altogether—JSTOR is not pursuing legal action against him and say they have no interest in doing so because the articles have been re-secured (although plenty of documents have already appeared online). However misguided such methods may be, it seems unfair to punish someone so severely for wanting to help the general public access a science journal, which would normally be available only to an elite group of graduate students.

Vancouver rioters accidentally identify themselves

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 12:16 PM - 15 Comments

Here’s a copyright story that has nothing to do with music downloads or movie piracy.

As was widely reported following the Vancouver hockey riots, social media was used to crowdsource a vigilante effort to identify the jerks who tore up their own city. Sites like Identifyrioters.com were launched to post pictures of the mayhem. They encourage users to click an “I know who this is!” button to link a pic to a person. Allegations are not posted publicly. They’re forwarded to the cops, who can follow up and see if the names fit the pics. Facebook also hosted similar armchair vigilante efforts, and video of the carnage was posted and scrutinized several sites. The online exposure was such that some rioters turned themselves in after finding their douchebaggery digitally documented. Continue…

Doesn't anyone want the Geek Vote?

By Jesse Brown - Monday, April 11, 2011 at 12:36 PM - 26 Comments

CPC candidate James Moore in a candid shot

Amid the usual hand-wringing over the apathy of the politically disenchanted youth, a simple question pops to mind: what party will stand for Canada’s geeks?

Yes, I know: the NDP has spoken up for Net Neutrality, the Liberals have their Digital Economy Strategy, and Tony Clement is good at Twitter. Seeing digital issues included in party platforms may gratify tech policy geeks like me, but we’re not where the real numbers are at. Only some geeks care about net neutrality and rural broadband. All geeks care about download speeds, cell phone bills, and bandwidth caps. And these geeks are legion.

Let’s consider their numbers: at its height, almost 100,000 Canadians were members of Michael Geist’s Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook Group. Over 482,000 Canadians have signed SaveOrNet.ca’s Stop The Meter petition. These efforts aren’t just the most popular Canadian political causes on the Internet- they’re among the most popular Canadian political causes anywhere. A massive number of Canadians are angry over consumer tech issues, and their votes are up for grabs. Continue…

The Bull Meter: The Conservatives on the Liberals' 'iPod tax'

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 7:33 PM - 46 Comments

"Ignatieff voted for an iPod tax of up to $75"

- Conservative attack ad
April 3, 2011

The basis for the Conservative party’s claim is that Liberal members of the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage voted in March of last year to extend a levy Canadians already pay on blank audiocassettes and blank CDs to MP3 players. The committee was voting on proposed amendments to the Copyright Act [not the government’s copyright legislation, as stated in an earlier version of this post]. The purpose of the digital media levy was to ensure that Canadian artists receive compensation when people use MP3s to copy their songs and music.

Pressed for details, a Conservative spokesperson told us via email that  “[according to] previous proposals from the Copyright Board, the iPod tax would increase the cost of the typical iPod or MP3 player by between $25 to $75 depending on how much storage space the device contains.” The reference is to the Copyright Board of Canada, which is in charge of fixing the amounts for such levies.

The claim a $75 levy was ever on the table—and that it was supported by the Liberals—is dubious for two reasons: first, contrary to Conservative claims, the Copyright Board never suggested the levy should be up to $75. That amount was proposed by a non-profit called the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which collects and distributes private copying royalties. But while they may not be the ones who collect it, it’s the Copyright Board that fixes levies on MP3 players, such as the ones that were in place until a December 2004 Federal Court decision struck them down. These ranged from $2 to $25.

Secondly, the Liberals changed their policy on taxing digital audio devices in December and have explicitly rejected the notion of an “iPod levy.” They now support compensating artists with a yearly transfer of $35 million.

Heard something that doesn’t sound quite right? Send quotes from the campaign trail to macbullmeter@gmail.com and we’ll tell you just how much bull they contain.

Sources:

Conservative attack ad

Record of voting by the Committee on Canadian Heritage on extending the private copying levy to digital music recorders

Levies proposed by the Canadian Private Copying Collective on digital music recorders

Levies certified by the Copyright Board of Canada on digital music recorders

The new Liberal position on the copying levy

Copyright Bill C-32

Copyright reform: the only thing more depressing than another election

By Jesse Brown - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 4:51 PM - 15 Comments

Hug a political reporter today, they could use it.

With little joy or passion, newsrooms are gearing up to dutifully cover every aspect of an election that nobody really wants. For journalists, the coming weeks will bring nothing but grind, a decaying echo of something that once seemed important, exciting, even fun. Twitter is filled with their tears, the poor babies.

Do I seem glib? I am glib! Glib and glum. I have no pity for those who cover politics, because I’m too busy pitying myself. I cover copyright. And that means I’m stuck on “repeat” for years, not weeks. Continue…

How we talk about the government's collecting of money

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, December 18, 2010 at 10:37 AM - 78 Comments

Followers of the English language may note that if, in the government’s estimation, there is no difference between a “copyright levy“—collected by the government from those who make a specific purchase for use toward to a specific purpose—and a “tax,” there would seem consequently to be even less room to claim a difference between an “airport user fee” and a “tax.”

Taxes, both real and imaginary

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 17, 2010 at 5:05 PM - 41 Comments

David Akin explores the tenuous reasoning behind the government’s latest radio spots.

They point to a report that came out of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Part of that report considered the idea of extending the levy Canadian consumers now pay on blank digital media like CDs to MP3 players. Indeed, the Heritage Committee voted on March 16 in favour of extending that levy with all Conservative members of that committee voting against and the two Liberals, two Bloc Quebecois, and one NDP MP voting in favour. Notably, as an NDP staffer pointed out to me today, the chairman of the committee, Conservative Gary Schellenberger did not vote with his Conservative colleagues, choosing to break a 5-5 tie at the committee by voting with the opposition.

The Canadian Private Copying Collective has apparently advised that an extension of the law would involve a levy of between $5 and $25 per unit. The NDP’s Charlie Angus has pegged it at $5. The Bloc’s Carole Lavellee has said it would be between $2 and $25. The Liberals have proposed amendments to the government’s copyright legislation, while categorically rejecting the idea of extending the copyright levy to iPods.

Perhaps interestingly, while the Conservative government says it is resolutely opposed to a levy on iPods, I am told by Minister James Moore’s office that the government has no plans to remove the levy that is already applied to blank CDs and audio cassettes.

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 12, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Doggone it
Cesar Millan, TV’s “Dog Whisperer,” was a hit with the crowd at sold-out Scotiabank Place in Ottawa last week, even though Ontario law deprived him of a key cast mate—Junior, the two-year-old American pit bull that recently took over from the dearly departed Daddy as Millan’s “right-hand man.” Millan, halfway through a tour of Canada, demonstrated training techniques on local dogs and expounded on his philosophy of calm assertiveness, but took time to criticize Ontario’s 2005 ban on pit bulls. “In the ’70s, the breed that people were afraid of was the Doberman,” he told the audience. “In the 2000s, it’s the pit bull. It’s not the breed, it’s the human behind the dog.”

Absolute powers of persuasion
Chinese authorities may not have much success persuading European governments to boycott the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honouring jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, but they’re having better luck at home. Author Yu Jie, a friend of Liu’s, said he and his wife have been stopped from leaving their Beijing home by security officers, for fear they plan to go to Oslo. Meanwhile, Guo Xianliang, an engineer from Yunnan province, disappeared while on a business trip in Guangzhou. He’d been detained for distributing flyers about Liu, according to fellow activist Ye Du. Police have also reportedly detained a young woman, Mou Yanxi, who tweeted her support for Liu. “If such behaviour goes on,” her friend Zhang Shijie tweeted last week, “it will eventually happen to all of us.”

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 1, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

A big week for Hillary’s hair
“Oh Hillary, that hairstyle just doesn’t cut it,” carped the U.K.’s Daily Mail, bemoaning U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “lanky locks.” “Hillary Clinton wears hair clip to the UN: ‘Do or don’t?” asked the Huffington Post. Hill’s hair, object of fascination throughout Bill’s presidency, had the fashion police on high alert at the UN. Meanwhile, its owner quietly intensified U.S. efforts in the fledgling Mideast peace process.

Not so big in Iran, then
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stirs trouble abroad, it’s a safe bet he faces problems back home. This week, the Iranian president was in full diversionary mode, suggesting the U.S. played a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, then mocking Western media for spotlighting cases like that of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death for adultery. (Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger, also faces the death sentence for creating online forums Tehran considered a political threat; a similar campaign is building in his favour.) The uproar over Ashtiani, complained Ahmadinejad, is far greater than that over the plight of Teresa Lewis, a borderline mentally challenged woman executed in Virginia on Thursday. His remarks didn’t stop U.S. media from looking past the bluster to the real story: growing divisions among Iran’s conservatives over the election 15 months ago that gave Ahmadinejad his second term. No wonder he wants to change the channel.

C’aan the man do no wrong?
What does K’naan have to do to be criticized? After organizers of a Vancouver-area charity concert fell short of his $40,000 fee, the Somali-Canadian musician refused to take the stage, leaving fans and the charity in the lurch; Simon Fraser University, where the benefit was being held, reportedly offered to pay the difference, to no avail. Yet event organizers, including charity chief Clement Apaak, fell on their swords, accepting full blame, and offering refunds. The Teflon star’s cred is unblemished by even a summer spent touring for Coke, to whom he sold his hit, Wavin’ Flag, for its World Cup marketing campaign, the corporate giant’s biggest ever.

A homer odyssey
If you hadn’t heard the name Jose Bautista before this fall, don’t feel bad. The Toronto Blue Jays slugger had hit fewer home runs in his three previous seasons combined than he has in 2010, and there was nothing to presage the power surge that this week lifted him into the company of legends like Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. Having surpassed the Jays’ team record of 47 dingers, Bautista cracked his 51st and 52nd over the weekend, giving rise to inevitable questions about the source of his unaccustomed power. Bautista swatted aside queries like so many hanging curve balls. “I understand because of the [sport’s] history,” he said when asked if he’d used performance-enhancing drugs. “But those days are gone.”

The devil is in the details
With his bald head, sinister black Van Dyke beard and dark sunken eyes, it’s hard to forget that Scott Robb, who’s running for Edmonton’s city council, is a practising Satanist. Still, religious issues aren’t a big part of the message for the founder of the Darkside Collective. Rather, the 31-year-old security guard’s platform focuses on opposing a plan to shutter Edmonton’s City Centre Airport, and proposes to run downtown light-rail transit lines underground. Robb eschews political donations and is spending his own money—$400 so far—on his campaign. Which would mean his name isn’t the only eerie similarity he bears to Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford.

Close Sesame
Elmo loves Katy Perry—but not inappropriately. “We had a good time,” the Sesame Street puppet told Good Morning America. Elmo’s talk-show appearance was meant to help defuse reaction to his onscreen play date with the pop singer, whose low-cut, cleavage-revealing costume irked parents and led the show to cut the segment. “We’ll have another play date,” Elmo told host George Stephanopoulos, who until recently hosted ABC’s Sunday political show This Week, where he interviewed powerful world leaders. In other news Perry- and puppet-related, the pop queen will appear in a special live-action episode of The Simpsons this Christmas. “In the wake of Elmo’s terrible betrayal, the Simpsons puppets wish to announce they stand felt-shoulder-to-shoulder with Katy Perry,” said Simpsons executive producer Al Jean.

How many women does it take to make a cabinet?
With the election of Simonetta Sommaruga to the Swiss cabinet, the conservative country crossed an unlikely threshold: with Sommaruga, a Social Democrat, as transport minister, Switzerland, which until 1971 barred women from voting, now has a majority-female cabinet—three men, four women—what Social Democrat chair Christian Levrat called an “essential, decisive step.”

A real guitar hero
Vancouver’s Don Alder entered the sixth annual Guitar Superstar competition on a whim—the top 10 finalists, he’d heard, get a nod in Guitar Player magazine, the enthusiast’s bible. Not only did the 54-year-old win, he earned the night’s only standing ovation. Judges deemed his performance “flawless” and “transcendental,” with one adding: “The world needs to hear you.” Alder took up the guitar at the urging of Rick Hansen, a childhood friend (they were together when Hansen was injured after being thrown from the back of a pickup). They were out fishing eight years ago when Hansen said, “Why don’t you get back to your music?” Alder told the Vancouver Sun. “He told me failure is not trying—ever since it’s taken me down this amazing journey.”

Do as he draws, not as he does
What began as a campaign against plagiarism ended as a lesson in irony. Taiwan’s “Protect Copyright” contest launched last year, soliciting entries for a poster campaign. Judges were particularly fond of Wu Chih-wei’s dramatic entry, “Work—Shattered,” featuring a plunging paper plane, words trailing its wings like smoke. The entry earned him a medal and a cash prize, and his poster went up all over Taiwan. Only problem: he’d ripped off Dutch artist Dennis Sibeijn. Wu was stripped of his prize and faced up to three years in jail, but Sibeijn declined to press charges. He would like an apology, though.

Aafia got her gun
Aafia Siddiqui is a 38-year-old Pakistani neuroscientist with degrees from MIT and Brandeis University. Arrested in Afghanistan in 2008, she was found to carry bomb-making recipes and a list of American tourist attractions. When U.S. officials visited her for questioning in jail, Siddiqui grabbed a discarded rifle and began shooting, saying in exquisite English: “I want to kill Americans.” The FBI called her a terrorist. Yet during her trial Siddiqui’s lawyer argued she’s mentally ill. Siddiqui disagreed. So did the judge, who gave her 86 years in prison. That led to riotous protests in Pakistan, where PM Yousaf Raza Gilani called her a “daughter of the nation.”

He hasn’t got a wife to spare
Maybe Ndumiso Mamba figured a man with 14 wives would take a philosophical view of infidelity. But Mamba lost his job as justice minister of Swaziland this week after he was found under a hotel room bed with his king’s 12th wife. Rumours of an affair between Mamba and Nothando Dube, a former Miss Teen Swaziland, had run rampant in the royal court for weeks. Dube reportedly disguised herself as a soldier to sneak out for their trysts, but officials loyal to King Mswati III cottoned on and set up a sting operation to catch the pair. Some predicted Mamba would be allowed to flee. But a long prison term seems more likely. “Mamba knows too much,” said one expert. “If he flees into exile with the royal secrets, that would be a major problem.”

Too mad for Mad Men?
He’s still a contender for Hollywood’s greatest train wreck, but things are looking up for Mel Gibson. News that he’s in danger of losing his house—and his church—to unpaid construction bills didn’t stop Jodie Foster from rising to his defence. “When you love a friend, you don’t abandon them,” she said. Her vote of confidence came as details of Gibson’s ugly split with wife Oksana Grigorieva trickled out: he was apparently willing to cough up $1 million for tapes of his foul-mouthed tirades. But some were buzzing about a comeback. Last week’s hot rumour from Liz Smith had him signing on for a role in the hit series Mad Men, though she retracted after producers demurred.

Catch and release
Captains of Chinese fishing trawlers don’t often trigger diplomatic crises. But that’s what 41-year-old Zhan Qixiong did when, on Sept. 8, while poking around islands claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo, he allegedly rammed Japanese coast guard cutters—twice. Arrested and jailed in Okinawa, he sparked the most serious standoff between China and Japan in recent memory, a dispute closely watched by a world concerned about a rising China. The incident sparked nationalist fervour in both countries, with some in Japan complaining after Qixiong was released on Saturday. Japanese PM Naoto Kan maintained that Tokyo would issue no apologies.

Buck stops here
Last week, Linda Buck, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist who studies how the brain processes odour, retracted two journal articles because they don’t pass the smell test. That makes three times Buck has disavowed papers co-authored with her one-time post-doc Zhihua Zou (who conducted the experiments), because she couldn’t duplicate the findings. Zou, who has reportedly returned to his native China, agreed to the first retraction, but not to last week’s.

Harry Potter and the trial by fire

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Marianne Helm

In November 2008, Kim Baryluk, lead singer for the band the Wyrd Sisters, sat down at her computer in her Ponemah, Man., home on Lake Winnipeg’s shores. There, she happened upon a story in the Globe and Mail describing a lawsuit filed in her name. As she read on, her jaw hit the floor—the suit was news to her. Her lawyer had, without her consent, she claims, sued two Ontario judges for $21 million for conspiracy, a case so bizarre (ever hear of a lawyer suing a judge?) even the Times of London reported it.

Baryluk had hired Toronto intellectual property lawyer Kimberly Townley-Smith in 2005 to sue Warner Bros. over the use of the band’s name in a Harry Potter movie. The case was tossed and the judge ordered Baryluk, who earns a modest income running a group home for teenagers, to pay $140,000 in costs. That was just the start. In the four years Townley-Smith represented her, Baryluk, 51, launched multiple court proceedings—most of which, she claims, she was never even informed of; costs awarded against her have reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, in a legal file so complex it makes Bleak House look like a pamphlet. In the recent conspiracy case, Townley-Smith was accusing the judges of case fixing, abuse of public office and fraud.

Continue…

Sometimes a gaffe is more than a gaffe

By Andrew Potter - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Blair Gable/Reuters

Since he became Prime Minister 4½ years ago, Stephen Harper has tormented the press gallery with an almost complete lockdown on government communications, with even cabinet ministers informed that the public is not entitled to their opinions. The assumption has always been that he is just a weapons-grade control freak, but a pair of recent exchanges suggest an alternative theory: that Harper knows something about the ideological leaning of his cabinet that he’d prefer to keep quiet.

Last week, Minister of Industry Tony Clement was given the task of defending the government’s decision to eliminate the mandatory long-form version of the census and move those questions to an optional survey. According to Clement, the long census—which asks questions about respondents’ ethnicity, education and income—is “heavy-handed” and intrusive. Clement mounted his libertarian high horse: “You try to limit the amount of state coercion that you have, you try to limit the intrusiveness of government activities, and that’s the balance that we’ve struck,” he said.

Continue…

Happy Birthday's sad money grab

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment

This is a major anniversary for the woman who composed Happy Birthday, but you can’t afford to sing it to her. June 27 marks the 150th birthday of Mildred Hill, who wrote a short song in 1893 with lyrics (originally “Good Morning To All”) by her younger sister Patty. Long after Mildred was dead, the song was registered with new birthday lyrics, and ever since then, the music publisher has collected a licence fee from any movie or TV show that uses Happy Birthday. When it’s sung in a restaurant, you may be hearing the sound of someone who owes money.

Nobody knows who wrote Happy Birthday to Mildred Hill’s tune, and it was sung that way for some time before anyone thought of charging for it. But ever since it was copyrighted in 1935, what sounds like a traditional song became a privately owned cash cow: the song was used in 10 movies in 2008 alone, and Warner Music Group, which now owns the rights, requires a licence fee of approximately $20,000 for singing even one of the song’s four lines. Producers sometimes save money by substituting public-domain songs like For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow in birthday scenes, or even creating original songs; the first home-video release of Leslie Nielsen’s show Police Squad! recorded over Happy Birthday with a song called Something Different. (When the DVD release restored the original version of the episode, some fans complained about the removal of Something Different.)

Continue…

Skin Game

By Ken MacQueen - Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 1:15 PM - 3 Comments

A lot of Vancouver businesses have some skin in the game when it comes to the Olympics. The latest to put his hide on the line, quite literally, is self-described “world renowned tattoo artist” Thomas Lockhart. The much-inked owner of West Coast Tattoo, the city’s oldest tattoo emporium, has just released the first of his “Vancouver 2010 Olympic Tattoo” designs.. They are a collection of fluttering flags, Olympic rings and the Vancouver Organizing Committee’s cartoon mascots. Taken together they are beautiful examples of, well, copyright infringement. Continue…

Plagiarismo di Plagiarismo!

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, July 11, 2008 at 4:35 PM - 0 Comments

Commenter Clarence reminds us that, as always, there’s a quote from the good years of The Simpsons that sums up how television works:

Roger Myers, Jr.: Okay, maybe my Dad did steal Itchy, but so what? Animation is built on plagiarism! If it weren’t for someone plagiarizing The Honeymooners, we wouldn’t have The Flintstones! If someone hadn’t ripped off Sgt. Bilko, there’d be no Top Cat! Huckleberry Hound, Chief Wiggum, Yogi Bear? Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney. Your honor, if you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they gonna come from? Her?

Marge: Uh… Um… How about “Ghost Mutt?”

The cool thing is how all of us, instinctively, can understand the difference between what is legally considered plagiarism and what is just “borrowing.” So while Roger Myers Jr. (son of the creator of Scratchy and the plagiarizer of Itchy) may say that The Flintstones was plagiarized from The Honeymooners, we all understand that that’s hyperbole: no one ever really thought that Jackie Gleason could sue Hanna-Barbera. But why is that, when everybody knew and acknowledged that The Flintsones is based on The Honeymooners?

Well, it’s because The Flintstones doesn’t actually take any of the actual specific details of the format of The Honeymooners. Even apart from the whole caveman thing, there’s not a single thing about the two formats that is exactly the same: Fred is not a bus driver, doesn’t threaten to hit his wife and doesn’t get insulted by her, lives in a suburban home instead of a cramped urban apartment. The Flintstones resembles The Honeymooners only in the most general things: both shows are about a fat working-class guy, his thin wife, and their wacky good-natured neighbour who gets into get-rich-quick schemes with the guy. But all those things are as old as the sitcom itself, so even in combination, none of them are enough to qualify The Flintstones as actual plagiarism. What The Flintstones did is what many if not most TV shows do: instead of borrowing the format of another successful work, it borrows its spirit. And you can’t copyright spirit, or inspiration, or concepts like “fat loudmouthed hero” and “get-rich-quick scheme.” The result is that you can make a show that is recognizably inspired by something else while still being, by any standard, an original work. Neat trick.

I’ll add finally that there are some real artistic advantages to the “same but different” approach, quite apart Continue…

Oh, great – now Marjory LeBreton will never be my Facebook friend.

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 5:19 PM - 0 Comments

Normally, I leave QP to Colleague Wherry at The Commons, but I just couldn’t resist sharing this exchange for obvious reasons:

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP): Mr. Speaker, thanks to Marjorie LeBreton, a Conservative Senate leader, we finally have an insight into Conservative thinking on digital innovation. She says not only does she not understand technologies like Facebook, she thinks they are dangerous.

Are millions of Canadian Internet users a threat? Because that seems to be the latest thinking behind the copyright trial balloon that would oppose a “three strikes and you’re out” policy for home Internet users.
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In case you couldn't bring yourself to read the liveblogging of the Library of Parliament committee …

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 2:31 PM - 0 Comments

I should point out that it actually turned out to be far more interesting than expected – newsworthy, even – when the head librarian – the Librarian himself, William Young – implored the committee to do whatever it can to ensure that the next round of amendments to the Copyright Act (which, incidentally, have been languishing on the Order Paper for months because the government is pretty well resigned to the fact that the bill is doomed) include a fair use exemption for the Library of Parliament, so that it won’t be stifled from providing necessary services to parliamentarians. In fact, he even pitched a similar dispensation for all libraries. Not a bad tactic – and definitely a welcome ally for the Canadian Library Association, which has been fighting for genuinely fair fair dealings rules for years.

Liveblogging the Library of Parliament committee. Seriously.

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 1:18 PM - 0 Comments

11:47:49 AM
No, I haven’t lost my mind, and no, this isn’t a parody of a liveblog, done National Post Dear Diary style, although come to think of it, that might actually be kind of entertaining. Wait, no—there is no possible way that satire could compete with the (sur)reality of committees in this Parliament.

Anyway, I’m here—early, even—and staring longingly at the tray of food at the back of the room. Technically, I don’t think reporters are allowed to graze on the cookie buffet, but maybe at the Library of Parliament committee, they’re more freewheeling.

11:51:29 AM
Not actually overheard, since it was pretty much addressed to me by a staffer: “Why is Kady O’Malley here?” Okay, I’ve been outed. I explain: I’m here to liveblog the Library of Parliament committee. Stunned silence results. No, really. Why are you all looking at me like that?

Seriously, though—this committee may be treated as the punchline to a joke; it’s pretty much seen as the ultimate punishment, as far as House assignments—but the Library itself rules our world in so many ways. It’s full of researchers, analysts, experts on every topic you could ever want to know, and more. Oh, and books. So many books, and documents, and maps!

Also, I may have made a few teeny tiny comments—constructive, positive, Library-friendly comments—about how the parliamentary website drives me “bonkers” during that roundtable at Queen’s, so I’m curious to see if anyone else feels the same way.

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