"With all the attention that copyright law gets, we forget that there was a time when it just didn’t matter that much to the way ordinary people accessed and used culture. I don’t mean that it did not matter to authors and publishers. Of course it did. I mean that it did not matter to most people as they went about their life using, enjoying, building upon, and critiquing culture. ..."

"We are about to make every access to our culture a legally regulated event, rich in its demand for lawyers and licenses, certain to burden even relatively popular work. Or again: we are about to make a catastrophic cultural mistake."
-Lawrence Lessig, For The Love Of Culture [@ The New Republic]

Linking with buttons

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is awesome. It's available for free streaming until the 20th of July. I watched the first two episodes last night and I have to say, the concept is inspired. [Also: I read this interview with Joss Whedon, which is good too. He loves BSG, of course. Damn that crazy, nerdy man, who gets to live my dreams.]

Also I added a button in the right-hand column to Michael Geist's 30 things you can do list. I know everyone is probably really tired of hearing me talk about this, but I also know a few people personally who have written to their MPs because of my haranguing. Because that constitutes a kind of success for me, I'm going to keep it up. (Ha! Positive reinforcement!) Bill C-61 is not going anywhere until the Fall, when Parliament re-starts. That means we have at least six more weeks in which to agitate. If you haven't done so already please, please write to your MP and/or the Minister of Industry. You could also join a Facebook group and/or your local Fair Copyright for Canada chapter, or record a video opposing Bill C-61. If you've already done those things, you in turn should harangue at least one other person and get them to write a letter to THEIR MP. That's how harrassment democracy works. It's a beautiful, irritating process.

Drama 2.0

So awesome: Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield's resignation letter [via 50books]. Any letter of resignation that begins "As you know, tin is in my blood" will get a link from this blog--guaranTEED.

Jim Prentice defends the Canadian Copyright reform act in Parliament, consents to an interview with CBC--I haven't even had a chance to watch/listen to these yet, so consider this link as much for my benefit as yours. (I have trouble finding The Internet later, do you ever have that problem?)

Everybody in my office is freaking out about something, and I'm hoping that if I just don't ask anyone what it is, I won't be asked to make a contribution of any kind. I'm a contractor. It's not my business. I am in the money business.

The USPS Charles and Ray Eames stamps came out this week, and my mom called me yesterday to let me know my dad had already bought me a page of them. Thanks guys!

Tonight I am going to see The Incredible Hulk. I realized in the season 1 finale of Heroes that watching superheroes fight is one of my favourite things. Regular people fighting just doesn't do it for me anymore. Hopefully this movie will fulfil my superhero-fighting-quota for the whole weekend.

Anti-circumvent THIS

The Conservatives have finally tabled their Copyright Reform legislation. I believe my Man Friend James put it most succinctly: "We're boned."

My favourite thing that happened yesterday

Government buffing Prentice's Wikipedia entry via kwout

It made me laugh, and by "laugh," I mean, "snort derisively." Don't these people understand the Internet? Don't they know they will be caught, and punished, or at least, ridiculed? Wikipedia's vengeance is swift.

Also, I discovered this service, kwout, that lets you take these kind of pretty screenshots and add them to your blog. I would have just "kwouted" something from my own blog, and then added it to my blog, but that seems a little pointless, even for me.

Do not read unless you are a nerd

Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, wrote an awesome letter to Jim Prentice and Josée Verner (the ministers of Industry and Canadian Heritage, respectively) about DRM. I found out about this from boingboing--I'm happy that someone there has such a passion for Canadian copyright reform. An excerpt:

My office has prepared an information sheet on DRM technology, a copy of which is enclosed for your information.

If DRM technologies only controlled copying and use of content, our Office would have few concerns. However, DRM technologies can also collect detailed personal information from users, who often do no more than access the content on a computer. This information is transmitted back to the copyright owner or content provider, without the consent or knowledge of the user. Although the means exist to circumvent these technologies and thus prevent the collection of this information, previous proposals to amend the Copyright Act contained anti-circumvention provisions.

This makes my heart happy on a cold, coffeeless Monday morning.

News from the interweb

I didn't even know this, but yesterday, January 1st, was public domain day, the day when a new set of copyrighted works pass into the public domain. I LOVE the public domain!

Also, the Washington Post reports on the release of the new Wikia Search, a "transparent" search engine that will be editable by users.

Tiny copyright update, feel free to skip

I just had to point out that 12,000 people have joined the Facebook group "Fair Copyright for Canada," in less than a week, including 11 of my Facebook friends. Good job, Facebook friends! The new law is getting some bad PR in the globe and mail. I feel proud to be part of something larger. Like being swallowed... by something larger.

Working working working. Or at least, sitting at my desk sitting at my desk sitting at my desk. I'm actually not working so much as thinking about products I might like to purchase.

And by "sir" I mean... well, never mind.

Hey, internet,
So, longer letter later, but here's the e-mail I just sent to Canadian Minister of Industry (and Calgary MP) Jim Prentice (who is holding a "Fair Copyright" open house today in Calgary, organized on Facebook!):

Dear Sir,

As an Albertan, I very much appreciate your decision to solicit opinions on forthcoming copyright reform from your constitutents today at your "Fair Copyright" open house. Unfortunately, I was not able to make the drive to Calgary, but I hope that you can take a few minutes to read my response to recent developments in Canadian copyright reform.

I am a Canadian who cares about Canada's cultural policy, and I am writing in regard to legislative proposals for "copyright reform." I am also a librarian, and I believe very strongly that Canada's legislation on copyright needs to reflect the rights and needs of users. Following the United States' lead by setting draconian copyright legislation that makes information users into criminals will not benefit the government, the country, or its citizens in the long run. In particular, I do not believe that "digital rights management" (DRM) technologies should stop the public from making lawful uses of their legitimately acquired media. Publishers using DRM push aside the delicate balance between copyright and the rights of the public - a balance set according to an assessment of the public interest by legislators - and replace it with one-sided rules that reflect publishers' economic interests. Technology should not take the place of law in controlling who has access to information, or how information can be used. New copyright reform legislation should not make it illegal to circumvent DRM for lawful purposes.

These concerns are shared by a substantial and growing number of informed Canadian citizens. I hope that you will take them into account when considering any changes to Canadian copyright law. Thanks very much for your time.

I cribbed this letter partly from Online Rights Canada. Jim Prentice's email address is Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca.

I almost put in a sentence about End User License Agreements (the dreaded EULA!) but decided I wanted to come off as non-crazy as possible. And did you see how I was polite? Diplomacy!

I heart writers. And librarians. Oh, and coffee.

I love this thoughtful essay on The Golden Compass and censorship by fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. In fact, I think because of it I will read his book, Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians, because based on this essay I think he understands what fiction does. And it's about evil librarians, and I love evil librarians almost as much as I love sexy librarians. I found out about him from whatever, the blog of writer John Scalzi. Every day this month he's featuring guest posts from writers, in honour of the writers' strike.

[I don't get to go to the Golden Compass movie until next weekend, so everyone please avoid discussing it in my presence until then. I wish to remain untainted by spoilers, fanboy/fangirl gushing, and Comic-Book-Guy style "Worst. Adaptation. Ever." bile.]

Whew. Typing that made me tired.

It's Friday, Internet. Tomorrow Canadian Minister of Industry Jim Prentice is holding an open house on the Canadian copyright issue at his headquarters in Calgary. Not many of us are prepared to make that trip (3 hours each way, for me) but I plan to send him an email tomorrow letting him know how sorry I am I couldn't be there. And telling him he's a dumbass.

It's going to be another crazy weekend. IKEA! sushi! Christmas party! Wal-mart! Not all at the same time though.

Wednesdays are the worst

In his blog, Canadian copyright activist and scholar and all-around cool guy Michael Geist says that the new, soon-to-be-announced Canadian copyright legislation will beat even the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the extent of its draconian, uh, bullshit. (Sorry, normally I can come up with better words but not when I'm angry.) The first thing all users'-rights-loving Canadian citizens should do is write to their Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister, and the Ministers of Industry and Culture. You can find out right here, from Online Rights Canada, who your MP is and how to contact them. (That site will even write a letter for you, but said letter has the wrong Ministers listed for some reason.) (My MP is conservative jerk Laurie Hawn, but since I've read enough of his dumb communiques about "family values," he owes me at least one reading of a letter about copyright reform.) Michael Geist also has a list of 30 things you can do to help steer copyright reform back into the realm of the reasonable and sustainable.

Here is how to contact our Prime Minister, his address is:
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa
K1A 0A2

The Minister of Industry:
Hon. Jim Prentice
C.D. Howe Building
235 Queen Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H5

The Minister of Culture:
Hon. Josée Verner
Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

The Canadian Copyright Policy Branch is also a good place to send your letters:
275 Slater Street
7th Floor
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0M5

Letters mailed in Canada to a federal politician do not require a stamp, and are that much sweeter if composed while at work.

The happiest of all days, or at least, all copyright-law-related days

Did you know that today is Fair Use Day? Fair Use is the part of copyright law that lets you use copyrighted works in certain ways without the copyright holder's permission--you can quote or use excerpts for the purposes of criticism, satire, or educational purposes. We at deletia hq LOVE fair use because without it, I would be stuck writing nothing but 100% original material, all day long. Bo-ring!

Actually, we don't have fair use in Canada, we have something even vaguer called "Fair dealing." But I sometimes observe other countries' copyright holidays; that's just how I roll.

Notes from the Underground

i. What is up with the scowly people? There are so many people around who scowl at complete strangers (ie., me) for no apparent reason. A lot of them are old, but that's no excuse. I am often tempted to sit down and have a talk with these people. As in, "WHAT? What did I ever do to you? Do I look like the ninja that killed your family?" And they would have no legitimate response. Because you KNOW I don't look like no ninja.

I'm not the world's friendliest person, but at least I don't appear to wish the deaths of complete strangers just because I had a bad day. I've even been known to smile, from time to time.

ii. When the LRT pulls into the University station now, the cool, collected voice on the LRT radio says, "University station. University. Please exit to the right(/left) of the driver." I had this whole rant ready about the dumbing down of our society, and how if someone can't tell when a train pulls into a station which side the platform is on, then that announcement may solve that particular problem for them, but they'll still be a moron. And how signs and announcements and instructions in our society seem to be catering, more and more, to the dumb and litigious-- a tyranny of the moronity. (That phrase is now copyrighted, so don't even think about it.) But then it occurred to me that it is probably for blind people, and that I am a jerk. And THEN it occurred to me that I may not be able to copyright just that one phrase, even if I did invent it, because this whole page is published under a Creative Commons license.

Heh heh. The title of this post is the name of a book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, but it's also literal because the subway goes underground... sigh. Nothing is ever enough for you people, huh?

Work is making me very tired and depressed today. As much as I complain about school (and I DO complain about school) I much prefer it to waking up every morning and putting on stupid clothes and coming here and staring at my computer screen. Work brings up existential questions, which I dislike, such as "What am I really doing here?" (That's 'doing' in italics, not the normal kind of 'doing') and "Is the point of life just to make enough money to keep on buying food so you can keep going to work?" and so on. I don't like to be left in a windowless hallway with an empty desk and questions about the nature of my own existence. Even if I DO have my own stapler. I much prefer to be distracted.

Plus it seems like more things used to happen to me, before, which I could blog about. Now nothing happens to me, and it takes forever.