open thinking

Members of the Edtech Posse (Dean, Rick, and I) had the great pleasure of chatting with the brilliant Dr. Michael Geist last night. Dr. Geist is a Professor at the University of Ottawa and is Canada’s leading legal expert on Copyright law. It was a terrific conversation with a lot of information regarding current copyright/copyleft [...]

 Edtech Posse Podcast with Michael Geist: Download

Cory Doctorow recently wrote the piece “Why I Copyfight” in Locus Magazine. The short essay is insightful and discusses the relationship between copyright and culture, the disparity between copyists and copyright holders, and the reasons why people (should) continue to resist the tight restrictions of current copyright law. Some of my favourite snippets include:

- “The [...]

From Michael Geist and FairCopyright4Canada:

Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced Bill C-61, which many have dubbed the Canadian DMCA, in June 2008. There was an immediate outcry from thousands of Canadians concerned that the bill would render illegal every day activities and harm both consumers and businesses.
The C-61 in 61 Seconds video competition is one [...]

Opensourcecinema.org has released their first Bil C-61 protest video.

If you look closely, you can identify me as one of the copyright criminals.
Of course, that’s not the important piece here.
Here’s some stuff to love about the new bill, C-61::
-$500 per downloaded song
-No Fair Use rights for remix culture
-$20,000 for uploading content (youtube anyone?)
Show your protest [...]

Watch this excellent, year-end video from Galacticast which does well to explain some of the basic issues of the proposed DMCA legislation in Canada.

The Galacticast netshow has produced a great little end-of-year short calling on Canadians to fight the Canadian DMCA in the coming year. This is the on-again/off-again US-inspired copyright act that Industry Minister [...]