Second life has been a bogey on my radar for long. It also seems to host a number of Creative Commons shin-digs, so I find this article titled 'Second Life' faces threat to its virtual economy To be quite odd:

Groups of Second Life content creators were gathering digitally Tuesday to protest the dissemination of a program they worry could badly damage the virtual world's nascent economy.

The controversy gathered steam Monday when Linden Lab, which publishes Second Life, posted a blog alerting residents of the virtual world to the existence of a program or bot called CopyBot, which allows someone to copy any object in Second Life. That includes goods such as clothing that people purchase for their in-world avatars, and even the virtual PCs that computer giant Dell announced Tuesday it is going to sell in the digital world.

Quoting one of the protesters, the article goes on to say:

"The essence of the creativity in this world is largely because of creators and their work being protected," Mallon said. "This tool defeats all protection. So if you labor to build a business like we all have, your work can be stolen."

The analogy to copyright is not too hard to see.

Update: Cory Doctorow has a much more in depth analysis of the snarls of this issue here.

My friend Lorne hooked me up with this:

Here is an Interesting Installation in china that has some kind of scale model of terrain beside it. Here is the Zoom of the scaled terrain. Where is the actual terrain? Why Right Here. Where is Here? The Disputed border between China and India.

Wild.

Update: Apparently this was Dugg (Digged?) awhile ago. Bah. Nothing is ever original on the internets. More info is here.

Captain Copyright is a shameless copyright propaganda effort to teach children the so-called value of intellectual property. Their Terms and Conditions are especially laughable:

Permission is expressly granted to any person who wishes to place a link in his or her own website to www.accesscopyright.ca or any of its pages with the following exception: permission to link is explicitly withheld from any website the contents of which may, in the opinion of the Access Copyright, be damaging or cause harm to the reputation of Access Copyright. Specifically, permission to link is explicitly withheld from sites featuring pornographic, racist or homophobic content.

Whoah. Here is another gem:

You are not permitted to copy or cut from any page or its HTML source code to the Windows™ clipboard (or equivalent on other platforms) onto any other website.

Two words: Fair. Use.

Man. This is very lame. The whole site is put together by Access Copyright, which is either an organization devoted to protecting the rights of authors and publishers. Seems to me that they are taking it a little far.

Via Boing Boing

(which is to say... double duce!)

Michael Geist the "pro-user zealot" has posted an article at p2p.net on the Canadian Music Creators Coalition.

Kick ass. Big names like: Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Stars, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), Billy Talent, John K. Samson (Weakerthans), Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Andrew Cash and Bob Wiseman (Co-founder Blue Rodeo) all have this to say:

Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical

Artists do not want to sue music fans. The labels have been suing our fans against artists' will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in artists' names

Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive

Artists do not support using digital locks to increase the labels' control over the distribution, use and enjoyment of music or laws that prohibit circumvention of such technological measures. Consumers should be able to transfer the music they buy to other formats under a right of fair use, without having to pay twice.

Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists

The vast majority of new Canadian music is not promoted by major labels, which focus mostly on foreign artists. The government should use other policy tools to support actual Canadian artists and a thriving musical and cultural scene.

Nice.

(via Jonathan)

From this article in ZDNet UK:

Search giant Google has been accused of being the "biggest threat to genetic privacy" for its alleged plan to create a searchable database of genetic information.

Google was presented with an award as part of the Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy in Curitiba, Brazil, this week. The organisers allege that Google's collaboration with genomic research institute J. Craig Venter, to create a searchable online database of all the genes on the planet, is a clear example of biopiracy.

Biopiracy refers to the "monopolisation of genetic resources" according to the show's organisers. It is also defined as the unauthorised use of biological resources by organisations such as corporations, universities and governments.

So wait, by making genetic information searchable and free, suddenly they are bio-pirates? I mean, the whole concept of intellectual property applied to genetics of murkey enough. But jesus fuck, making geneic information searchable is not evil like Monsanto evil. It hardly counts as bad. Who is the J. Craig Venter institute?

The Institute’s areas of scientific focus include: genomic medicine with an emphasis on cancer genomics and human genome resequencing and analysis; environmental genomic analysis with an emphasis on microbial biodiversity, ecology, and evolution; use of molecular and genomic methods to develop biological sources of clean energy; synthetic genome development; and policy research on the ethical, legal, and economic issues associated with genomic science and technology.

Well that seems respectable.

Though, if I was big pharma/agriculture, I'd be worred about google cutting into my "intellectual property" territory.

It's been a little while since I have ranted copyright. But This article just pisses me off to no end.

Music sales in Canada dropped 4% in 2005 to $536 million, the Canadian Recording Industry Assn. reported Thursday.

The dip is part of a 10-year decline that the CRIA blames on illegal music downloading.

Except, the RIAA, the big brother to the CRIA, as been known to fudge their numbers, and claim things like music sales are dropping, when really they are gaining in the face of a recession. So have music sales really dropped 4%? Does it have to do with piracy, or does it have to do with the number of music retailers online? Does it account for non-Canadian music e-tailers that sell to Canadians? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I rather suspect it goes something like "We cherry-pick whichever makes it look like we are losing the most money!"

Maybe the real answer to the question is that Canadians don't need to buy that pop album because it is all we on the radio. I don't know the state of radio for the rest of Canada, but if Calgary is any indication, it is pop, rock, more pop, and a little bit of country. To be hones,t I haven't really looked into buying music online, but I rather suspect that a dollar per song is about right. So, say a full CDs worth of songs (call it 10-12 songs) is almost equal to the cost of a music CD (10-15 dollars). They're selling bits. There is no artwork, no packaging and no inventory. Shipping is incredibly fast, easy and cost-effective. Why aren't the savings passed on to the customer?

Another problem. "Illegal music downloading"? Errr... no. It is legal, according to the Supreme Court of Canada and our current copyright legislation. But what gets me is this quote from the CRIA head honcho:

"As legal downloading surges ahead in other parts of the world, Canada is marooned on the sidelines," said CRIA president Graham Henderson. "The goal of a vibrant digital marketplace in Canada will remain beyond reach until our legal environment encourages people to buy music instead of passively accepting theft on the Web."

So wait a second. You lobby to get higher levies on blank media, because Canadian copyright law allows private copying, and you get it. Now that you have it, you want Canada to make private copying illegal? So you want to have your cake, and eat it too then? I see.

Funny how this "News Article" from variety just listens to one side of the story. Sounds to me like they got it from a press release.

The big thing these days is Google's big step into china. People are not happy.

This comes right on the heels of Google fighting the US Department of Justice trying to get access to its records.

So we have:
A) Supporting a fascist regime... bad.
B) rejecting the US Governments spying on its own citizens... good.

All this from a company whose motto is "Don't be evil". Well to a certain extent, I am willing to cut some slack to Google. Maybe they are straight profiting from helping boots find human faces better (forever). However, maybe something else is happening here. Maybe, just maybe, by getting into the search game in china, Google is helping the free flow of information. Stop thinking about The Great Firewall of China as a burning stone barrier. Instead think of the free-flow of information as water, and The Great Firewall of China as a dam. If that dam were to be suddenly removed, then there is going to be some serious issues. When communism fell in Russia, think about how much turmoil there was. As I recall, an entire country that separated from the USSR, got involved in some kind of sketchy dealings and then went flat broke. We are talking about 1.3 BILLION human beings here. If suddenly Google were to step in with a free-for-all-search, what would happen?

Ultimately, Google isn't necessarily being evil when its offerings its search services to china. I'd like to take a "wait and see"approach. But who is to say that we're going to see, or recognize, any benefits of Google's presence? Or for that matter, any misfortune caused by it?