And you don't even need a stamp.

First, go here: http://www.copyrightforcanadians.ca/action/firstlook/

Then fill out the form. Copy the preview result and print that out. Finish the groovy webapp, then send off the hardcopy.

Seriously, it takes 10 minutes. It it accomplishes nothing, then you've only lost 600 seconds of your life, 1 sheet of paper and an envelope (not even a stamp!)

But what happens if it could accomplish something?

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.

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.

It is taking a lot of restraint not to use language like "first against the wall" and "treasonous" when writing this entry. But really, that kind of colourful language only lets the reader know that the writer is totally rabid.

And its not like I am rabid about copyright issues. Me? Oh no.

At any rate, Sarmite Bulte, Liberal candidate for Parkdale-High Park is basically taking bribes from the strong IP lobbies (music, movies, television and of course pharma) in the form of campaign financing. When you look at Sams involvement in the copyright issue, you see that she only really cares about copyright when given money by the lobbyists. A prime example is this:

Ms. Bulte claims that “Nobody influences me. Nobody can buy me.” I’ll take her at her word. But I am concerned at Ms. Bulte’s recent fascination with copyright law. Ms. Bulte was first elected in 1997. According to Elections Canada’s candidate contributions and expense reports, her campaign contributions totaled $67,423. Corporate sponsors aplenty, but no big copyright. And, interestingly, I cannot find reference to Ms. Bulte even uttering the word “copyright” until the dying months of that Parliament, when, as a member of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, she asked a few questions in a working sessions on a study of the Canadian book industry. She’d have to have slept pretty hard to avoid talking copyright there.

In the November, 2000, election, Ms. Bulte had managed to scoop up over $81,000 in campaign financing. And now some of the big copyright names are there: SOCAN, the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, Alliance Communications Corporation, Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc., Epitome Pictures, Chapters, CanWest Global, CTV, Rogers Communications, Baton Broadcasting, Good Earth Ventures and the Astral Television Network. Interestingly, there are a number of other IP intensive industries represented: beer (Molsons), wine (Pilliteri Estates Winery) and pharmaceuticals (Pfizer and Apotex – makes you wonder what she said to these two!). And when the 37th Parliament began on January 29, 2001, voila, Ms. Bulte began publicly uttering pro-copyright platitudes.

This is from the Creative Commons licensed blog Copyright Watch which is about to make my RSS feed in a big way.

In fact, you should go read that blog entry if you are interested in copyright in any way, shape, or form. It is very informative about how our representatives in this government are being manipulated by the big content industries. To see someone so shallowly, and if I may use the word, transparently in the pockets of big business makes me sick to my stomach.

She is essentially giving a big "Fuck You" to all Canadians, and her constituents especially. She is saying that the rights of the individual Canadian are trumped by the rights of big corporations. Now, I am not talking about the right to freely download music (or infringe on copyright). I am talking about far more important rights then that. The IP lobbies are using the music/movies downloading issue as the bait to a far more sinister hook to control the means of content creation and distribution. They understand that their models, especially the distribution models, are fuct. They want copyright laws that make it easy to take down threats and protect their business models. A classic example here is the webcasting industry. In a report to the senate about mandatory licensing for all webcasters the RIAA told the senate that a license should be around $1,000,000 because that is "what the market could bear". At this time, around 90% of all webcasters were private individuals, and lots of them were playing content that was not under copyright control from the RIAA.

The big content industries are not worried about kids downloading music. They are worried about kids downloading music, remixing, reinterpreting, and re releasing it for themselves. Downloading music isn't the issue. The issue is that someone can create, edit, and release their own content completely free of the shackles of the movie and music industries. And it is getting easier all the time.

If you define culture as "The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought." (Answers.com definition for 'culture') then you can see that a majority of our culture is owned, and the rules of ownership are getting stricter all the time. 20 year copyright terms are fair, 90 year terms of copyright that are extended every time Steamboat Willy gets close to being public domain are insane. Content creators deserve to maintain a monopoly on their work for a period of time as this is the incentive that our culture uses to keep our artists, musicians and film makers creating. But the monopoly shouldn't be for the lifetime of the artist plus 75 years. All art is generated from the past. The problem is that currently, if an artist is inspired by a video game, TV show, movie or other media, they have to be extremely careful about how they express this inspiration, lest they get a Cease and Desist order. Frequently it doesn't matter if the artist has fair use rights or not. A Cease and Desist sent to the artist (or their ISP) is enough to kibosh any work. How many artists have the money to pay for copyright lawyers?

In fact, the only thing that the big content industries have that the rest of us don't are vast teams of copyright lawyers, and politicians in their pockets. And you better believe me, they know their advantage, and are using it.

So fuck you very much Mrs. Bulte. You are whoring your countrys culture out to primarily American corporate interests. (How Canadian is the Canadian Recording Industry Association if it is also made up by the same members of the Recording Industry Association of America?) Don't let the door hit you on your way out.