Group to appeal overturning of levy on digital music players. Yes. Artists need to get paid, but then, perhaps Artists need to find new ways to get paid, instead of trying to tax technology?

Creators of the world unite, you have nothing to loose but your chains!

The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, which collects royalties for musicians, has targeted dental offices in its latest campaign. The group is asking them to cough up a yearly fee if they use copyrighted music to entertain patients.

-- From the CBC also on < a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/25/2121237.shtml?tid=141">Slashdot.

There is a quote from sneakers that seems apropos.

There is a war old pal, a war of information! It is not about who controls the guns, or the bombs anymore, but the information!

(this may not be a direct quote, I am working offa memory here).

Now, Sneakers was cool, and fun, but it was very cold-war. Because now, we don't have to worry so much about the information that the ruskies might get, but instead, we have to worry about what information the NSA, CIA, FBI, CSIS, JAM, LDD, ELF and KLF are collecting about us. Now we have to worry about who owns what information. I buy a DVD player. Do I own the player? Surely! But what if I decide to hack around with it's electronics. I own the DVD player, that means I own the electronics, right? How about the (dvd, not www)CSS encryption, do I own that? It is part of my DVD player.

Same goes for CD's.

The thing is, that we are getting into a licence heavy world now. I don't own the recording of Skinny Puppy's "The Process". Instead, what I own is a licence to play it. A very restrictive licence. When it comes to music, software, and movies, there is nothing inherently wrong with this model. It is a good thing that I retain the rights to my music. However, it becomes a problem when organizations like the RIAA, MPAA, ASCAP, and SOCAN start to use this model not only as a way to maintain conrol of the works of the artists, but also to attempt to control the means of distribution.

On a compleatly unrelated note. I want a dentist chair. Man thoes things are COOL.

Nate Tarrant is an absolutely stunning Dark Ambient Musician. So why are the results for a google search for him So Shitty? Why can I find absolutely no CD's, no shared files, and basicly absolutely nothing about the guy?

Unfortuately his songs are locked up in the shitty Audio Galaxy player format. Any of you kids out there wanna hook a brutha up?

Wow. Thanks to the MPAA, if you pirate movies, you will go to jail. Except this one.

MPAA spokesman Matthew Grossman said Thursday that since Lions Gate, which recently battled the organization's ratings board over Moore's documentary, isn't a member of the movie-lobbying group, the MPAA doesn't have the authority to go after bootleggers of its films.

But if it was Spiderman 2, then all hell would break loose, and Jack would rise from the grave and join his evil twin Dan, and they would kick ass and chew bubblegum.

In Brief:

The respondents are the licensee and owner, respectively, of a patent that discloses the invention of chimeric genes that confer tolerance to glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup and cells containing those genes. Canola containing the patented genes and cells is marketed under the trade name "Roundup Ready Canola". The appellants grow canola commercially in Saskatchewan. The appellants never purchased Roundup Ready canola nor obtained a licence to plant it. Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 per cent was Roundup Ready Canola. The respondents brought an action against the appellants for patent infringement. The trial judge found the patent to be valid and allowed the action, concluding that the appellants knew or ought to have known that they saved and planted seed containing the patented gene and cell and that they sold the resulting crop also containing the patented gene and cell. The Federal Court of Appeal affirmed the decision but made no finding on patent validity.

Read the full decision Here if you are bored.

This is shitty. This is effectively patenting Life. Just how does that fly? Who owns what genes now? What were Monsantos modification of the Canola Plants genes? Is that enough of a modification that is patentable? Is it sane to patent an object that is able to reproduce? An item whos genetic madate is to grow and spread across the earth?

And isn't an affirmation of the decision that finds the "patent to be valid and allowed" a finding on patent validity? I don't understand this decision at all.

At any rate, this is bad news.

It appears that Lindows is doing Bad Things. Using creative commons art beyond the scode of the licence without asking for permission is like stealing from church. If you want a larf, read what the Slashbots say about it at a Score of 5. Seriously, how hard is copyright law to understand people, if the work had no previous licence, then it means that the work is covered by standard copyright law, which gives no one permission to do no nothing.

In other news, slashbots were just as annoying and lame about other stuff.