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)

Seriously, after the recent total fucking havoc of senate appointments and cabinet minister choices, what is left to say? Perhaps: "Duh Canada, we got what we deserved. Thank god it's a minority government."

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?

Sam Bulte rightfully lost her seat, and the conservatives probably will not be able to form a majority government.

Unfortunately the greens didnae get a seat. Ahh well. Next time. Who knows how soon that will be?