I love it, the debate surrounding the long form census. It’s exciting, it’s engaging, and if nothing else it’s great to see (and hear) that this kind of discussion can be had in this great country of ours. It can be, right?

If you’ve read my blog for more than a little bit then you know that I try my best to present a non-partisan view of things. Really, I try, but sometimes honesty can be mistaken for partisanship, I think, if you read me the wrong way. For example, I could say something like, “Stephen Harper runs a tight ship, giving little to no control over to his Ministers, with even the smallest governmental details passing across his desk,” and you could mistake that for a pot shot at our Prime Minister. But, truly, I’m not one for pot shots and when I say something like that I mean it as more of a fact than an opinion. The sentence following that one will be an opinion, but that’s more obvious. And why is this so important? Because I believe that a discussion about scrapping the mandatory long form census should be one that transcends politics altogether, let me tell you why.

Stephen Harper runs a tight ship, giving little to no control over to his Ministers, with even the smallest governmental details passing across his desk. I don’t necessarily agree with his style, but that’s why I didn’t vote for him. Still, while a lot of the time this kind of control factor can be nothing more than bothersome for policy makers and politicians it can be, at times, detrimental to our national health and identity. There are examples of this in the national housing strategy, our international agreements, and key pieces of criminal justice legislation. Harper has the final say and sometimes the only say, it seems. Discussion be damned, and for certain issues this simply does not fly; in my opinion the long form census is one of those issues.

Read the rest of this article »

I apologize to readers who are bored to death by two politically-minded articles in a row, I promise to provide you with the lighter stuff tomorrow.

A little over a month ago I warned you of the upcoming copyright reform proposed by our politicians. I warned you that it imposes certain restrictions on how you own things and what you can do with those things. I mentioned, too, that it wasn’t the first time that the Conservatives tried to pass this kind of reform legislation,

The last time the Tories tried to pass new copyright legislation was two years ago. Jim Prentice was the Minister in charge back then and he was widely seen as being in the pocket of American interests. In fact, the Bill he originally introduced was so backward, so heavily favoured towards huge American media conglomerates that the public outcry was simply impossible to ignore. As a result of the outcry, the Conservatives put the legislation on the back burner and, last summer, went on a whirlwind tour across the country soliciting public opinion and feedback on copyright.

That Bill died, on the table, after Parliament adjourned for the summer because it had no support, because it wasn’t the result of consultation with the public, because it was seen as merely pandering to American big media, and because the government clearly underestimated the powerful and vocal grassroots fair copyright movement in Canada.

Well it appears that this second attempt at copyright reform is also going the way of the Dodo.

After declaring war on the “radical extremists” who were opposed to the new reform bill, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore is now refusing to comment on the legislation according to copyright watcher, author and blogger Cory Doctorow.

Is this a sign of what happens when an unpopular bill is introduced, and introduced again, largely ignoring public consultation?

Like many, I agree that this most recent reform bill included some of the aspects that came out of the public consultation but at the same time it ignored many important aspects as well. The legislation, like its predecessor, still includes significant rights-impeding digital lock provisions—the same kind of provisions which were protested in the last incarnation of the bill. But despite all that consultation, the Conservative government chose to ignore the rights and requests of the Canadian population and again include those provisions. And again the ground swell of support for fair copyright reform has grown and immediately after announcing the bill, and in the time since, media focus has largely centred around the controversial digital locks.

But, if Moore’s refusal to comment is any indication, this bill is fit for the same destiny as its fore bearer. Let’s just hope that, if this is truly the case, the next time around the government will get things right. This second time around, the media was well informed on how and what to report—they got their focus right by honing in on the digital lock provision—and, as a result, the public has been kept up to date, and kept well informed themselves. If the Conservatives tried to sneak a copyright bill through the House of Commons the first time, they failed. This second time the media and copyright watchers the world over were ready, and they spoke loud and clear. If this bill dies there will be a third attempt, no doubt, and maybe then they’ll finally get it right.

If there’s one thing that Canadian politics is good for (and maybe there is just one) it’s the introduction of new and fun terms to our collective lexicon. Remember our pre-Olympic love affair with the stodgy term prorogation? Ah, those were good times, listening to newscaster fumble over that unnecessarily complicated word, grasping at straws to try and explain how in the heck it was even legal, nevermind moral to just up and cancel Parliament.

But if you’re a political junkie like me you love these kind of moments in the Sun. Your heart skips a beat when the popular press picks up on a new polispeak word and runs with it. Well, friends, it’s happened again.

Read the rest of this article »

This afternoon the Conservative government introduced a new copyright bill in the House of Commons.

The last time the Tories tried to pass new copyright legislation was two years ago. Jim Prentice was the Minister in charge back then and he was widely seen as being in the pocket of American interests. In fact, the Bill he originally introduced was so backward, so heavily favoured towards huge American media conglomerates that the public outcry was simply impossible to ignore. As a result of the outcry, the Conservatives put the legislation on the back burner and, last summer, went on a whirlwind tour across the country soliciting public opinion and feedback on copyright.

Lots of us spoke out, hundreds of thousands, during these public hearings and it seemed like the government was truly listening. However, today’s Bill indicates that while some of what we said got through, serious and fatal flaws remain in the law.

Read the rest of this article »

Well, folks, it’s been a slice but my time is up.

In the seven years that I’ve run this site, it’s been a lot of different things. Most recently, and for the past many years, it’s been an on-again, off-again place for me to post reviews and previews and commentaries about stuff. I’ve liked it that way and even while it fell into a particular bit of disuse in the fall, leading up to my wedding, my campaign to bring it back to its former glory, and to pack it full of almost daily content, has been successful. It’s been a good last two months. My readership has increased, new and unique visitors are on the rise and the number of people brave (or stupid) enough to leave a comment is slowly creeping up. It’s been good, and it’s felt good to get this site moving and shaking again. I like writing, so it’s been fun.

But, much to my horror and surprise, an e-mail that would change the course of this little site’s life arrived in my e-mail box this morning. And, of all the ways I imagined this site might one day expire, this was certainly not one of them. Surely even I am not this creative. Here is an exert:

Dear Mr. Keith Little,

As a representative of Disney Enterprises Inc., the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate, I must advise you to immediately cease and desist your use of the “Corch” brand. This includes, primarily, the website — http://www.thecorch.com — which is currently hosted at the address of…

…since 2001, the “Corch” name and brand have been the property of Disney Enterprises for the purposes of children’s entertainment and development. According to internationally recognized intellectual property laws, our prior claim on this brand, for use in our Disney TV programming package, renders your subsequent use of the brand to be unlawful.

…failure to comply within a reasonable time frame will result in further legal action. Enclosed is legal contact information and our communications department will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Please be advised that for legal purposes, all calls regarding this matter will be recorded.

So the “Corch” is a Disney character all this time? I thought I made the term up…

I haven’t decided if I’ll recreate this site somewhere else, or what, but it’s a lot of work to move servers and a bit disheartening. I’m obviously not up to the challenge of fighting a potential law suit against the “world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate” since I will surely lose so I really have no other choice. I plan to leave this message up for a few more days and then close down the site.

It’s been good, it’s been strange, but thanks for everything, guys. At least now I can say that I once had a website shut down by Disney! What a joke!

Google’s battle with the Chinese government has been brewing for some time now but it appears as if it’s finally come to a head.

Since they first came onto the scene in China, Google’s position in the communist country has been tenuous at best. For a company who’s mantra has been “do no evil,” censoring search results in order to hide and cover up dissension within the country seems to be pretty, well, against code. If you aren’t aware, China’s Internet policy is among the most strict in the world. The government actively filters out content which it doesn’t want its citizens to see online. That includes dissenting comments, protest movements, blogs, and, as far as I know, anything that’s overly critical of the Chinese government. (I’m probably blocked now, too!)

Even worse, Google has recently uncovered an enormous string of hacking attempts and successes on a number of its services—namely, Gmail—which it traced back to the Chinese government. According to Google, it was the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists which were the target and these accounts, it says, were routinely accessed by government officials in a kind of cyber-espionage.

Up until now though, Google has been pretty complicit. There have been ups and downs between China and Google and much, much, global criticism leveled against the search engine giant, but for the most part Google has gone along with the government’s Internet policies. The government hacking was the crack that broke the dam though, and today came the flood.

Beginning this afternoon, all traffic to the China search engine page, says Google, is now being redirected to their unfiltered servers in Hong Kong. Here’s a snippet of the press release,

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from [Hong Kong] is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.

What’s more, Google has set up this page to monitor exactly what the Chinese government is blocking access to. That means if China decides to block Google’s new unfiltered searches, the world will find out.

It seems like Google is finally taking serious steps towards a sensible Internet policy in China.

Even if you only have a pedestrian interest in copyright law or the Internet this is a very enjoyable read. Heck, even if you’re only a casual YouTube user, you’ll probably get a kick out of it. It’s YouTube’s opening briefs in the lawsuit that Viacom has brought against them.

Viacom is suing YouTube for not removing copyrighted videos from its website, videos that Viacom held the copyright to. It sounds straight forward enough except for a couple of important factors. First, under international copyright laws it’s the responsibility of the copyright owner (Viacom) to notify YouTube of infractions—not YouTube’s responsibility to remove videos of its own volition. And second, as it turns out, Viacom filed this suit all the while uploading its own videos to YouTube surreptitiously.

Here’s what YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine had to say,

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom.

And as if that wasn’t enough, YouTube alleges that some of the videos included in Viacom’s lawsuit against them were actually uploaded by the company itself,

Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

The waters get exceptionally muddied at this point and you really have to wonder what Viacom was thinking. Remember, this was a company that tried several times to buy YouTube.

As clear as the result may seem, from the outset, it’ll be an interesting case to follow.

The brief goes on to explain that now, in the 21st century, most media corporations are working with YouTube and even finding monetary value in putting their clips up online. Of course. I guess, ever the evolution of technology marches on. But there’s a big difference between fighting against an emerging media platform and sneaking your videos up on there, and then suing over them.