Robin mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, and I think I posted already, but I met Freddy last night. He’s making a fantastic graphic novel of Orwell’s 1984 (see: gutenberg australia’s ebook).
Freddy is selling these posters for $12 a pop:
And here is the opening scene (you can get it in B&W or colour):
Just listening to Brett on cinqasix on CBC radio, with radio goddess Patti Schmidt.
He’s talking about his great film project Basement Tapes, undertaken with support from the NFB. The film will be about remix culture generally, with a lots of talk with Lessig et al.
But the revolutionary angle here is that Brett wants all of you to edit some of the movie. You can download interviews and segmets of raw footage, and build them into something else. Try it, over at Open Source Cinema
I have yet to do my editing, but … if I get time … I … er … might.
Back during the election, and the Bulte affair, I wrote to Harper, Martin and Layton about digital copyright, asking for their party’s position. I just got this email from Jack Layton, leader of the NDP:
Thank you for writing to me about copyright reform in Canada.
As you may know, copyright reform has been an ongoing issue in Parliament for several years now. The NDP recognizes that any copyright legislation needs to balance the rights of creators, users, and distributors. Today, NDP Heritage Critic and two-time Juno nominee Charlie Angus held a joint news conference with the Canadian Music Creator’s Coalition (CMCC) on the issue of digital downloading. Please find attached a copy of the press release issued by Charlie regarding the efforts of the CMCC to bring artists’ concerns to the table. Charlie’s work with the CMCC comes on the heels of consultation with many individuals and groups to consider competing interests concerning copyright reform. These discussions have included artists, creators, lawyers, digital and online experts, and photographers, just to name a few. For more information on the CMCC, please visit: http://www.musiccreators.ca .
Again, I appreciate hearing from you. All the best.
Sincerely,
Jack Layton, MP (Toronto-Danforth)
Leader, New Democratic Party of CanadaTo catch up on recent news and issues, please visit http://www.ndp.ca or subscribe to our e-mail bulletin, e-NDP, at subscribe@ndp.ca.
May 8, 2006
Music Coalition a Wake Up Call on Copyright Law – NDP
OTTAWA – NDP Heritage Critic Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) says the emergence of the star-studded Canadian Music Creator’s Coalition (CMCC) is a welcome addition to the long simmering war over copyright legislation. The Coalition is in Ottawa to meet with Industry Minister Maxime Bernier and Heritage Minister Bev Oda.
The CMCC intervention comes as the government discusses legislation that could have wide-ranging impacts for music fans, educators and software innovators. Restrictive copyright legislation could be used to squash the development of new digital distribution models, sue kids who share music files and impose tollbooths on the educational use of the Internet.
Speaking at a press conference with Steven Page (Barenaked Ladies), Andrew Cash (Cash Brothers) and Brendan Canning (Broken Social Scene), Angus said the message from the bands is loud and clear – digital downloading will not be the death knell of Canadian music. In fact, it has created exciting opportunities for bands across the musical spectrum:
“This is not a debate between bands who want to give music away and bands who want to be paid. This issue is about artists who have adapted to new digital markets and an industry that is trying to use legislation to impose a 20th century business model on a new generation of fans. There is no going back. Canadian bands have thrived and adapted. It’s time Parliament woke up to this fact.”
Angus, who is also a two-time Juno nominee with the band Grievous Angels, said the copyright agenda has been largely driven by corporate interests.
“It’s important to have the coalition at the table when new legislation is drafted. New copyright legislation will have profound implications not just for music fans but for students, educators and software innovators. The music coalition is giving politicians a badly needed wake up call.”
The coalition includes a wide array of Canadian music greats including: Sam Roberts, Broken Social Scene, the Barenaked Ladies, Sum 41, Billy Talent, Bob Ezrin, Feist, Stars, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), John K. Samson (Weakerthans), Sloan, the Stampeders and Randy Bachman.
That’s kinda cool.
I meant to post about this before, but got caught up in that little project of mine … anyway, a bunch of musicians left the CRIA over copyright issues, and started the wonderful Canadian Music Creators Coalition. Some high-profile folks in there, including the Barenaked Ladies, Feist, Avril Lavigne, and Dave Bidini of what remains one of my all-time favourite bands:Rheostatics. More to come presumably. Idea: CRIA and industry-friendly anti-piracy doesn’t help the artists, but hurts them. Here’s their statement of principles:
1. Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
2. Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
3. Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists
Anyway, we hope to see more exciting stuff like this.
In other news, I’ve been in touch with Justin again recently, and would like to spend little time on publicbroadcasting.ca, which I think could develop into a very important project: a true people-powered public broadcaster that uses (rather than shuns) the internet to connect Canadians.
But first, I must spend some time on the very-neglected LibriVox.org - which is moving swimmingly without much help from me, but there are some things I should help clean up including a bunch of recordings I owe!
So there’s some movement at WIPO that Cory Doctorow (in Boing Boing) and others argue will be bad news for podcasting. I can’t get my head around what’s on the table, but it’s related to Webcasting and DRM, and the problem seems to be requiring special permission from a host to distribute even creative commons licensed content. Anyway, if WIPO’s around, I assume it’s not all that great. Here’s what Cory has to say:
The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization has reconvened to discuss a treaty to kill innovative Internet audio/video offerings — like podcasting, YouTube, Google Video, and Democracy Player — in order to protect the business models of a few entrenched broadcasters. This is the Broadcast Treaty, and the process — never pretty — got uglier than ever today.
He goes on:
… Webcasting and DRM — are deadly for podcasters. Podcasting services rely on the ability to mirror, aggregate, index, process, convert and host podcasts, and hundreds of thousands of podcasts are licensed to explicitly permit this kind of work. But once you need permission from hosting companies like Yahoo before you can index, and once it’s illegal to break copy-restriction formats to analyze the podcasts they contain, it’s game over.
Check the EFF post about it.
(thanks to the ever-vigilant digital copyright canada for the tip)
So a few Montreal geeky types convened at the Office (aka Laika) for a sort-of impromptu discussion to try to figure out what the hell is going on in the world, and specifically what this “Open Movent” might be, and what connections we can draw (if any) between it’s various strands: that is, are there any connection between:
The group was mainly geeks, and unfortunately Devlin couldn’t make it. That’s too bad because Devlin isn’t a geek, and works in agricultural IP issues, mostly in the South (ie developing countries) and his take on things might have helped us find the root we couldn’t grasp: biotech/IP issues are important in those countries because they have a direct impact on farmers’ choices about how they feed their families, how they live - if they can feed their families - and so are, in some sense, more critical than what we were talking about.
But I feel that there is an important link between all these things, a link that is very difficult to articulate because all these “sectors” talk in very different words, and are motivated by very different things. The hard-core geeks and the creative commons artistic freedom fighters are not necessarily talking about the same things, and probably wouldn’t agree on much.
Julien assigned me the task of summarizing the 1.5 hr discussion, but I don’t think I’ll do that. It would be a disservice, and I’m much more interested in what those attending have to say themselves (get writing!) than trying to interpret what they had to say, and butchering their thoughts in the process. Still, what I’ll try to do is summarize my perspective of things, after trying to absorb the discussions. I’ll probably leave out things like “I think” and “in my opinion” and “as steve said” etc…Take what comes below as an open reflection that could encourage comment & discussion, and not exactly my categorical statement of Reality in the Universe (although it might sound like that).
To start with, there are links, they are important, and figuring out what those links are is important. But all these “new movements” are in fact not new at all: the various principles the intellectual movements are built on (say: freedom, equality, access to data/information) are all old successful ideas. Ideas that are compelling because they appeal to successful and enduring notions in many cultures. For instance: sharing is good (kindergarten class #1), everyone should have access to knowledge (public libraries, public schools), a society should try to give everyone the same opportunities - ie you shouldn’t be explicitly barred from doing something because of race, creed, colour; but we might not do too much to help you.
These ideas are not at all universal, but just happen to be prevailing ideas of our particularly successful (ie good at economic & military dominance) western liberal democracies. We happen to be at the top of the heap right now. Meaning we’ve been successful, but not necessarily meaning that the Universe has designated us Kings of the Planet.
Note also: Not everyone is motivated by such abstract ideas. This is something that Mike speaks of with great passion from his experience at ISF: many people are involved because they like coding, they like wires & antennae, they like fiddling with projects, tinkering, building. That they’re doing something for the “good of humanity” (freedom etc) might be important to some, but it’s certainly not the universal motivator. Some couldn’t care less.
So here’s what I think: Humans are programmed to find ways to overcome environmental challenges, and to get pleasure from overcoming them (which encourages them to overcome them). If you look at the history of human civilization, you could look at it as a series of problems: access to water, access to food, access to heat/energy, access to clothing, access to shelter, access to mates. “Civilization” is an evolving process which morphs based on a lack of any combination of those, and cultures develop as codified ways to meet those needs, in more and more complex ways, generally for more people. Wars start when one culture’s need for one thing rams up against another culture’s need for another; successful cultures are the ones that win wars, and gain access to what they need; or cultures that succeed in negotiating in some non-war way. Unsuccessful cultures don’t win the wars, and get denied access to varying degrees. Similarly within a culture you’ve got warring factions all fighting for bits of the stuff that satisfies those needs. And the drive for wealth, the drive for power etc. is a sensible thing to have within the system of a culture because it means that the culture, as a system, will be driven to maintain access to the things which fulfil those base needs. As the world & it’s cultures get more complex, this need is abstracted out to other things. So you get art, computer games, religion etc. But in a way that’s just a fetishized expression of the same thing. (That guy’s pyramid, whatever his name is). Even when you have all the water, food, mates etc you could possibly want, your drive to solve those problems is still there; your drive to solve problems full-stop is still there. Otherwise you would fade away. That drive to solve problems manifests itself in art, in the joy of coding, in building bookshelves…anytime you “do” something, accomplish something, build something, and you feel good about it, you’ve filling that need; and the pleasure you get out of it is a genetic signal that you’re a functioning human. There are of course exceptions, but bear with me.
So: Humans are happiest when they build things (whether that’s a poem, a bridge, a printer driver code, or a field of corn, a new way to generate energy, a library, a community of freedom-fighting geeks). Let’s say we are genetically (culturally?) programmed to get satisfaction from completing tasks, making something. Some tasks are more fulfilling than others, but in general even completing excruciatingly boring tasks results in a pleasing feeling. You can describe this in many different ways, but we generally feel pride and happiness about accomplishments.
We use various tools to accomplish these tasks, to build things & do things. Hammers and ibooks, and apple scripts, paintbrushes, shovels, encyclopedias, calculators. And people who are driven to build things (say, the tinkerers, the programmers, the car buffs and the CEOs, the politicians & the activists) are pretty pissed when they are told that they cannot make the tools they use better. So when, for instance, a software company gives you a tool to do a job, and you say to yourself, this is OK but what I really want is THIS; but the software company says: you cannot change the tool to do THIS, you can only do THAT. Well that pisses off someone who has a job to do, an inefficient tool, the means to make that bad tool into a good tool; but gets artificially prevented from improving that tool by IP protections. That, I think, is the root of the Free Software movement. That a non-free software system that doesn’t allow tool users to use tools the way they want, and to improve those tools offends their general desire to build things and do things. If you have a bad tool and the means to make it a good tool, it’s really shitty not to be able to make it a good tool.
Now you can abstract THAT out to everything else related. Art, data, scientific research, education, seeds etc. are all tools used to solve problems. Those problems could be very base & important (how do I feed my family), or very trivial (how do I make a better songlist in iTunes), but we are driven to DO these things and build these things and solve problems; and that we are driven this way means that we as a species are good at overcoming environmental challenges. ie It has been essential for our survival that this be the case.
So I *think* this open movement is about something very fundamental to the survival of the human species, that is: we want the ability to get and use tools to solve whatever problems we deem worth solving.
The free movement is about defending this fundemental need of humans to use tools as they wish, for purposes they wish, and with whatever modifications they wish. And the different strands grow out of different people’s interest in different tools (encyclopedias or bits of code, or music samples). So we are against:
And we are for: Allowing humans to use their tools as they see fit, and to modify their tools if they want to modify them so that they are better at solving problems. By “opening” this stuff up, we give humans access to more data and more ability to solve problems (trivial, critical) in creative ways. The Open movement has huge implications for the future survival of cultures, and perhaps the species.
NOTE about participants (ie people who happened to be there): brett (videoblogger & film maker), mike (isf founder & general free movement spitter), robin (anarchist software developer), steve (builder of opensource tools for scientific collaboration), julien (ace podcaster), and me (in my LibriVox hat, I guess). Ella, an artist & blogger and non-boy popped over to our table a couple of times, but I think we were stupidly much less welcoming than we should have been - more out of intentness of our conversation than anything conscious - and I would like to personally apologize for that.
Peggy Nash (NDP) beats out Sam Bulte (L), of copyright shame, . Let’s hope Ms. Nash, and the rest of Canada’s politicians, got the message that this is an important issue.
I like David Byrne. He’s the biggest musician I know of (there surely are more) who keeps ranting about copyright and DRM and all that good stuff. He’s got a good weblog, and a great streaming radio station, and wrote this: Happy New Year. Don’t Buy CDs from the Big 5. Juicy bit:
These guys deserve to go out of business, they obviously don’t love music, and they don’t understand their own customers.
(via Boing Boing)
From Matthew Good, re: copyright, and corporate media/record companies in Canada:
The most important realization that any Canadian can make about this country’s music industry is that it is almost entirely beholden to foreign parent companies. Now, many of you might be labouring under the false assumption that the primary concern of Canada’s foremost corporate music giants is the promotion and support of domestic artists, but nothing could be further from the truth. Canadian companies exhaust the majority of their energies promoting large international acts, basically acting as little more than regional sales offices. Below those concerns is found whatever investment remains in Canadian music, an investment that over the last decade has rapidly declined. That’s not to say that all interest is gone, or that there aren’t a few good people left out there with their heads screwed on straight, just that their options are limited by those above them…[more]
I think iTunes is a crappy programme, it’s interface sucks, it does lots of things you don’t want it to do, and it’s all bundled into a big mess. It moves your files around, changes their format, puts them in mysterious places. It’s podcast feature takes you to the music store, which is no anything close to the same thing. The podcast and music store interface look like they were designed in 1998 by www.crappycommercialwebdesign.com. Among other things.
Plus it’s bad for artists, see this nice site that lays down the facts, with a fair bit of editorial flamboyance: downhillbattle.org.
(via Circles Around the Square)
UPDATE: So iTunes stinking for artists is one reason it stinks, here more: Cynicism and Stupidity at iTunes. This post from Tom Coates about the ads and spyware on iTunes new “upgrade.” What are they thinking? Maybe that most users will just happily say, OK. They have pretty impressive market domination right now, and they’re probably right. But what was idle thoughts of changing platforms has now turned to an imperative for me. So take that Apple. Ha! Bet they’re sorry now!
(via this is mikel)
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