Southward

Filed under: General Thoughts and Media

I’ve been keeping an eye on the southern neighbor these days; the election coming up down there will have regrettably far-reaching consequences for not only the US but for us, too. I’ve seen more than a few things that bother me, not least of which is the fact that there is literally not one candidate for any party that strikes me as anything other than an opportunistic, grasping, myopic shell of a human being. I wouldn’t move to the US right now if someone paid me.

Okay, well, maybe if they paid me a lot.

It’s the last epithet that concerns me, though; I expect grasping, and opportunistic is synonymous with ‘career politician’. The persistent failure of vision, however, is scary; they can’t see past their clawing to the top to acknowledge the wounds they’re inflicting on themselves in the process. And Bob forfend that we suggest that the process is flawed, that’s frankly unamerican.

I know, I know, I devote too much thought to this for someone who doesn’t even live within the borders, let alone have a right to vote there, but the US elections are merely a logical endpoint (not the only logical endpoint, mind) of the particular form of representative democracy that is so widely believed to be the one, true way. I know I’m going a bit off-message for myself here, but I blame a combination of my usual bugbear (the unending manipulable and moronic voting public) and a new beast: Corporate finance.

I’m a devoted supporter of freedom of expression, so this is hard for me, but I believe more and more that allowing corporate freedom of expression is suppressing individual freedom of expression too much. I know that there’s a good argument to be made that corporations’ speech is just a collective expression of individual freedom to speak, but I’m no longer convinced that it’s a valid defence. I’m arguing ethics from consequences here, which is not always a safe path to tread. Here, however, the consequences look increasingly dire.

Still, in the end, it’s the people who keep putting this system over themselves.

What’s a libertarian to do?

Brand New

Filed under: Internet, Media and Science

Well, thank you, Stewart Brand, for doing a fine job of saying something that I’ve held to be true for a good long time: Good old stuff sucks.

This is part of the EDGE questions for 2008; “What did you change your mind about in 2007?” This is a web thing, I suppose, but some fine thinkers are involved, and their responses run the gamut from predictable (Sam Harris) to interesting (Richard Dawkins).

I recommend checking the rest of them out from the provided links. I’m on my way to work, but I think that this evening I’ll try to add my own “What did I change my mind about in 2007?” to it; if I can find one

A Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

Filed under: Events

Well, well.

Persuant to my post about the Canadian DMCA it appears that the legislation has been pulled and will not be enacted in its current form.

It’s hard to say why without the power of telepathy, but I would imagine that the widespread public outcry over the effects of the law can’t have hurt.

Sorry, the bill has been delayed, not withdrawn

Rights? You don’t want those.

Filed under: Events, Internet and Media

Buried under the avalanche of holiday-related product placements that hit once every year for about, oh, three months, a major change in Canadian copyright legislation is about to take place, and — despite Minister of Industry Jim Prentice’s claim that this change will “put consumers first,” there’s little enough of that to be seen in the proposed legislation.

Now, I’m not going to parrot the analysis here, because one of the biggest friends that this type of law has is an uninformed populace. What I’d ask instead is that you (the two of you still reading this after my long silence) spend a morning informing yourself about the way laws like this will affect your freedom to consume and produce art in the Canada we’ll live in for the foreseeable future. If you need a starting point, as I’m sure that you do, I can offer a couple:

If you want a great video showing you what is happening in the US — whose DMCA is the template for the act that will be introduced in Canada sometime in the next week and a half — then I recommend Lawrence Lessig’s TED talk: How Creativity is Being Strangled By the Law. It’s 20 minutes, but it’s well worthwhile.

If you’re more inclined for a local perspective, you can do far worse than Michael Geist’s Canadian DMCA articles. Geist is a lawyer specializing in the internet — specifically issues with respect to privacy and e-Commerce, and he’s one of our best early-warning systems for dangerous copyright legislation.

And, in the end, if you come to the end of these links — and please at least skim them — and you want to do something, there’s an article on what you can do, too. I, for one, am going to be contacting Laurie Hawn and Jim Prentice. Hopefully on some level they listen.

Update

I just sent this to Jim Prentice

Good day, Mr. Prentice;

I am not one of your constituents in the strictest sense, being from Edmonton. I do live in Laurie Hawn’s constituency, and I am a Conservative voter in both the capital- and small-c- senses. It is in the latter capacity — as a philosophical conservative — that I write you today.

I believe that Canada’s future as a vibrant culture and an economic powerhouse can be better assured by removing barriers to innovation and reducing the challenges with which creative persons must contend to produce their art. Coming into the earlier parts of the 21st century we have an unparalleled opportunity to take the fruits of our technological process at this early stage of their development and use them to broaden our collective horizons in ways that you and I cannot possibly imagine at this time. This will not, however, happen if we as a nation do not protect the freedoms necessary to create new art from old, a process which has been ongoing for almost all of human history, with a lull only in the early parts of the 20th century when the costs to create new media prevented all but the largest corporations from participating. That imbalance has now righted itself, and the technology of creativity is now democratically available again. The question is, with what will these newly-enabled artists create? What will be their raw material? Moreover, how will others see their work? The restrictive legislation that is to be tabled later this month lacks critical provisions for fair use and for reverse engineering, both of which are driving forces of invention.

Make no mistake, I am not a ‘copyleft’ fanatic; I am a software developer by trade and I make my living on copyright and the protections it provides. I do not wish to see a regime wherein my work is freely available without compensation to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who decides that they want it. Moreover, my friends who are artists run the gamut from the “give it away” to the “it’s mine and I should be paid for it” on the spectrum. What is true, however, is that the legislation that you are expected to introduce this month will hurt all of us in ways that are eminently predictable, since we have the immediate example of the United States to see.

In conclusion, I ask that you reconsider your stance on consumer consultation before introducing this bill. When creating content has become so trivial (witness YouTube, although perhaps you’ll share my sense of disappointment with most of that content) it’s important to realize that the only difference between a ‘consumer’ and a ‘creator’ in this century is likely to be in the size of their wallet.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks, TED

Filed under: Asides and Media

Aaron mentioned TED to me some time ago as an interesting place to go for talks about the world; technology, science, economics, politics.

I finally got around to checking it out, and I have to admit, there’s a lot there.

It’s a time-consumer, no question, with the video talks running to 20 minutes each, so you might not get to see all of it at a shot, but I’m convinced it’s worthwhile. Right now I’m watching a talk on the application of economics to explaining AIDS in Africa, and there’s more like that.

Check it out.

Windmills

Filed under: Internet, Media and Science

You know, I feel sorry for the iconoclasts of the world; it’s not easy to convince people that their particular brand of fixed idealism is a bad approach, and the more religious the adherence the harder it is to combat.

This particular line of thought comes about while reading an essay by Freeman Dyson entitled Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society, wherein Mr. Dyson discusses some of his own personal heresies vis-a-vis global warming. Although he makes coherent arguments, he is doomed from the start not by flaws in his arguments, nor by the unimpeachable truth of the ideas he’s criticizing, but instead he’s doomed to forever tilt at windmills on this subject because — like religion and political orientation — belief in climate change, for or against, is based not on reason but on faith.

So, I feel sorry for Freeman Dyson. I feel sorry for Bjorn Lomborg. I feel sorry for Al Gore (although for different reasons — he’s part of the solution here, and part of the problem there) and for Richard Dawkins and James Randi.

Sitrep

Filed under: General Thoughts

Well, it’s been a bit; I’m not sure why, but I’ve been undermotivated to blog lately, which has resulted in an ominous quiet from the site.

Here’s a bullet-point update on my situation these days:

• I’m biking to work pretty much daily now; it’s about (I’m told) 6km each way, so it’s a bit of exercise I wouldn’t otherwise be getting, and it’s pretty decent exercise. It’s excellent that our workplace has a shower.
• I’m taking class in the morning and working late, which means that anyone that wants to make plans with me has to take into account that I won’t be home until 7:30 or so each weekday. Having said that, I’d love to do evening things with people, so please call any time.
• Work is up & down; I want to work on new things, but old things keep cropping up.
• Char is away this week, and I miss her.
• XBMC is the greatest thing since sliced bread. No AppleTV for me, my new (old) Xbox does everything I would want the aTV to do.
• I’ve read a few books recently, notably “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which I bought for Char. It’s excellent, and I highly recommend it.
• On Sunday, with the blessings of Lyal and the qualified non-refusal of a shoulder surgeon, I’m going to fly again.

Politicause

Filed under: Events, General Thoughts, Internet, Media and Rants

I want to second Char’s mention of the Green Party of Canada’s petition to be included in national debates. Political discourse in this country needs to include all of the parties that are in the running, even if they are just nascent entities on the political stage.

How are voters supposed to make informed choices, if all of the reasonable alternatives — plus the NDP — aren’t allowed to present their platforms?

The Green Party is the first party I’ve seen that has ever given me reason to re-examine my fairly hard-line conservative bent. They’re basically the other side of the coin, for me; where the Conservative party satisfies my sense of fiscal and civil responsibility, the Green Party emphasizes a fair number of intellectual property and personal freedom policies that I support, as well. It makes it a hard choice, and even more so because I live in one of the two ridings in Alberta that elects a Liberal, which brings my own personal distaste for strategic voting to the fore.

Let’s just say I’m not 100% certain to vote Conservative this time around.

Free, huh?

Filed under: General Thoughts, Internet, Media and Rants

I’m still damned busy, but some things I just can’t help myself from posting.

This is a small site, with no real impact, and no political pretensions — I don’t provide a service to people who want info on the government, although I criticize sometimes. However, the fact that linking to this is cause for subpoenas from my own government… Well, let’s just say that suppression of free speech is abhorrent under all circumstances. Especially when it involves the very people in positions to suppress it.

This USian blogger is pumping out information about the Adscam trials, although I’m not sure what his angle on it is, and as far as I’m concerned is providing a valuable service.

Just remember — if you’re co-national with me, it might soon be illegal for you to read those links.

It’s worth noting, as someone else in the blog community has in response to this, an old saw about the internet: It will treat censorship as network damage and simply route around it. This is a feature, not a bug.

Anyway, the workload is lightening off a bit — I may be reachable for conversation (for the masochists among you) soon, and after next weekend I actually expect to have time to relax!

Let me count the ways

Filed under: General Thoughts, Internet, Media and Rants

I can’t even start to enumerate the ways that this program to teach schoolchildren copyright offends my sensibilities.

Along with the american MPAA, who is also doing something like it, this program is part of a concerted effort by holders of modern, excessively-long copyrights to indoctrinate young children into toeing the party line.

Unlike some groups I don’t advocate the idea that ‘Information wants to be free’, nor do I believe that any entity, be they an artist or a massive conglomerate like the (MP|RI)AA, is obligated to give away their intellectual property just because the marginal cost of duplication is so small. However, I object to the entry of private industry lobby groups into an education system that is already starting to show signs of commercial decay.

The Register in the UK has a writeup on this, and there is an open letter from a British citizen on kuro5hin that indicates a nice, clear set of objections to the policy.

Sometimes I think that, while we’re all looking the other way, our rights as human beings — not as abstract consumers of goods — are simply going to be cancelled along with the latest crop of post-Seinfeld flops.

This shit worries me. What in the hell are we doing, letting this happen?