iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Rick Mercer was recently at Brock University to help spread the word on the Spread the Net campaign. The goal of the campaign is to have Canadians buy simple Mosquito nets at $10 each that will be given to children in Liberia and Rwanda to give them a place to sleep protected from mosquitos and the threat of Malaria.

Everyone at Brock University would love it if you could make a donation at: my.e2rm.com/TeamPage.aspx?EventID=15008&LangPref=en-CA&TeamID=84330

Its simple way to make a big impact and save lives.

Additionally, I will NOT be buying the Rogers iPhone on July 11th after previously calling it the best devices ever made. The only way to affect change in the Canadian cell phone market is to resist it. Sorry Rogers, you ruined the iPhone.

Just submitted the following comment to The Creators’ Copyright Coalition article The Hockey Song? Blame Michael Geist.

I’m often just as apt to do it, but it fascinates me how different people interpret the same vents differently. Remember your semiotics, all meaning is negotiated!

Your article doesn’t make clear how refusal to pay for something and then not using it (in this case the Hockey Song) is anti-copyright? I thought it had something to do with payment/permission for use and no use without it – the CBC’s not even trying to argue a fair use/fair dealing situation.

Unless the only thing copyright stands for is paying people, and if that’s the case then I submit that its in fact you who’ve fallen into the “kid downloading an MP3 mindset”.

In any case, thanks for contributing to the public dialogue.

I did forget to divulge my conflict of interest: mattclare.ca/wordpress/2008/05/31/i-won-tfc-tickets/

Ironically, the op-ed posting on the educational exceptions of Bill C-611, Straw in the wind: the mindset behind C-61, is bang on.

Thus concludes post 500.

Want to send Grandma a DVD (OK, maybe play for her a DVD) of the latest baby pictures with your favourite Beatles songs in the background? If Canada’s proposed update to copyright law makes it into law it will result in a $500 fine for Grandma and a $20,000 fine for Mom and Dad! The only saving grace is baby might be able to extract $20,000 from Grandma if she screened the DVD for her knitting circle.

This is one of the many individual uses that generally considered fair use (dealing) in Canada that is being attacked by bill C-61, the proposed amendments to Canada’s Copyright Act.

Canadians will have to consider every time they press play: “will this cost me $20,000?”

This bill is about protecting or creating failed business models and it is anti-consumer, anti-innovation, does little for actual artists (rarely the actual rights holder), circumvents the market and tramples on fair use/fair dealing while ensuring rights holders are entitled to extra revenue for content they’ve already sold to consumers transferring play-back devices.

The same government that refuses to change the rules to protect Canadians when circumstances change are apparently willing to protect largely American owned rights-holders when circumstances change for them. Canadian consumers worried about unfair prices when the Canadian dollar overtook the American dollar ignored, Canadian workers in the finance minister’s home riding can’t even get a visit from their MP when their contract was violated, but when technology makes it hard for companies to enforce unreasonable contract restrictions the Harper government offers up a federal law to remove rights from Canadians.
Read more... (533 words, 3 images, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

How’d I miss this? www.campustechnology.com/articles/60271/. Maybe it’s just as well that I didn’t post this around April 1st.

Credit to Giulia for spotting it.

There were 10 total issues raised in the reexamination request covering all 44 of the claims in the Blackboard patent. The process isn’t over, and the patent is technically still valid, but it is very unlikely that it’ll cover much at all when it’s all over. As I’ve always said, Blackboard might have invented some things, but not everything to do with on-line learning.

My favourite quote (as it often does) come from Eben Moglen “… the education community should be pleased to hear that Blackboard has now been deprived of the opportunity to commit more ‘thuggery’”.