Copyright

Although it is off the radar for most, and out of the public specter at this time, I am often explaining to businesses and individuals why a balanced copyright legislation is important in Canada. After the economy rights itself, and the Politicians settle down over their discussions for who should lead the country as our Government, the issue of Copyright will again surface.

For a great explanation of what it means to you as Canadians, I highly recommend watching this documentary entitled Why Copyright? from Michael Geist and Daniel Albahary, which allows various stakeholders in this discussion to explain why balanced copyright is important, and what implications it may have on all of us, it a DMCA style legislation is brought forward.

The film is also distributed in multiple formats at CopyrightVoices.ca which allows you do annotate, mashup, redistribute and create derivative works from the original film. Way Cool.

• Darren Mak's blog

This morning I was listening to CJOB and heard an interview with someone from the Songwriters Association of Canada. I would love to post a link to the interview on the CJOB site, as well as the name of the songwriter that was interviewed, however they require Windows Media Player to listen to or even search their audio vault, and bening on a Mac I cannot access this content, but that is another post for another day.

Anyway, I was slightly surprised by some of the things being said by this gentleman, and thought it was worth a listen. He made some good points and I was suprised that the Songwriters were actually admitting that something different had to be done. Their proposal however is flawed on many levels.

1. getting ISPs to agree to collect and manage this "tax" is highly unlikely.

• Darren Mak's blog