Response to Canadian Copyright Consultation
By Josh Chalifour, 12 September 2009copyright, canadian copyright consultation, copyright law, culture
IP-Pretension
Category Archive
Rip Movie
By Josh Chalifour, 17 March 2009Just saw the film, Rip, last weekend. The movie explores most of the present day struggles with copyright and notions of ownership of “intellectual property.” I thought it was interesting in how it presented a US government decision in the 90s (through interviews with those responsible) to definitively shift its economy from a manufacturing oriented [...]
Some Notes on the Canadian Digital Information Strategy Draft
By Josh Chalifour, 21 November 2007I’ve been reading the draft consultation version of the Canadian Digital Information Strategy. The strategy proposes strengthening content, ensuring its preservation, and maximizing its access and use. These are important for many reasons the report addresses regarding culture; the report also has some anchors in industry, stating that “nations that nurture their digital information assets [...]
Copyright Reform and the Stats Can Report
By Josh Chalifour, 12 November 2007Michael Geist posted about the politics in the debate on copyright reform. The point stems from dissonance between the recent Statistics Canada report and a reform-oriented bill expected to introduce more restrictive copyright policy. The report showed some nice Canadian recording industry profits where similar industries in other parts of the world seemed to be [...]
Anti-IP Motivation from Me
By Josh Chalifour, 29 October 2007Frustrated with the state of things on the “intellectual property” news front, last week I sent a few letters accompanying copies of Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture book to some Canadian politicians. Is that self-righteous? I really enjoyed the book. Lessig did some sound thinking around all kinds of issues and he wrote about them in [...]
Terminology Advocates Protect FOSS
By Josh Chalifour, 21 June 2007Open Source Initiative (OSI) president, Michael Tiemann, discusses adherence to the “open source” definition. I read his article with two interests in mind. First, of someone who feels semantics are important (I’ve always felt the poor argument “it’s only semantics” is little more than an attempt by small-thinkers to belittle what they are unwilling to [...]
Dissecting Proprietary Doublespeak–ISC Letter Criticism Part 2
By Josh Chalifour, 19 October 2006Now to continue what I started yesterday–criticising the letter (PDF) from the Initiative for Software Choice’s (ISC) Hugo Lueders. Why bother criticizing this? Is it of any consequence? I think so, if not because the letter itself may actually influence policy, but rather because this kind of thing is visible to many people and can [...]
Dissecting Proprietary Doublespeak–ISC Letter Criticism Part 1
By Josh Chalifour, 18 October 2006What would we do if George Orwell hadn’t enabled us to come up with doublespeak neologisms? Matthew Broersma of Techworld.com wrote about a “leaked” letter (PDF) from the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) regarding a UNU-MERIT study on FLOSS in the economy. Broersma describes the ISC as a “Microsoft-funded pressure group” which sounds like an [...]
