So I’ve added a plugin to put polls in here. I’m going to use one, first, to figure out my traffic patterns. Feel free to comment if you can’t find an answer in the list.
-Jer
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Bell has been busted for Internet throttling. (CBC story here.) No news there. The news is that they’ve been told to back up their congestion claim with numbers. (CBC story here.) Expect some creative accounting of traffic dynamics – Bell’s going to bring out the Master Chefs on this one.
Here’s the scoop:
Bell says that ‘Net neutrality is impossible because rich-media content, especially full work downloads (movies, albums, etc.), takes up so much of the very precious and limited bandwidth available that they have to clamp down on those who don’t pay extra or everyone will suffer some kind of cataclysmic Internet pipeline collapse. Therefore, they are examining the traffic, using a privacy-threatening (and common carrier status-threatening) technique called “deep packet inspection”, and slowing down users’ connections when the result of their listening-in tells them that those users are using their Bell high speed Internet connections for rich-media.
There are a lot of problems with this.
This last claim is being used to justify the throttling.
Let’s extend the “traffic” analogy, and see where it falls apart: Read the rest of this entry »
I was talking to my father-in-law on Sunday morning about which show George Carlin ws likely to bring to his upcoming night at the River Rock. Would it be the silly and hilarious poke at absurdity that generates his funniest storytelling? Would it be a barely tolerable polemic on his recent pet peeves? Or would it be what he does best, I wondered: Rather than the class clown, would he play the court jester, veiling the polemic in poignant and palatable (and, I hoped, filthy) humour, leaving you wiping tears of laughter but also thinking about his underlying observations?
George Carlin died later that day.
In the earliest rendition (as far as I know) of his most infamous - and certainly his most notorious - routine, which he referred to as the “Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say On Television,” Carlin said, “I love words.” He also said that there are no bad words - bad thoughts and bad intentions, yes - but not bad words. To George, words floated in the ether of communication, themselves devoid of any morality - positive or negative - but that which we attach as the thoughts that are their payload.
When George Carlin’s list was broadcast on the radio, as compared to being confined to the controlled environments of album playback and live performance, the F.C.C. threatened sanctions against the broadcaster’s parent, Pacifica Foundation. Pacifica fought back, and though they ultimately lost, milestones were achieved in the limitations of the F.C.C.’s power to regulate.
The United States Supreme Court decided that “Filthy Words,” as that rendition of the routine was called, was indecent but not obscene. It was protected under the First Amendment, and therefore the F.C.C. could only limit broadcast in certain situations, such as when children would be likely to listen. Only when broadcast as entertainment and not news adn during hours when children are likely to listen would the F.C.C. be permitted to regulate and infringe free speech, as a distinction was drawn between “indecent” and “obscene”.
Justice Stevens concluded at page 750 of the case (438 U.S. 726):
The F.C.C.’s power to regulate was upheld, but in a narrow context. Moreover, the court felt compelled to reproduce the entire routine, in what must have been courtroom-rocking hilarity, as an appendix to the decision.
George, wherever you are, I hope you’re cracking the place up with Lenny and Richard. In high school, you cracked me up. In university, you got me to explore words in a presentation on their effect that made others blush. In law school, I used the “Seven Dirty Words” routine as an appendix to a presentation on Freedom of Expression. I think we could have enjoyed meeting over a beer and talking about our love of words. In your honour, I will not have a moment of silence. You said you didn’t know what to do with one, and neither do I. I’d rather have a moment of laughter.
George Carlin, May 12, 1937 - June 22, 2008.
Here we go… [UPDATED: Links added]
It’s been a week since the Minister of Information Industry, Jim Prentice, dropped a piano Bill C-61 on us. Thanks to Prof. Michael Geist, we had some warning: This bill would not be a brave surge forward into the 21st century for Canada, embracing the Information Age and showing the world that we lead in promoting innovation and civil liberties, that we have the wisdom to strike balance where others are stricken with fear, and that we anticipate rather than kowtow.
This bill is instead sycophantic obsequiousness to groups that should be politically and legally notwithstood according to any definition of Canadian sovereignty or democracy.
Our public interest groups (Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic - CIPPIC), private interest groups (Canadian Music Creators Coalition - CMCC), and even corporate lobbyists (the Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright - BCBC) have spoken, but it was to the U.S. Ambassador, the RIAA, the MPAA, and the other foreign interests that elected Members of Parliament Jim Prentice and Josee Verner listened.
If not for the environmental catastrophe that would be precipitated by tons of polycarbonate in open water, I would advocate dumping boatloads of blank CD-Rs and flas memory cards in Boston Harbour. Why should our laws be dictated by a government not elected by us? I think I’ve heard that before.
Anyway, I’m going to spend the next while continuing to sink my teeth into the meat of C-61 and will try to get specific in critiquing its shortcomings.
I’ll give you a taste of some detailed analysis, however: Read the rest of this entry »
Servamus.
It is often said that in an armed law enforcement agency - be it military, paramilitary, or police - that exists within a democracy, the highest rank is civilian. That democratic hierarchy of rank is evident in the motto of the Vancouver Police Department:
Servamus.
We serve.
There is little genuine argument against the public benefits conveyed by the enforcement of traffic safety (excluding those arguments about police resource allocation and specific traffic laws, but those do not deal with the validity of traffice policing itself).
“The [Vancouver] police force has up to eight replica cops that initially will be deployed on Knight Street to try to reduce speeding and traffic fatalities,” wrote Neal Hall in Friday’s Vancouver Sun.
Servamus.
In the fictional book, “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism,” a creation within George Orwell’s novel, 1984, Big Brother rules through fear. The fear of the phantom is more powerful than any real Big Brother could be as a tool to elicit obedience.
Obedience and fear? Read the rest of this entry »
I was listening to CBC Radio 2 tonight on my way home, and they played Senator Robert Kennedy’s speech, “On the Mindless Menace of Violence,” about the plague of violence that was making the United States sick, in his view. I heard RFK’s speech, and was moved. The need to respond rose so acutely that I pulled over, and wrote this:
In one decade, visionary humanitarian John Kennedy became president, his brother Bobby Kennedy ran for president on a similar platform of the brotherhood of man, and Martin Luther King told the United States that colour and religion should not be criteria for segregation, but for diversity.
In that decade, all three men were shot dead, crucified in a sense, for their vision.
We in Canada have smugly watched from our cottony soft mantle north of the 49th parallel, our now native ironic detachment from our primary source of cultural product insulating us from a sense that we need to participate in the same social activism. It is true that we are not as violent, that racism and other forms of bigotry, while not necessarily less pervasive, are not manifested by the same bloodshed in Canada. But our complacency is a mistake.
Bobby Kennedy’s speech spoke volumes about our world, today, in Canada equally, four decades later. Guns and swagger are becoming the measure of the man, and not his ability to defuse and resolve conflict, his ability to pacify combatants.
Who will rise above the pettiness of party politics in November and lead the world once again, as the United States did under Roosevelt, Kennedy, and maybe even Clinton? Can Barack Obama’s posturing yield a Kennedy or a King? Can John McCain’s individualism and claimed oath of personal sacrifice place the noble pedestal (and not the tyrannical mace) of the Executive above the Legislature?
Cyberion, at Tazzu, posted a link to the Vancouver Province story on the threatened border checks on the legitimacy of electronic media. (Cyberion’s post)
I had some rather strong feelings, and ranted the following:
This is one of the nastiest and most frivolous pieces of legislation I’ve heard about in a long time. If it were used to gather evidence against commercial pirates or others who make their living off contraband, I could maybe (and I say that stretching my “maybe” like a yoga pose) see it as legit, but really it feels like another latex gloved finger of the RIAA/MPAA coalition. Where are the civil libertarians? ACLU, EFF, etc.? I know Prof. Geist is opposed, but is his the only loud voice? This could do to U.S. tourism what a strong $CDN has done to ours; it gives people a reason to stay home. What will be the criteria for detention? A predominance of unlicensed material, or just any possibility of an inadequate license (e.g. a shareware version of CuteFTP downloaded in the Win9x days before the trial license had an expiration built in)? Will people have to carry student cards and proof of enrolment to demonstrate the likelihood of academic use of academically licensed software? Are we to trust the border guards’ intimate knowledge of the arcane variations on licensing, the differences between fair use (U.S.A.) and fair dealing (Canada), and judgments such as BMG v John Doe? What about watching time-shifted video downloaded from a PVR to a video iPod, legal under Sony v Universal Studios?
And for all of the talk about enforcement of the DMCA, are we expecting the border guards, for whom I generally have had pretty good respect due to my many pleasant - even funny sometimes (yes, U.S. border guards crack jokes sometimes) - trips across the border, to go to law school boot camp to learn the intricacies of the DMCA exceptions (17 U.S.C. 1201(f), among others)?
I’m going to go take pictures of the Yukon and have some beers and pretend this isn’t happening.
This rant is bearing in mind that all of the music on the microSD card in my phone, with which I travel and to which I listen as an mp3 player, was put there legitimately - under the U.S. Copyright Act’s exception for interoperability (s.1201(f))and the First Sale Doctrine and the Canadian Copyright Act’s personal copying exemption (s.80) - as it was all ripped from CDs I own. So I’m not the guy they’re looking for. But how long would I have to wait at the border while explaining the legitimacy of my music to someone who has neither read the acts, nor studied them in academia and in practice, nor read the relevant cases?
Time to start carrying my records around with my record player, amp, speakers, and a small nuclear power station to give me the necessary AC current. I can get those through the border, right?
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on the subject of over-reaching employment contracts.
Anyway, I promised that I would have the next part up within days and well, it’s been kind of crazy. Between work, articling applications, and being not so well, I haven’t had the time I’ve wanted to blog properly. Resuming now. Apologies offered all around, especially since I’ve been hearing that there are people out there actually reading this! [Comment, please! It doesn't have to be a complete essay, Derek, although I do expect a witty title from you... Also, Diggs are greatly appreciated.]
In the first post, I talked about someone whose employer demands assignment of previous or future competitive IP products of the employee to the employer. Broad time span, but limited applicability.
Let’s look at another scenario:
Employers often extend the IP/non-comp in breadth. In other words, they remove the related/similar/competitive qualifier. Consider this example:
The employee waives or the employer acquires rights to all intellectual property created or developed by the employee during working hours.
I have three posts on the go. One is a follow-up to the Tazzu Word Camp. I archived all of the speakers (except Jeff Kee - sorry Jeff, I was still setting up at the time) and will embed links here to watch the flash videos of their presentations. In the meantime, keep up with it at the Tazzu Blog.
Incidentally, the Tazzu Word Camp was an overwhelming success. The room was full beyond capacity, and some great presentations, questions, and answers were heard. I am looking forward to watching it all again when I post it!
One line of questioning, however, made me think that we need a Law Camp for IT professionals. There were Q&A about copyright, licensing, distribution, et cetera - basically the commercial and non-commercial use of media and matter published on the web. Does publication on free sites - the making available of something copyrightable for free public consumption - equal release into the public domain? The questions were not phrased like that. And those of us with pronounced study or practice in copyright know that the two are not equivalent. But the questions and uncertain answers led me to believe that those working in IT would benefit greatly from an evening of IT Law. I have some people in mind whom I would invite to speak at such an event. What issues would you like to see? I am thinking of IP and Licensing, Privacy, Corporate and Proprietorship Liability, Third-party and Product Liability, and Contract.
Another post is that long-promised next post on employment contracts. I haven’t found much on IP waiver/assignment clauses per se, but I have some great info on the enforceability of non-comps in Canada. Coming soon…
Finally, I just have to flesh out and write my list of activities for my version of a massive technology show.
Incidentally, there is now a contact page on the weblawg. Though I prefer comments when possible. And Diggs too!
Password is tazzu-test. If it doesn’t work, go to www.justin.tv/jeremycostin
Watch live video from Tazzu Wordpress Camp on Justin.tv
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