Forward-thinking reform to copyright is possible: laws that recognise the growth and importance of the Internet, open source software, and new business models for creators. Canada could take the initiative, and lead the world.
Instead, new legislation proposed by this government will be a complete sell-out to the United States’ government and media’s demands. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act — a law that the U.S. passed in 1997 and has been widely seen as a damaging failure — will be imported wholesale. Instead of inviting a new era, Canada will repeat all the mistakes of the last decade.
This will not be a copyright law for Canadians. It will be a copyright law from entrenched U.S. lobbyists and politicians. Join us, and fight back!
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Mike Kujawski posted a link on the Podcamp Ottawa Wiki to a very useful, and funny, video explaining RSS in a way anyone can understand. This is going to save me least a couple of hours a week.
This just in from our friend Hugh at Librivox:
LibriVox makes it to 1,000!
LibriVox, the free audio book project has just cataloged it’s 1,000th
book: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” by Edgar Allan Poe (read by
Reynard T. Fox).LibriVox.org started in August 2005 with a simple objective: “to make
all public domain books available as free audio books.” Thirteen
people collaborated to make the first recording, Joseph Conrad’s
“Secret Agent.”Two years later, LibriVox has become the most prolific audiobook
publisher in the world - we are now putting out 60-70 books a month,
we have a catalog of 1,000 works, which represents a little over 6
months of *continuous* audio; we have some 1,500 volunteers who have
contributed audio to the project; and a catalog that includes Jane
Austin’s “Pride and Prejudice,” “Moby Dick,” Darwin’s “Origin of the
Species,” “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Einstein’s “Relativity:
The Special and General Theory,” Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” and
other less well-known gems such as “Romance of Rubber” edited by John
Martin. We have recordings in 21 languages, and about half of our
recordings are solo efforts by one reader, while the other half are
collaborations among many readers.We are always looking for new volunteers! Come join us.
Best,
Hugh McGuire
http://librivox.org
info@librivox.org
Congratulations, Hugh, and everyone involved with Librivox. You’re what the interwebs is all about.
Since I’ve re-committed to posting here, last night I figured I had a few quiet hours to myself after the conference I was attending wrapped up. I mean what else is a geek to do in an exciting, world-class city besides upgrade the software running their blog?
I made a right mess of my WordPress upgrade. ‘Long story short: Everything is updated and running/displaying as it ought to now, but if you spot any oddities, please let me know.
Thanks Chris, for getting me out of a pickle. You should know better than to pick up the phone if I’m calling you after 10pm though.
[link]
I use Gmail as a central inbox for all my email addresses of which — between NAC and personal accounts — I have about a dozen active accounts. This helps me manage my email in a central location and leverage Gmail’s excellent spam filtering.
I just noticed that, not only has Gmail bumped up my mailbox to 4.3 Gb (when did that happen?), they have also quietly launched IMAP functionality! This is huge for me, it means I can completely sync my Gmail account on my Treo and in OS X Mail.app. Gmail tags become IMAP folders. All one has to do is enable IMAP in the Gmail settings.
I’m positively giddy.
Now that we’re producing more than a few podcast series, with a good number of episodes in each feed, it’s time to promote our podcast offerings at every opportunity. To that end we need to come up with an NAC Podcasts logo, or “badge” as they say, that clearly conveys a URL, the ‘product’, and works at all kinds of sizes and resolutions right down to a tiny icon at the bottom of a print ad.
Here’s our leading contender for the job. It’s a vamp on an older design by our friend Jaywest. Is it apparent that NACPodcasts.ca is a URL? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.
LibriVox has added a really cool new feature. You can now download chapters of their public domain audio recordings via an RSS feed; Meaning you can easily grab Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, for example, by clicking on the RSS link, or even the Subscribe in iTunes link — The files will automagically be moved to iTunes or your podcatcher of choice. Neat-o.
Bob Lefsetz is a pop music industry analyst who’s been writing his Lefsetz Letter for 20 years. Whether your a fan or not, he’s always worth reading.
Lefsetz can talk knowledgeably about pop music from Loggins & Messina to Fugazi and back. He’s got opinions on the industry you wouldn’t expect from someone with his background and experience (I didn’t say age), certainly not what you’d expect on DRM or on file sharing. He’s passionate about his music and it’s always fun to hear him get in lather over a seminal album in his weekly Rhinocast segment [RSS] for Rhino Records.
This week on his blog, Bob’s taking on the music industry’s broken economic model and making some excellent points on free music.
I’m positively stunned at the blowback from business regulars about that chap giving his music away for free. Oldsters can’t understand the economics!
I’ll clue you in, THERE ARE NONE!
This is your worst nightmare. People who can follow their dream on sweat equity. Who with their computer and the money from their day job or mommy and daddy can compete with you. It’s like the North Vietnamese, all our military might couldn’t defeat individuals who would fight to the death. Same deal in Iraq.
link: full article
Bob Lefsetz on CBC’s The Hour: full interview
‘Back in Ottawa after a quick trip West, and I feel oddly compelled to to keep postings here going, so here’s a ‘content quickie’:
ArtsJournal.com maintains a page of arts and culture videos culled from YouTube. Clips rotate through the page over the course of a couple of weeks and you can find some really great stuff. And those videos will lead you to other videos in the same vein, and, can you say, “where did the afternoon go?”
Currently featured are a wide range of clips; from Donald Byrd and Stan Getz in 1957 to David Sedaris on Letterman. Check out the hilarious Rachmaninov Had Big Hands clip.
Link: artsJournalvideo
Don’t forget about TubeSock if you want to move some of this video to iTunes, your iPod, or simply save them to your computer.
[One last work-related entry, then I'll give this day job stuff the heave-ho for a while]
The National Arts Centre recently launched the Quebec Scene, a cultural extravaganza featuring 700 Quebec artists from all disciplines who will perform in Ottawa/Gatineau between April 20 to May 5, 2007.
We’ve built sites for both of the Quebec Scene’s predecessors — The Atlantic Scene and the Alberta Scene — and with each we’ve tried to up the ante in terms of the web features and content available. We’ve used “scene” sites to introduce customizable calendars, Flash interfaces, RSS feeds. In March 2005, we launched the NAC’s first ever podcast series, Alberta Scene Radio.
With the Quebec Scene we want to try something new. The Quebec Scene’s podcast feed will feature “user”-generated content — Artists, audience members and NAC staff will contribute audio, video and text to be included in a single RSS feed called “Echos de la Scène / Echoes from the Scene” [RSS]. The entries will hopefully capture the spirit and energy of the event in a multitude of voices. The audio, video and text blog entries will be recorded on all forms of portable devices; mobile phones, PDAs, and MP3 recorders.
To submit a blog entry during the Quebec Scene, simply email it to EchoesFromTheScene [at] gmail [dot] com.
This is of course new for us. We’ve had student bloggers submit content for certain initiatives like NAC Orchestra tour sites, but never have we solicited and made available independently produced audio and video on an NAC website. (Legal department, what legal department?)
What do you think? Would you contribute if you had the opportunity? Leave a comment here on the blog, or email EchoesFromTheScene [at] gmail [dot] com.
To whet your whistle for all the great shows to come in April and May, here’s a short video montage from the launch event with performance clips from Thomas Hellman and Boogat (video by Randy Bowler). It may take a minute or two to load.