PodCastle, the fantasy fiction podcast, features “Directions” by Caleb Wilson read by Chris Furst |MP3|.
You can subscribe to the feed at http://feeds.escapeartists.net/PodCastle_Main
Posted by Charles Tan
Escape Pod Features “Revolution Time” by Lavie Tidhar
Stephen Eley reads “Revolution Time” by Lavie Tidhar over at Escape Pod. Here is the |MP3|.
Subscribe to the podcast via this feed:
http://escapepod.org/podcast.xml
Posted by Charles Tan
The Dragon Page Interviews Maria V. Snyder
The latest Dragon Page Cover To Cover podcast features an interview with Maria V. Snyder (Fire Study).
You can download the |MP3| directly or subscribe to the show’s XML feed:
http://www.dragonpage.com/podcastC2C.xml
Posted by Charles Tan
A proposed bill to amend Canada’s Copyright Act
A week ago the minority federal government of Canada, and Industry Minister Jim Prentice, tabled an amendment to the Copyright Act. Entitled Bill C-61, its purpose is to bring Canadian copyright law into compliance with the current WIPO treaty (this despite their being no international legal obligation to implement WIPO – it hasn’t been ratified by Canada). Prentice states in a Toronto Star letter to the editor that C-61 will allow…
“…the recording of webcasts [I think he means podcasts and/or streaming audio or video] and TV and radio programs” such recordings may be “enjoyed at different times; music to be copied on devices such as MP3 players; and the copying of books, newspapers, videos and photos into different formats.”
But, Prentice doesn’t mention that these are all liberties we Canadians already had without C-61. What he fails to mention is that the bill actually curtails citizen (and consumer) liberties. Bill C-61 criminalizes the removal of DRM and encryption. Bill C-61 criminalizes recording from broadcast streams and archiving for your own personal library. Bill C-61 is our very own version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
What C-61 intends to achive:
-The plan is to make any streamed digitally recorded media like streaming audio (and video) legal only for an unspecified time – until you listen to it (ya that’s right an unspecified time until you listen to it). This means you won’t be able to archive something you recorded in a digital format even though you acquired it legally, and you can’t hang on to it for fear of being accused of not listening or watching it in a timely manner? WTF!?
-There is a $500 statutory damage minimum for possession of a single file freed from crippling DRM. With some audiobooks each CD has 99 tracks. That’s $49,500 for one CD. WTF!?
-Any circumvention of DRM, even on files you’ve owned for decades, files you’ve purchased, been given as a gift, or inherited, will be deemed a violation and subject you to a $500 statutory damage minimum (per file). WTF!?
-It will be illegal to transfer DRM’d files to your own iPod or portable media player (you can’t strip-out the forced ads out of DVD that you own either). WTF!?
-It will be illegal to make your media player compatible with an incompatible (but legally purchased) media files if it has DRM. WTF!?
I call this crap. It shall not stand.
Here’s the stuff to get you informed…
The bill itself [READ IT HERE]
Video of the press scrum after the bill’s introduction (CBC Newsworld) coverage on the introduction of the new bill (watch fast because the videos may be illegal after the bill is passed)…
And commentary from Business News Network…
And most damning of all the Industry Minister’s 10 minute interview on CBC Radio One’s Search Engine podcast |MP3|.
There aren’t a lot of good reasons for joining facebook. This is one! As of today, Thursday, June 19, 2008, a week after the bill was tabled in Parliament, 70,000 Canadians have already joined the Fair Copyright For Canada Facebook group to protest Bill C-61.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Robert E. Howard’s Queen Of The Black Coast as a FREE AUDIO DRAMA
Broken Sea Audio Productions, the folks who brought you such original audio dramas as Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter and Grog and Gryphon, have finished adapting their audio dramatization of Robert E. Howard’s Queen Of The Black Coast. Now, the true age of Conan can begin!
Queen Of The Black Coast
Adapted from the story by Robert E. Howard
Performed by a full cast
Podcast – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Broken Sea Audio Productions
Podcast: June 2008 – ????
Episode #1: |MP3|
Into the seaport town Messantia, of the southern Hyborian kingdom of ARGUS, the road of Kings led the twenty four year old Cimmerian barbarian- CONAN. Having gotten crossways with the local justice system over a friend of his and the death of a guardsman, Conan took the law into his own hands with his mighty broadsword. The guardsmen were not pleased by his northern Cimmerian ideas of justice, so CONAN “borrowed” a horse from the courts and fled looking for a ship. The mercenary ship- The ARGUS, just so happened to be putting out to sea as CONAN thundered down the pier having just stormed through the market- guardsmen hot on his trail. Will the ship’s captain, TITO, allow the Cimmerian passage, or will the guardsmen fill his back full or arrows first? And what of the legendary She-Devil Pirate Queen of the Black Coast? Join the adventure and find out- BY CROM!
Subscribe via the podcast feed for BSAP’s Conan audio:
http://brokensea.com/conan/?feed=podcast
Posted by Jesse Willis
Recent Arrivals – Recorded Books New Science Fiction Audio Imprint
Introducing a New Science Fiction Imprint from Recorded Books!
These are the first titles we’ve received from this new imprint, and, like the previous science fiction published by Recorded Books, these are high-quality works!
Blindsight
By Peter Watts; Read by T. Ryder Smith
10 CDs – 11.75 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781436119474
From the Blindsight pages on Peter Watts’ website:
Who you do send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities carved surgically into her brain. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultra-sound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior whose career-defining moment was an act of treason. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist — an informational topologist with half his mind gone — as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.
You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.
But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…
The Accidental Time Machine
By Joe Haldeman; Read by Kevin R. Free
7 CDs – 8 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781436120418
Joe Haldeman is the esteemed Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Forever War. Things are going nowhere for lowly MIT research assistant Matt Fuller—especially not after his girlfriend drops him for another man. But then while working late one night, he inadvertently stumbles upon what may be the greatest scientific breakthrough ever. His luck, however, runs out when he finds himself wanted for murder—in the future.
Now and Forever
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Paul Hecht
4 CDs – 4.75 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781428198258
A legend in American science fiction, Ray Bradbury has penned such landmark works as Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man. In 2007 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. The evocative collection Now and Forever features two previously unreleased novellas, “Somewhere a Band Is Playing” and “Leviathan ’99.”
These books and three more, Carnival by Elizabeth Bear, Spaceman Blues by Brian Francis Slattery, and Plague Year by Jeff Carlson, mark the beginning of this new imprint. Long may it live!
Posted by Scott D. Danielson