Solid! Check out THIS open letter from Hugh McGuire, (the founder of LibriVox.org) written to Jim Prentice and Stephen Harper. The letter is posted up on the LibriVox blog, and was mailed to the Industry Minister and the Prime Minister, it fully illustrates just two examples of how by being a LibriVoxateer (someone who volunteers to make audiobooks for the public domain out of public domain books) you can become a C-61 criminal. You know there’s something wrong with a piece of legislation when volunteers working from their home recording studios, on public domain materials, for the public good, are made liable for hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of damages!
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!?
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.
Canadia: 2056: Season 1
By Matt Watts; Perfomed by a full cast
5 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: CBC Audio
Published: January 21, 2008
Product ID: ERART00217
Themes: / Science Fiction / Humor / Canada / War / Toilets / Audio Drama / CBC /
This entertaining sci-fi comedy series is written by one of Canada’s best-loved comedy writers, Matt Watts. The United States has launched an armada to destroy an alien threat. Canada sends the nation’s only publicly-funded spacecraft, The Canadia – a ship with a single purpose – to plunge the Americans’ toilets.
There are lots of audio dramas out here on the internet, but if you want to hear a professional piece of work that will make you laugh out loud, you should give Canadia 2056 300 minutes of your time. Matt Watts and the entire cast and crew of Canadia 2056 have created something special. The show is an absolute gem.
The Canadia of the series is a Canadian spaceship that has been sent to war with a United States fleet, which in turn has been sent to perform a pre-emptive strike on a planet called Ipampilash. Midshipman Max Anderson is the only American member of the crew, and his relations with all of the Canadians is central to the comedy of the show. I’m not a Canadian, so I’m certain that I’m missing the deeper meaning of some of the jokes, but the scripts are crafted and performed in such a way that I really didn’t feel I was missing out.
An example of this occurs in the very first episode. The captain of the Canadia (hilariously performed by Paul O’Sullivan) is choosing a voice for the computer. He goes through a few, then settles on a gravelly female voice. I found the scene funny without knowing what I was told later – the voice selected was Shauna MacDonald, who is known as the Promo Girl in Canada. Apparently, her voice was heard all the time on CBC, and the debate between the folks that wanted her off the air and the folks who wanted her to stay made her famous. (I’d have wanted her to stay, by the way. I adore her voice.)
Max Anderson (played by series writer Matt Watts) makes an interesting representative of the United States. He’s cowardly, geeky, selfish, and his mother is an admiral in the US fleet. He feels his way around the crew, and finds his place among them eventually. Holly Lewis was captivating as Amanda Lewis, the engineer that Max spends the most time with. There’s a lot of tension between the two, and it’s wonderfully played.
I could sit here and start listing my favorite moments, but it’s suffice to say that I loved these shows enough that I listened more than once. There’s a short list of audio drama that’s really excellent, and even a shorter list of comedic audio drama that’s really excellent. Canadia 2056: Season One is one of those, and I urge you to give it a listen. It’s cruckin’ fanatastic!
Season Two of Canadia: 2056 starts next week on CBC Radio! It looks like the first airing will be at 11:00pm, Wednesday, March 19th. Click here to keep your eye on the CBC Radio schedule.
As November 11th is Remembrance Day here in Canada I thought it ok to include a war history (almost alternate history) radio drama from BBC7. The play is set in Alberta on Lake Patricia (near Lake Louise). In the middle of the lake under the clear water lies the metal frame of Habakkuk, a ship for which a secret is about to be revealed. Everyone should listen for the fascinating true story of professor Geoffrey Pyke in…
Habakkuk of Ice
By Steve Walker; Performed by a full cast
1 Broadcast – [RADIO DRAMA]*
Broadcaster: BBC7
Broadcast: Thursday November 15th @ 11am and 5am “There is a cold clear lake in Northern Alberta called Patricia. Take one of the two rowboats that lie beside the lake. Row out into the middle of the lake. Lean over the side. Open your eyes in the clear water and before your eyeballs freeze you will see the twisted metal skeletal remains that supported the body of Habbakuk, a battleship made of ice.”
*Incidentally you can read the script for the play HERE.
Next up is a “fast moving science fiction drama” by the team behind Cold Blood…
The Voice of God
By Simon Bovey; Performed by a full cast
5 Broadcasts – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday to Friday at 6pm and midnight When a series of earthquakes rock Australia, seismologist, Sam Rideout and her outback guide Joshua Patamerri track the epicentre to a top secret facility researching the use of infrasound as a weapon. Following the mysterious death of the team’s seismologist, Sam and Joshua are asked to help.
Less interesting to myself (I’m not a super fan) is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut fiction including…
Report On The Barnhouse Effect
By Kurt Vonnegut; Read by Stuart Milligan
1 Broadcast – 30 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sunday at 6:30pm and 12:30am Professor Barnhouse discovers a way of channelling his mind to control the forces of nature. He sees his skill as a marvellous opportunity to secure world peace. However, the American government has other ideas.
Slaughterhouse 5
By Kurt Vonnegut; Read by Robert Jezek
4 Broadcasts – [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Monday to Thursday at 6:30pm and 12:30am Billy Pilgrim, is a boy soldier, an innocent abroad armed only with a pencil stub. He’s so traumatised by the experience of witnessing the decimation of Dresden by Allied bombing in February 1945 that he becomes unstuck in time, even to the extent that he experiences alien abduction.
Thanasphere
By Kurt Vonnegut; Read by Kerry Shale
1 Broadcast – 30 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Friday at 6:30pm and 12:30am A military space mission is taken over by the voices of the dead, calling back to earth. How will the generals and scientist in charge cope with this sudden confrontation with mortality?
Matt Watts, creator, scripter and actor in the comedic Science Fiction radio series Canadia: 2056 wirtes:
“We recorded the first two episodes of the new season of Canadia last week… It was fun to have the cast together again… Currently, I’m writing the next two episodes, which record at the end of the month. So there.
The plan is to re-air the first season starting in January, then continue on with the new episodes.
And I can finally say that the show will be airing in two timeslots.
Wednesday’s at 11PM and then Friday’s at 11:30AM. It’s Afghanada’s timeslot again… Which I love because it must confuse listeners to tune in one week and hear a seriously dramatic show about Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan, and then the next week hear a retarded show about Canada’s involvement in an outer space war.
Still no update on podcasts… People are working on it. And the CD’s are scheduled to come out… Sometime… Maybe around Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.”
More happy CANADA DAY releases! Completed a full month ahead of schedule, The Fur Country is a lenghty unabridged novel from LibriVox and public domain audiobook narrator extraordinaire Esther (AKA Starlite). Set at “Seventy Degrees North Latitude” in Canada’s far north, this is one of Jules Verne’s least known novels. The perfect choice for a July 1st release!
The Fur Country By Jules Verne; Read by Esther 47 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 13.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED] Publisher: LibriVox.org Published: July 1st 2007 “In 1859, officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company are given the mission to found a fort at 70 degrees north of the polar circle. At some point, an earthquake occurs, and from then on, laws of physics seem altered (a total eclipse happens to be only partial; tides are not perceived anymore). They eventually realise that they are not where they are supposed to be.”
Get the entire novel in podcast form via this feed:
Solid! Check out THIS open letter from Hugh McGuire, (the founder of LibriVox.org) written to Jim Prentice and Stephen Harper. The letter is posted up on the LibriVox blog, and was mailed to the Industry Minister and the Prime Minister, it fully illustrates just two examples of how by being a LibriVoxateer (someone who volunteers to make audiobooks for the public domain out of public domain books) you can become a C-61 criminal. You know there’s something wrong with a piece of legislation when volunteers working from their home recording studios, on public domain materials, for the public good, are made liable for hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of damages!
As November 11th is 
