Richard Dreyfuss reads from the incredibly long iTunes EULA (End User License Agreement) at the CNET Reporter’s Roundtable. I found it quite stirring.
Posted by Tamahome
Tag: copyfight
CBC Spark: Robert J. Sawyer on his WWW trilogy (and Mindscan)
Nora Young‘s uncut interview with Robert J. Sawyer, recorded for an upcoming episode of CBC Radio One’s Spark podcast, is available for download |MP3|.
From the Spark blog:
Yesterday, Nora interview the award-winning Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer. He’s just published the third installment of his WWW trilogy, called Wonder. It speculates about a possible world in which the web develops consciousness and becomes “Webmind.”
Spark PLUS Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cbcradiosparkblog
Bonus: A three part video interview with Sawyer in Hungary.
Sawyer talks about: FlashForward, other Sawyer-related TV shows, dinosaurs, awards, his upcoming book (Triggers), memory, research, assassination, ebooks, Japan, piracy, DRM, advice to aspiring writers, teaching writing, the University Of Toronto, travel, translations and RJS book covers from around the world.
[via RJS’ blog]
Posted by Jesse Willis
P.S. CBC owes us Apocalypse Al.
Commentary: How to vote on Monday, May 2nd, 2011
According to this Wikileaks document, an embassy cable from the United States embassy in Ottawa to the U.S. government in Washington, the United States was heavily pressuring Canada’s Conservative government ministers to pass their DMCA-style copyright legislation.
Despite the pressure, which included placing Canada on a “Priority Watch List”, the Conservatives weren’t able to please their U.S. advisors by delivering a DMCA-style copyright law. This failure is attributable to the Conservative’s minority government status and a growing opposition (public awareness). According to the cable neither attempt, Bill C-32 nor Bill C-61, was brought to a vote because the Conservatives knew it might cost them the 2008 election or the next (Monday’s). One of the more interesting lines, in the fascinating document, is this one:
On February 25, however, Industry Minister Prentice (please protect) admitted to the Ambassador that some Cabinet members and Conservative Members of Parliament – including MPs who won their ridings by slim margins – opposed tabling the copyright bill now because it might be used against them in the next federal election.
Despite Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s protected status he will not be running for re-election.
It may have been in a bid to curry such protection “an [unnamed] influential Liberal MP on intellectual property issues” told the U.S. embassy that “the copyright bill would receive widespread support from the Conservative, Liberal, and Bloc Quebecois parties if and when the GOC [Government Of Canada] sends it to Parliament.”
WOW! The Liberals and the Bloc would have supported Bills C-61 and C-32. Nice to know.
Perhaps this is due to the “inherent inferiority complex of Canadians” toward the U.S.? That’s detailed in this cable about how the U.S. needed to stay out of Canada’s last federal election. Will the trend be overturned on Monday? Maybe the “orange wave” can prevent whatever successor copyright legislation that comes after the election from being written wholly with U.S. interests in the foreground.
In the U.S. blue stands for the Democrat and red stands for the Republican. In Canada red stands for Liberal and blue stands for Conservative. No matter which side of the border, though, both red and blue are the parties of big business.
Individual people, small business owners and the self employed are not served by voting red or blue. The funding for all four red and blue parties comes from big business, they are honourable and so they do what they are paid to do – serve big business. But unlike our American cousins we have a second option in Canada. We have a choice of either blue/red or orange. Sure, maybe having green would be a good idea one day too – but right now we really only have a choice of either red/blue (big business) or orange (people). Please be a person on Monday and vote-in an orange government.
Posted by Jesse Willis
RECEIVED: DMCA Copyright Infringement Notification – “Adjustment Team” by Philip K. Dick
Though the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law, and hasn’t been adopted by Canada, I suspect that’s not the point of the following email.
The post that Kristina Moore refers to is HERE. It has comments on it that clarify why one of the links is now dead.
But that’s not the end of the story, lets go back a bit and consider why I was contacted at all. Let’s take it as a hypothetical given that, as Kristina Moore’s email is claiming, Adjustment Team is copyrighted.
I don’t believe that to be the case, not from what I read about it being a case of copyfraud. But even so, lets assume Moore’s claim to be true. What then does that have to do with my post? I did not post the story. I linked to it. And from my reading of Chilling Effects FAQ page on linking (and deep linking), that is not a copyright violation under the DMCA. And, even if it were the DMCA is United States law, not a Canadian one.
Now I will admit I did put up, and host, two pictures from the original publication in Orbit Science Fiction’s Sept-Oct. 1954 issue – but that surely can’t be what The Wylie Agency was upset about. The Philip K. Dick estate certainly does not hold the rights to the images. And, yes, though I did link to an audiobook version of Adjustment Team, that file was removed from LibriVox because of a similar DMCA notification to LibriVox.
In case you would like to do your own research on the matter, I point you to the Wikimedia Commons source for Adjustment Team. Where the story is still available HERE. That’s where I got the pictures.
I will leave up my original post until I get a reasonable explanation for why I shouldn’t. In hopes of getting one I have replied to Moore’s email with an invitation to appear as a guest The SFFaudio Podcast.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #104 – READALONG: Untouched By Human Hands and Seventh Victim by Robert Sheckley
The SFFaudio Podcast #104 – Scott, Jesse, and Gregg Margarite talk about two Robert Sheckley short stories, Untouched By Human Hands (aka One Man’s Poison) and Seventh Victim.
Talked about on today’s show:
extravaganza vs. jamboree vs. hootenanny, the absent article, The Tenth Victim, Is That What People Do? The Selected Stories Of Robert Sheckley, “one man’s poison is another man’s meat”, writing with your mind, On The Road by Jack Kerouac, Gregg has been on many bloody campaigns with his typewriter, Scott loves the pen and notebook, Jesse uses a camera, whiteboard technologies, our podcast about FOOD, Douglas Adams, “Sheckley is not as vaudevillian as Adams”, Tom Baker’s Doctor Who, The Pirate Planet, a building shaped like a doughnut, “food-worthy”, c-rations vs. sea rations, “fill all your stomachs and fill them right”, Hellman and Casker, how do you determine food from non-food, chemists have horribly burnt tongues, Geology exams require the use of tongues, giggling food, drinking vs. being drunk, short stories should throw off sparks, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Untouched By Human Hands was sixty years ahead of its time, Laurel And Hardy vs. Gilligan’s Island, the SyFy channel is sixty years behind the times, Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson |READ OUR REVIEW|, Robert A. Heinlein, copyright, Mickey Mouse vs. Mighty Mouse, keeping murder alive, Sheckley’s late career, Stanton Frelaine = Stand In the Free Lane?, The Most Dangerous Game, Richard Connell, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, The Lifeboat Mutiny by Robert Sheckley, The Leech, Warrior Race, Watchbird, La Decima Vittima, Marcello Mastroianni, New York, World War IV, World War VI, feminism, Mindswap, the economy in Seventh Victim, wordlbuilding in a short story, Spotters, Morger, the Tens Club, a game where people kill people, “there is no such thing as human rights”, are these rights not self-evident?, thou shalt not kill/murder, “the age of the half-believer”, Catholicism vs. protestantism, cherry-picking the beliefs from the old and new testament, the three legs of the scientific method (rational, empirical, scholastic), fads, should we require a degree in science to wear a lab-coat?, cargo cults, philosophy, the Emotional Catharsis Bureau, “damn women”, “gladiatorial events complete with blood and thunder”, does a desire to murder start wars?, Gregg thinks we are vehicles for genes, Professor Eric. S. Rabkin, Genesis, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is aggressiveness (or competition) a requirement to move on, the Space Race, the architects of tech during WWII, Michael Faraday isn’t getting any royalties, copyright vs. copyfight, seek technology got a patent!, For Us The Living: A Comedy Of Customs by Robert A. Heinlein, guaranteed minimum income, William Shakespeare, West Side Story, “there are only seven stories [basic plots]”, “we stray”, Frelaine’s reaction to the suicidal Victim, the purpose of catharsis, the deep unsatisfaction of an unfinished play, an unrequited kill, how many [TV] series are canceled before their plots unfold? (too many), Dexter vs. Babylon 5 vs. Lost, Game Of Thrones, Drive, The Wire is deeply unsatisfying every episode, ambivalent storytelling, “you can’t fix this neighborhood, move.”, The Corner, Firefly and Serenity, “he had a plan”, how to watch Babylon 5, what is the message of Seventh Victim, X-Minus One, Battlefield 2, do violent video games (and computer games) reduce violence?, Penn & Teller’s Bullshit, Killer: The Game Of Assassination, Gregg wants it with collateral damage.
Posted by Jesse Willis
LibriVox: Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick
Meanwhile … over on the Wikipedia talk page for the entry for Philip K. Dick’s Adjustment Team there is a wonderful argument going on. Part of it is over an issue called “copyfraud” (false claims of copyright designed to control works not under copyright). I suspect that it just such awesomeness that is behind so much of the awesomeness that is Wikipedia. Check this response out from a Wikipedia editor named “Refrigerator Heaven”:
Oh, to answer the section’s question. As a long-time fan of Philip K. Dick who is familiar with his main themes and not very interested in the movies based on his writings, I do think the copyright stuff is more interesting and more Dickian than the movie [The Adjustment Bureau]. Perhaps I’ll add a quote or two from him after dinner. For a parting thought I’ll leave this with a quote he used in his Hugo Award winning novel, The Man In The Hight Castle [sic]. “Things are seldom as they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Wikipedia is wonderful for its quotes alone. It was there, on the Wikipedia entry, for instance – that I learned that Adjustment Team was public domain. That’s what prompted me to tell my favourite LibriVox narrator that it was PD and that is, in part, why he recorded it for LibriVox. Thank you Gregg Margarite and thank you Wikipedia!
Soon to be collected in LibriVox’s Short Science Fiction Stories Collection #044:
Adjustment Team
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: NOT YET COLLECTED!
“Something went wrong and Ed Fletcher got mixed up in the biggest thing in his life.” First published in Orbit Science Fiction, Sept-Oct 1954, No.4.
Illustrations by Faragasso:
Posted by Jesse Willis