It’s a simple equation really: I own hundreds of movies and games, thousands of books, and an uncountable number of CDs. I am not something rare in Canada, I am common: I am a media consumer. Bill C-32 aims to punish me for paying money to the artists I love.
If Bill C-32 passes I will no longer consumer as much media. My money is discretionary and I can focus it elsewhere. In addition to consuming this media, I rock climb, I take photographs, and I write. Shifting proportionality on what I do isn’t hard.
MP James Moore: stay out of my living room. Yes, we need to protect artists, myself included, but what I do with something after I’ve bought it is my business and NOT YOURS.
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James Moore tweeted that several of his co-workers had joined the iPad nation. I asked him how they were going to feel when they found out he wouldn’t let them rip DVDs they own to watch on their iPad. His response?
Buy DVDs & bluerays (sic) that offer a digital copy or use iTunes. If u don’t like that, don’t buy an iPac. Choices are all around!
What a snide son-of-a-b… Ahem. Let’s be clear: this is a non-solution. I have $6000 in DVDs already, many of which were released before the digital download revolution. What can I do about those? James is silent on his solution there. Why can’t I watch content I own? Well, I should clearly use the state-sponsored Apple solution.
What an embarrassing barrel of nonsense! It wasn’t even worth responding that the technology is called “Blu-ray” not “blueray”, but to be told that I flat-out shouldn’t buy a device because of a digital lock? Preposterous. You should be embarrassed, Mr. Minister.
The longest part of the upgrade to WordPress 3.0 was backing up my databases. I’m running six separate sites on WordPress, one of which was running WP3 RC1. Logging into my host and backing all six up through MySQL took 15 minutes. Upgrading all six sites concurrently took under a minute.
The clean new look of the dashboard is a welcome change, and a unified update panel makes maintaining a site much easier with fewer clicks.
The next step will be to merge these sites into a single WordPress installation using WPMU. That’s going to have to wait for the weekend, however.
Check out the improvements in this recently released video from WordPress.org
Astroturf is a pretty nasty thing – it happens when big industry wants to get their point across, but they know they’re not landing their message from a corporate PR standpoint. So instead, they create fake “citizens groups” that are apparently made up of people like you and I.
It appears that Balanced Copyright for Canada is one of these groups. They’re using stock images on their site, seeding out reports that are known to have been commissioned by Entertainment industry groups, and even going as far as to reprint headlines that have been purchased almost like ad placements on sites.
The claims are that balanced copyright will protect creator’s rights and keep jobs in Canada. They do not go into detail as to how that will happen. They don’t touch on the fact that you could face a $5000 fine for making a backup of a DVD so that you kid doesn’t wreck the original. They don’t want to talk about the fact that this bill is virtually useless for consumers because of the digital lock provision.
Canadians like buying media. Sales have been strong in both traditional and digital formats. There is no need for the digital lock provision, and there’s no need for industry reps to lie to us through a faux-grassroots movements.
It’s up to you, as a consumer, not to be fooled by this. Contact your MP and let them know that Digital Locks don’t help artists, they hinder them. Real artists have come out against Bill C-32, based on the digital lock provisions – and if you like the freedom you have with your gadgets you will too.
