Yup we saw it. It was fucked. We're puzzled.
11:57:31 PM   []

Writing for the majority of the Court, Justice Ian Binnie stated that "the proper balance among these and other public policy objectives lies not only in recognizing the creator's rights but in giving due weight to their limited nature . . . Once an authorized copy of a work is sold to a member of the public, it is generally for the purchaser, not the author, to determine what happens to it."

Justice Binnie then continued to emphasize the dangers of copyright that veers too far toward copyright creators at the expense of the public. He noted that "excessive control by holders of copyrights and other forms of intellectual property may unduly limit the ability of the public domain to incorporate and embellish creative innovation in the long-term interests of society as a whole, or create practical obstacles to proper utilization."

Here's a link to Théberge v. Galerie d'Art du Petit Champlain inc.

Also I have just noticed that Matthew Skala a UW Phd student has published his notes from the April 11th copyright consultation meeting in Ottawa. I haven't read the notes yet but will post some comments when I have.
6:57:50 PM   []

STL: Feds spend $273k to 'confront the youth Goth culture' (via boing)

[M]any teens in the area feel stifled by the suburban blandness of Blue Springs and are seeking forms of self-expression.

Nothing like a little suburban blandness to drive you stark raving gothy.

Stop the sprawl is what I say.
5:44:15 PM   []

I have noticed that in the discussions here, there seems to be a fundamental assumption on the part of some intelligent people that we are being... how do I say it... stupid in our approach. That we haven't even considered certain obvious issues and problems and strategies. That the first thing an intelligent reader of these threads might think of is obviously a better strategy than ours.

I think that such assumptions are made because intelligent people can get jaded by the amount of crap out there. There ARE many crappy web sites out there, created by people who think that good marketing, rather than good technology, is the way to create a successful company.

But if you wade through his 1,951 word response you will see that Gary has been around a long time and understands what he's doing.

This K5 situation reminds of Fairtunes' first Slashdotting in which we were attacked for a number of reasons some them including:

• We'd never actually send the money to the artists
• How would *we* find the artists
• Tipping will never work
• Our business model wasn't viable.
• Our costs were too high

You get the point.
1:48:49 PM   []

But deep-linking has been the subject of litigation in the United States. The best-known case involved Ticketmaster against Microsoft, settled out of court before a decision was reached. Ticketmaster later went back to court seeking to bar rival Tickets.com from deep-linking to Ticketmaster content, but lost that case.

The most recent case, Kelly v. Arriba, was decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in February. The court found that a search engine that linked to copyrighted material by "framing" it in a new Web browser window infringed on the copyright owner's rights.

My opinion: If you don't want people linking to your stuff then get off the Internet.
11:06:49 AM   []

Also 3 auctions are ending tomorrow so if you have some EM points and want to pick up and album or two go bid on them now.
10:23:34 AM   []