Michael Geist's movie: "Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law"
Michael Geist sez,"One year after launching the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, I've just released a new film that explores why copyright emerged as such a high profile issue. Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law, which I produced together with Daniel Albahary, features a wide range of Canadian voices - artists like Gordon Duggan of Appropriation Art; writers like award winning science fiction author Karl Schroeder; musicians like Wide Mouth Mason's Safwan Javed; business people like Nettwerk Record's Terry McBride, Lulu.com's Bob Young, and Skylink Technologies' Philip Tsui; government appointees like Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart and Ian E. Wilson, the Chief Librarian of Canada; and many, many more. Given the emphasis on the benefits of the Internet as a distribution channel for creators, the film is available in multiple ways online at newly designed page."
Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law (Thanks, Michael!)
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You'd be surprised at how many mega-global names in the Corporate world are notorious for boo-hooing about copyright violations, themselves took public domain work, copyrighted it and then started suing people left and right. In one case a company took a public domain animated film work, copyrighted it, then sued the people that originally made it!
Some of you will probably realize who I am talking about, the name which must not be spoken because they have great and powerful lawyers.
I support copyrights used correctly but there are so many companies out there who use it as a tool to harass, abuse, and monopolize.
It seem that the Conservative government is about to be replaced with a coalition of Liberals and NDPs. This would mean the the Canadian DRM bill of the Troys is effectively dead. What I'd like to know does the new government plan to introduce its own bill.
@2, I believe the Troys are normally referred to as the Trojans :P
Bill C-61 died when parliament dissolved for the election. The Conservatives haven't reintroduced a new bill on the subject...yet. I wouldn't count on a Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition taking over. The Conservatives are being their usual arrogant selves and wanted to see if they could push their agenda and try to rule as if they had a majority.
Correction to my last comment. They haven't reintroduced the same bill or introduced a new bill on the subject. It's impossible to reintroduce a new bill.
It's been said that the conservatives DO want to re-introduce a similar bill.
The coalition government is possible (I certainly support it), but I can see the Canadian public thinking something along the lines of "The economy is in a mess, I don't need all this fuss, I'll just vote conservative for now."
Besides, with Bell being allowed to throttle once more, who knows whether another C-61 will be able to slip through? I can only hope that if there isn't a coalition government, there will be just as much backlash against another C-61 as there was to the original.
I posted the following comment over at Geist's blog, and wanted to shout it out here too:
I want to Remix this so that my wife will watch it!
I don't mean to rain on the parade, but my first reactions to the film were not stellar. I greatly admire Professor Geist and I think that his message is one of vital importance, not just to Canadians, but to every nation in danger of having an unjustly Draconian Copyright paradigm imposed upon them.
However, if we're looking for a film to help the issue of Copyright Reform gain its much-needed penetration into the public awareness, then this film in its current form is not it. I am in no way ungrateful for the amount of work that the filmmakers put into making this video, nor do I deny the value of the information contained within it, but I think that it will only resonate with people who are already for the cause. I was unable to persuade my wife to view the film with me last night, and as I watched it I became glad of my inability to do so, because I am certain that she would not have found it compelling and therefore not engaging.
I would personally be interested in getting involved in a project to remix this film into a more accessible "Cole's Notes" version, whose main aim would be to be more attention-grabbing for the general public, hopefully motivating them to seek out the more detailed and nuanced treatment that is provided by interviews in the full version. Can someone please help me set up a wiki for scripting the edits and additional voice-overs required to condense the film in such a way? (My ISP doesn't provide me with webspace, so I haven't played around with web-authoring since the early days of Web 1.0.)
Has anyone (the filmmakers?) made a transcript available of the film yet? That would obviously facilitate this effort (as well as the efforts of anyone wanting to participate over at dotSUB).