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Do LOLCats help fight censorship? The surprising answer is that yes they do.

This year’s Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism was a feast for media nerds like me. Former CBC reporter and producer Sue Gardner, now executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, made more insightful comments about the future of media, journalism and the way the web is changing our relationship with information than I can recount here. But one comment on the resiliency of the web in adressing would be censors of widely adopted social media platforms really stuck out for me.

Reflecting on the usefulness of Twitter to the Iranian election protests last June, Sue Gardner said (with my added emphasis and links):

Things like Twitter are really hard to censor because they are tools that lots of people use for lots of different reasons. There’s a guy named Ethan Zuckerman, who is a fellow at the Berkman Institute at MIT and he calls this the “cute cat theory.”

So the theory is that if millions of ordinary people use a tool like Flickr, or YouTube, or Twitter, or Facebook, or whatever – and they use it to share cute pictures of cats, or their grandchildren, or party invitations, or snapshots, or whatever – and meanwhile a few activists also use that same tool for other purposes, to share “information that wants to be free,” that people want to suppress: that makes censorship really difficult.

What happens is that if you try and shut down the tool that people are using to share cute pictures of cats they will freak out, right?  Because they want to share the pictures of the cats.

So what that means is that the pictures of the cat lovers provide cover for tools that are also used for, frankly, more important purposes such as for sharing information that would otherwise be suppressed. So the utility, the sort of general broad utility, of something like twitter makes it much much harder to censor.

Unsurprisingly, I’d recommend that you listen to the entire hour long 2009 Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism, and while you’re at it, subscribe to the CBC Ideas podcast where I found this gem among many others. Lastly, a hat tip to the I can has cheezburger network, including the infamous FAIL Blog, for their enormous lack of FAIL.

While the prospect of a federal election this Fall threatens to derail the entire process, the government’s copyright reform consultations are picking up speed and starting to capture some attention. I’ve followed the consultations closely. I read the crowd-aggregated news stories, Op-Eds and blog posts on twitter (at the hashtag #copycon), observed the Calgary roundtable and even watched the webcast of the Montreal townhall.

As noted in previous posts on this topic, I’ve been personally interested in copyright and internet law (and certainly copyright enforcement) since I downloaded my first MP3 thirteen years ago.  Recently, I’ve been fortunate to have the issue intersect with my professional life as well. At the PSE Partners conference last week, Dr. Meera Nair had a very interesting response to a question I asked her about how digital locks – software that blocks users’ ability to copy files including Technonological Protection Measures, TPMs, and Digital Rights Management, DRM – reconcile with the fair dealing provision afforded by Canadian legislation and case law.  Dr. Nair explains on her blog “Fair Duty”

Simply put, once a work is locked, it’s game over. Fair dealing is meaningless if you cannot access the material. Many individuals are anxious that IF Canadian law were to prohibit the circumvention of TPMs, such a prohibition should only apply to circumvention for infringing purposes. Meaning, if you circumvent a TPM for a noninfringing use, such as fair dealing, you will not run afoul of the law. Yet, there is a question of why permit the use of TPMs at all? TPMs take away existing rights available to Canadians. To limit access to published work is to deny fair dealing. Said another way, TPMs violate a structure of law that has been in place since the creation of copyright itself (nearly300 years) and present in Canadian law since its inception in 1924.

In other words, the very idea of companies or industry consortiums using digital locks to prevent people from making copies of works they’ve legally purchased runs counter to the notion of limitation in copyright law – which limits both creators and consumers -  as well as the existing provisions afforded by fair dealing under Canadian law.

Sadly, in reading and listening to many of the remarks of industry stakeholders at the formal roundtables and the townhall, this unwarranted trampling of Canadian’ rights through the imposition of digital locks is being touted as the only way these industries can save themselves from the unwashed masses of file sharers. At least in the realm of music, this position is convieniently ignoring UK music industry economists’ admission that the music industry is growing.

In today’s Toronto Star, Michael Geist addresses the issue of creating longevity in any forthcoming adjustments to Canadian copyright law, and in doing so, establishes four principles to employ in the evaluation of proposed changes. Dr. Geist’s second point implicitly addresses the issue of digital locks by acknowledging the short comings of proprietary technological constraints.

First, copyright law should strive for balance between creator rights and users’ rights. If the law tilts too far in one direction, the other side is virtually guaranteed to put the issue of reform back on the table and the changes do not last.

Second, the law must be technologically neutral. Copyright has proven remarkably resilient over the decades in large measure because it states broad principles about the scope and limits of protection. If copyright veers too far toward specific technologies by mandating new protection for specific business models or technological innovations, those rules risk being overtaken as the technologies and marketplace evolve.

Third, the law should strive for simplification and clarity. Copyright may once have been a niche issue understood by a small number of experts, yet today it affects the daily lives of millions. If Canadians are to respect the law, they must first understand it. When Bill C-61 proposed a 12-part test to determine whether recording a television program was legal, it rendered the law far too complex for the average person.

Fourth, the law should embrace flexibility, which has allowed many copyright provisions to adapt to continually changing economic and technology environments. Flexibility requires a general-purpose law and ensures that it works for stakeholders across the spectrum, whether documentary filmmakers, musicians, teachers, researchers, businesses or consumers.

I’m hopeful that something reasonable will come out of these consultations but I also worry that the government is going to miss the mark and embrace the imposition of a copyright clampdown that either restricts established legal protections or turns regular Canadians into criminals.  You can do your part to make sure that doesn’t happen by making your voice heard.

Make your written submission right here: http://copyright.econsultation.ca/topics-sujets/show-montrer/18

Today we learned that CTV will broadcast 60 hours of tomorrow’s Michael Jackson memorial over 10 of its channels.  While reading their press release loudly proclaiming the “super-simulcast,” I cringed with horror. Has anyone turned on a TV in the last week, flipped through the channels, and not had Michael Jackson’s ridiculously tragic life invade their living room?

It gets better.

After a long and nauseating “Save Local TV” campaign by CTV and CanWest (and the even more disgusting counter campaign by the cable and satellite companies – I’m looking at you Shaw and Rogers) today the CRTC decided to bailout the broadcasters to the tune of $100 million for the 2009-10 broadcast year.

Saying the absolutely most ridiculous thing possible, CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C. pronounced that “we have taken steps to ensure that broadcasters … continue to provide Canadians with programming that reflects their needs and interests.”

von Finckenstein will surely soon declare that up is down,  black is white and that money grows on trees. The CRTC is requesting that you submit your comments by August 10, 2009, by filling out the online form.

On the bright side, Ben Mulroney and dead Michael Jackson have real chemistry together.  (as noted by  @robertmcbean)

This a "Wordle" compilation of my most commonly used words on twitter

If you use twitter, you can make a sweet “wordle” word cloud like this one at  tweetstats.com after entering your username and clicking on the tweet cloud link. 

Douglas Rushkof gives an incredibly thought provoking talk on the history and origins of: capitalism, economics, the corporation, money and banking. Rushkof explains how the current financial system heavily incents the creation of ‘hollow’ companies where everything is outsourced. Everything. He goes on to examine the role of web 2.0, ephasizing the elimination of information scarcity, and the role it will have in fundamentally changing – even completely revolutionizing – the fundamentals of the economic system.

Agree or disagree, this talk presents such a compelling case for the future that demands either action or refutation…

But I’m still torn.

(link via mikesoron.tumblr.com)

The Huffington Post’s Paul Dailing casts a hilarious critical gaze on the “Death of Newspapers” meme that pervades twitter and the “blogosphere” in How to Become a “Death of Newspapers” Blogger

The Toronto Star surveys the lay of the land in Canadian broadcasting after huge cuts to the CBC this week and the potential of more cuts at the private broadcasters in TV tumult on the Canadian dial

NPR and WNYC’s “On the Media” looks at the JP Neufeld, a Concordia University student in Montreal who stopped a an act of school violence before it happened, 3000 miles away in the UK: The Long Arm of the Law

The Atlantic’s The Quiet Coup is a devastating examination of the role and influence of the finance and banking sectors over the entire American political process. 

Ian Brodie, Harper’s former chief of staff , asserts that evidence doesn’t matter when making public policy via Macleans.ca

The Totalitarian Temptation and all that is an examination of the tendency towards totalitarian belief systems on both the left and right. I loved it, but I care about this sort of stuff. Link to  http://crookedtimber.org/ via @MikeSoron

My friend, former boss, current volunteer team member, and local blogger Doug Lacombe wrote a great piece for techvibes.com about his recent trip up to Red Deer to see Michael Geist speak at Red Deer College. 

Dr. Geist’s Fair Copyright for Canada still serves as the best example of Canadian internet-organized opposition and activism related to a specific issue: the lack of provisions protecting consumers rights in the now defeated Bill C-61. Although I’m a member of Fair Copyright for Canada, I think the most interesting of part of Dr. Geist’s story is the rise of effective internet-organized activism itself as a phenomenon. 

As Doug put it: 

The rise of digital advocacy has been meteoric, to say the least. Web 2.0 or “social media” applications such as blogs and Wikis, Facebook, MySpace and now Twitter have given the power to organize and mobilize to the masses. It’s simply easier and more efficient to find people of like-mind and take action.

In other words, as the internet and social media tools proliferate, the transactional cost of organizing like-minded people into groups begins to approach zero. Getting those people to come out in the real world and “take action” on issues they care about is the real potential of the exponentially growing social web and what Ken Kowalski is worried about: 

• Barack Obama understood that creating meaningful connections through any and every communications medium would produce results on Novermber 4th 2008.
• Local #yyc (i.e. Calgary) twitter users understand it in their (our) frequent meet ups, like Demo Camp  or Third Tuesday Calgary  (which I help organize.)
• The site meetup.com is a social media site with the specific goal of migrating connections and relationships made on the web into the real world.

Doug and I understand the power of these mediums too. That’s why we’re working together to get Calgary Reads, a local non-profit organization dedicated to helping struggling grade two readers, set up in the social media world (Facebook, CR Blog, Twitter) with the goal of helping them promote their annual CBC-Calgary Reads Book Sale fundraiser on May 1-3 . </shamless_plug>

Check out Doug’s Blog: blinking12.ca - social media for the VCR generation