An excellent visual explanation of copyright law and fair use has been circulating. It's an excellent summary worth far more than a mere 1,000 words and was originally created by Erik Heels to explain the concept to a youngster. I've heard it said that you don't really understand something until you can explain it to a child... and if that's so, then
Michael Geist has done a video presentation to put the issue of piracy in Canada into proper perspective. It's a good picture of "the rest of the story" and leaves you thinking that Canadian law is being far too readily influenced by US lobby groups who aren't telling the whole truth. Makes you wonder what kind of agenda they're pushing, as they aren't going to accomplish what they claim they will through this means. You'd think they have to know that...
Steven Silvers thinks that email might make news media interviews obsolete, but he dislikes the practice of conducting interviews via email. Personally I don't mind, but Steven has a point.
Tom Purves observes that Canada [is] Worse than 3rd World Countries when it comes to Mobile Data Access. Although globally Canada has one of the higher percentages of people online and one of the higher percentages of broadband users, those who access the Internet using a PDA or cell phone are paying through the nose... to the tune of $1,600 to transfer 500MB of data.
Well, I've delayed comment until now, but the dust is settling and it's time to say something. Not to kick up the dust that doesn't need disturbing, but because I feel that somethings ought not pass without comment, and this is one of them.
Firstly, if you aren't up on the blog-world, you won't have a hot clue what I'm on about, or who Kathy Sierra is. But you should. Kathy is one of the brightest lights in the blogosphere, and her blog, Creating Passionate Users, should in my humble opinion be required reading for anyone who designs software, user interfaces of any kind, for people who manage such projects, or for anyone who is particularly in the wired end of the business world. Kathy is a thinker and a writer, and some of my all-time favorite blog posts have come from her virtual pen.
Congratulations are due Dave Winer of Scripting News, the longest continually running blog on the Internet — April 1, 2007 clicked past on the weekend, marking ten years for the site. That's right, Dave Winer was blogging on Scripting News before there were blogs. For posterity, he has archived the original page from April 1, 1997... just in case you don't remember what the Internet looked like in 1997.
Back in the early 1990s, the CBC experimented with their news format, airing Prime Time News as a part of the changes they tried. One Prime Time News report from 1993 has surfaced on YouTube... a look at something called "Internet", a network that was just starting to move past its institutional roots and out to ordinary folk. (via).