Stephen Fry’s latest podcast, recorded at the iTunes festival (a U.K. music festival), is a moral history of copyright. After the very funny and informative speech Fry takes questions from the audience and twitter. Is there’s anyone cooler than Stephen Fry? He’s like a comedic John Lennon minus the Yoko.
Have a listen |MP3| or subscribe to the podcast:
http://www.stephenfry.com/media/audio/rss/mp3/
Posted by Jesse Willis
Pictured above are Canada’s Minister Of Industry, Tony Clement, and Minister Of Heritage, James Moore. They’re at the podium to announce a copyright consultation website.
http://www.copyrightconsultation.ca/
Despite having written to Moore about my concerns with Bill-C61 I did not get invited to the invitation only consultation in B.C.. Had I been invited I would have made three points.
Any new copyright legislation should exclude the following:
1. A “three strikes” style law. – Accusations of web copyright claims should be a judicial process and not be dictated by a media company’s complaint to an ISP. The CONAN ATTACKS FANS case shows that false claims in nations with such laws (New Zealand) are very effective at stifling the legitimate use of the PUBLIC DOMAIN by artists.
2. The enshrinement of DRM. – DRM should not be protected by law. Neither the jailbreaking of a device nor the platform shifting of a file should not be criminalized with a statutory fine. A legally acquired disc, file or device stripped of its disabling crippleware or buggy region coding, when necessary, helps me and does not harm society. Any digital file or item that I legally own, as acquired from a personal purchase, as a gift, through an inheritance, etc., is and should forever be, acknowledged as mine to dispose of as I please. I wrote to Moore personally about this very issue as a problem in Bill C-61. It is important to me that I not be branded a criminal for making my store purchased DVD discs usable.
3. The criminalization of P2P. – There should be no section in the copyright legislation equating the non-commercial sharing or copying of digital files or information with stealing. Stealing deprives an owner of his property. Non-commercial copying and sharing does not equal stealing. Neither WALL-E, nor I should be made a copyright criminal for doing what makes culture.
If you’re a Canadian affected by a change in Canada’s copyright laws you can email your own thoughts to:
And CCing to your MP would be a good idea too.
Here’s the press conference:
Here’s an anonymous skeptic’s response to the “invitation only” consultations:
And here’s a partisan response from LiberalMinute.ca…
[via the Digital Copyright Canada blog]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Bill Hollweg, the audio dramatist who adapted Robert E. Howard’s Queen Of The Black Coast, also worked on an adaptation of Logan’s Run. He recently scanned the first few pages of MTI edition of the novel upon which the movie, and BSAP’s own fan adaptation, were based. There are TWO FULL PAGES detailing who and what the authors were inspired by…
Can you spot all the RADIO DRAMAs on the list?
Logan’s Run
By William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
Paperback book with stills from the film
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 1967 /1976
ISBN: 0553025171
First dedication page:
Second dedication page:
Here’s the podcast feed for Broken Sea Audio Productions audio drama of Logan’s Run:
http://brokensea.com/logansrun/feed/
Posted by Jesse Willis
I don’t know if there exists a non-fiction book with more downloads than Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. The Archive.org stats show it having been downloaded more that 13,000 times. That’s impressive. More impressive is how readable it is. The narrators are all amateurs and they occasionally mispronounce a word or stumble over the descriptions of the images and charts in the paperbook. It doesn’t matter though. The content is delivered extremely well – Lessig is an excellent explicator, and the book is highly relevant for anyone who visits this website. Americans in particular will find immense value in this audiobook. I highly, highly recommend it.
Free Culture
By Lawrence Lessig; Read by various
18 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 9 Hours 42 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AKMA / Turnstyle.org
Published: 2004
Provider: Archive.org / Open Source Audio
I got this audiobook through a torrent. You can get it that way too. Unfortunately I don’t know how to link to a torrent so I’ve made a HuffDuffer podcast feed for it…
Podcast feed: http://huffduffer.com/jessewillis/tags/free_culture/rss
iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|
Here’s the entire audiobook for streaming listening too…
…
Those still unconvinced should have a look/listen to this April 17, 2009 powerpoint enhanced that Lessig gave at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s entitled The Forbin Problem – its title takes inspiration from the AMAZINGLY AWESOME Science Fiction movie called Collusus The Forbin Project.
Posted by Jesse Willis
CBC Radio has canceled its most popular podcast. CBC had previously, in an unprecedented move, exiled Search Engine from the actual radio broadcasts and had the staff reduced to just the host (Jesse Brown). Despite these hurdles the show was still breaking important news and doing terrific interviews on a nearly weekly basis. In fact Search Engine was CBC’s:
“…most downloaded audio podcast. It’s won an international radio award and has been on iTunes’ .Best Podcasts of The Year List’ for each year that it’s been around.
It also happened to be the CBC podcast I most looked forward to each week.
CBC still produces some amazing programs. But the new trend seems to be produce retarded decisions…
Cancel Intelligence. Cancel radio drama. Cancel Search Engine.
What the fuck CBC?
The folks making these decisions have got to be boneheaded techno-fogies who don’t read their own stats.
The good news is there appear to be some smarter managers over on TVO (TVOntario) who’ve decided to pick up Search Engine. CBC doesn’t want listeners?
TVO here we all come. For more on this story read what TVO’s Search Engine has planned for Summer 2009.
Here’s the new podcast feed:
http://feeds.tvo.org/tvo/searchengine
By the way this is Heritage Minister James Moore‘s portfolio (Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam). I would hope he is very shamefaced by this CBC gaff under his ministry. He comes from radio. Prior to being a politician he was a broadcaster on CKST.
Posted by Jesse Willis
P.S. Another boneheaded decision by CBC. It still hasn’t released the J. Michael Straczynski radio drama The Adventures Of Apocalypse Al!
Here’s a “FREE” deal (for Mac and PC users) that, despite some convoluted wrangling with OverDrive, is still worth it…
HERE is the offer. From the notes:
“This offer may be redeemed once per customer and entitles customer to free copies of eligible Audiobook MP3 titles at bn.com or its mirror sites. Offer ends May 16, 2009 at 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time”
It also says:
“Please Note:you must have a valid credit card on file with bn.com or enter one during checkout in order to obtain the free eligible Audiobook MP3 titles, even if these free items are the only items in your order. However, your credit card will not be charged for the free Audiobook MP3 titles.”
But, payment methods of PayPal or “telephone order” are also offered as options. Be also aware you must also enter a USA shipping address (even though these are digital downloads). After the checkout process you’ll also need to install OverDrive’s “Media Console” software in order to download the files. That’s annoying, but more annoying is the 2,000 word essay on which rights you are giving up to use the stupid software. After that you’ll get an email linking you to a B&N download page, where you can one-click a download for each story – which in turn will allow you to two-click your actual MP3 downloads. Then after the actual download of the actual MP3 a search of your hard drive for the title of the story will reveal where the files were hidden on your computer.
So like I said, the offer WAS WORTH IT, at least for me. It took about 25 minutes all told to get the two stories that interested me. For that time invested I’ve got myself a novel, Blackstone Audio’s The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (read by the incomparable Grover Gardner), and a Harper Audio short story called Best New Horror by Joe Hill (read by David Ledoux). It’s a cool horror tale from the collection called 20th Century Ghosts. The other 7 titles may be good too, I’m not sure its worth the wrangling and searching – I couldn’t tell who wrote some of them, or what they were about. So, if you do give this offer a shot please let me know if you find something else worthwhile in the 9 freebies. I’ll delete OverDrive’s “media console” within the next couple of days. I’ll give you 48 hours to convince me to use it again.
[via SFsignal]
Posted by Jesse Willis