I found a link to this National Post piece on Zeke's Gallery. National Post: "A reporter who refused to testify about where he got confidential information is no longer facing a criminal record but could still be found in contempt of court, because journalists are not ''above the law,'' a judge said Monday." ¶ 7:34 p.m.
The web is an intersting place. Got this one from Feedster on a search for "Privacy AND Canada". I can't validate this, I'm just saying that if this is true, it's yet another case of NOT GETTING IT:
Tim's place: Busy week: "Hooked on Phonics stated in their privacy policy that they wouldn't give out your personal information and then they sold that personal information to outside marketers to make a buck." ¶ 7:00 p.m.
According to Michael Geist, a U. of Ottawa law prof. and privacy expert, TheStar.com - Numbers don't crunch against downloading: "A recent Economist article reported that an internal music-label study found that between two thirds and three quarters of recent sales declines had nothing to do with Internet music downloads."
This makes sense to me, having read the anecdotal stories about how the appearance of the video recording machines, and subsequent movie rental business, actually revived the flagging movie industry. If the Canadian recording industry would embrace Napster 2.0, Puretracks.com, Archambault and the upcoming iTunes Canada it might extracate itself from the necessity of dependence on government funding.
Don't get me wrong. I like that my tax dollars support culture and the arts. I just think that pop culture should be a little more self sustaining to bear the sobriquet of 'pop'ular.
¶ 6:54 p.m.
The Globe and Mail: CIBC bans faxes after scrapyard gets more: "The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce took the remarkable step of banning the use of fax machines for any transmission of customer information after The Globe and Mail and CTV reported that confidential data for hundreds of its customers had been faxed for more than three years to a scrapyard operator in West Virginia."
Talk about closing the barn door after the entire herd has left!
¶ 10:49 p.m.
The New Yorker: Fact: "Words belong to the person who wrote them. There are few simpler ethical notions than this one, particularly as society directs more and more energy and resources toward the creation of intellectual property."
Those are the words in a New Yorker article. Somehow I find that chilling. Possibly even stultifying. That's not to say that writers and others shouldn't be compensated for their work, it's thinking that ideas or expressions of ideas as property that bothers me. I can accept Intellectual Property as a necessary fiction given the structure of our economy and our society, but not as some sort of natural or intrinsic right.
For an alternate view check out the creative commons
¶ 11:45 p.m.
Fact vs. Fiction: 10 Questions to Test Your Space IQ
Try your luck on this 10 question Fact/Fiction Science quiz. Fun for geeks
¶ 11:35 p.m.
According to Murray Dobbin on rabble.ca:
At no time in the past 50 years, at least, has Canada's élite been so openly contemptuous of its own country, or so eager to give up its self-appointed role of protecting Canada's unique place in the world. And at no time in this same period have “ordinary” Canadians been more proud of their values and traditions and so confident in them.
I'm pretty sure he's correct about our 'leaders', and I sure hope he's right about the pride that Canadians have in their values. The fact the Tommy Douglas seems to be topping the vote in The Greatest Canadian may give some credence to this view.
...I have to confess that part of me would have got a giggle if Don Cherry was the winner!
¶ 11:36 p.m.
[daily dose of imagery] noam chomsky @ yorkIt's not so much the picture of Noam Chomsky sitting under a sign that prompts this entry. If you go to this link, and read the comments, someone disparages Chomsky for his "pathetic idealism"!
I can accept that one's idealism can be mistaken, misdirected, out of touch with reality or even naive. But pathetic somehow implies that the very idea of idealism (so to speak) is wrong. Now that poor soul IS pathetic. I suspect they live in a narrow self imposed prison of perception, always pre-emptively acting selfishly on the mistaken assumption that that is how the world works.
¶ 3:50 p.m.
