By Eric Pettifor A new copyright bill has been introduced into parliament today, Bill C-32. I nearly wrote “anti-copyright” bill because, while I like the original idea of copyright, most of what governments have done to it in recent decades has been to its detriment. The idea behind copyright was that all creative works belong […]
Don’t Copy That Flop
By Eric Pettifor Q: How difficult would it be for the copyright holder of a film to get the IP addresses of people sharing that film over bittorrent? A: Easy as pie. Here’s a portion of a screen capture from my bittorrent client, ktorrent, showing the ip addresses of people sharing a popular file […]
First strike
isoHunt, a Canadian bittorrent site akin to The Pirate Bay, is making a preemptive strike against the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), our own little Canadian version of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). From TorrentFreak: As an act of self-defense, isoHunt has decided to sue the CRIA instead, and today Fung will file […]
The Fraud of “Intellectual Property”
There is no such thing as “intellectual property.” Take copyright: if we are to look at creative works as property, then it is the property of the commons (that is, public domain), and copyright is simply a limited duration monopoly on works extended to creators as an incentive and reward. Patents likewise are of limited […]
Be Your Own Robin Hood
Recently Slashdot posted a story about the RIAA suing a disabled man living on social security. For the most part, the Slashdot crowd is rabidly anti-RIAA, but one fellow commented that just because a person is disabled, it doesn’t mean that he can’t infringe copyright. I found this defense of the RIAA vs. a poor, […]
Avast ye, eh?
Avast ye, and listen well. Ol’ Joe Biden has turned his guns to North and is taking aim at our Great White Land o’ the Pirates, aye. Seems he and his Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus gave fair warning three years ago when they put us on a watch list, but e’en so we did not […]
Naked Geeks
Who are the 12 greatest computer geeks of all time? Can you put names to the following 12 clues? There will be an answer key at the end of this blog entry. Difference engine. AI test and work on defeating Nazi enigma encryption during WWII. In 1983, geeks 3 and 4 below received an award […]
Tech Predictions for 2007
Can’t really put off the “tech predictions for 2007” bit much longer . . . Could do it tomorrow . . . No, let’s quit the boozing for a sec and just knock something off . . . Okay, I fearlessly predict that things will be the same as in 2006, but with bigger numbers. […]
