Too Much Copyright

Originally copyright was to promote useful arts, but aging properties of corporations have seen the laws continually changed to protect these properties and keep them in the public domain.  This clip debates the usefulness on government imposed bills such as PIPA, SOPA, ACTA and whatever will come next.  Governments and corporations have a very different view from the public, and those that understand as to what copyright is and should do.

The movie RiP: A Remix Manifesto is a movie that focuses on the DJ, Girl Talk, whose music is a collage of hundreds of different copyrighted samples.  It tells of how he gets around copyright, fair use, and creative commons.  As a day job Girl Talk (Greg Gillis) is a biomedical engineer so the movie also talks about how copyright and patents stifle and limit what can be done in the medical and pharmaceutical industry.

The Truth about ACTA

Last week the internet was all about PIPA and SOPA and now that those have temporarily been put on the shelf due to public outcry (and many government and media websites being taken down by hacktivists).  Now there is ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which establishes international standards on intellectual property.  This was drafted mainly by US multinational corporations and the RIAA and MPAA (which were the sole beneficiars and supporters of PIPA and SOPA (there were a large number of multination corporations that stood against these two bills)).  ACTA establishes an international legal framework and would create a governing body outside established international institutions.  Canada was one of the first countries to join over 6 years ago and has been fully supportive of all the bills that see big businesses wants covered at the expense of their citizens and their privacy.

Anti Piracy

I'm sure most have you have had to sit through this shitty commercial before watching a movie that you have bought or rented.  It turns out the music used was stolen by the MPAA and the composer Melchoir Rietveldt was never contacted.