US labels to Canada: stop giving us free money, we prefer to sue

from bOINGbOING:

The Canadian Recording Industry Association (which represents multinational, US, and other non-Canadian record labels exclusively) has come out against the “private copying levy,” a tax on blank media that it lobbied hard for over the past 15 years. The levy is charged against blank media, and the money raised is paid to copyright holders in exchange for the right to copy music and other works onto the media. CRIA apparently fears that the levy can be used to legalize P2P music-trading in Canada (an activity whose legality is in dispute right now), thereby breaking the P2P deadlock, decriminalizing millions of music fans, and paying millions of dollars to their members. The record industry giants would prefer to go on suing music fans and technology companies — an activity that pays the record companies handsomely, while encouraging fans to defect from buying music in the future, and which does not pay one cent to any artist.

“The Canadian Recording Industry Association this week quietly filed documents in the Federal Court of Appeal that will likely shock many in the industry. CRIA, which spent more than 15 years lobbying for the creation of the private copying levy, is now fighting to eliminate the application of the levy on the Apple iPod since it believes that the Copyright Board of Canada’s recent decision to allow a proposed tariff on iPods to proceed “broadens the scope of the private copying exception to avoid making illegal file sharers liable for infringement.”

Given that CRIA’s members collect millions from the private copying levy, the decision to oppose its expansion may come as a surprise. Yet the move reflects a reality that CRIA has previously been loath to acknowledge – the Copyright Board has developed jurisprudence that provides a strong argument that downloading music on peer-to-peer networks is lawful in Canada. Indeed, CRIA President Graham Henderson provides a roadmap for the argument in his affidavit:

“First, the Board has stated, in obiter dicta, on several occasions that the Private Copying regime legalizes copying for the private use of the person making the copy, regardless of whether the source is non-infringing or not. Therefore, according to the Board, downloading an infringing track from the Internet is not infringing, as long as the downloaded copy is made onto an ‘audio recording medium’…”

some things are less unexpected than others

HEY SEATTLE!

That 1 Guy is playing this evening at the Tractor Tavern. (watch the video) (listen to the music)

His gig here was so phenomenal that I can’t, in all reason, pass up the chance for a second show. It’s looking like I might be in attendance, so this is our chance to finally get down and shake some booty together. Who’s in?

Edit: Alright, there’s no “might be” anymore. “Might be” was before we spent 12 hours together. I’d have left with him this afternoon, but there’s no busses back, so Nicole and I are going instead. We’re leaving in an hour.

(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death

My evening plans dissolved under the frayed-temper weight of a mid-run rehearsal that went late, went later, then turned into an improbable, cramped-in-the-back-of-the-car expedition to Burnaby to The Arts Institute, until finally, tired, worn, at four in the morning, I was dropped off home.

Part of me knows why I let these things happen, but the rest of me is speculating on a possible homicidal spree. Something you can all hear about on the radio. Trading in famous for infamous with the merest arterial spray.

Today was the anniversary of the World Trade disaster, the strength of misplaced faith moving towers instead of mountains, but until I signed on-line, I heard not a word on it. Even then, coverage was sparse. In six years, it’s had time to fade, but also to become one of Those Questions, “What do you do?” “Where are you from?” “Where were you on September 11th?” The immediacy has merely shifted focus, become diluted through our culture like waxy ink through blood. A slow acting poison, changing our perspectives.

I was in bed, until I wasn’t anymore. Cory and Jon in the den, glued to the TV. We all have our stories, sitting in cars, unlucky at airports, the entire world spinning still, like a record slowing down, just in time for the second plane to crash in. Fire, collapse. Do you remember the jumpers? Echoes. Of anywhere, I wanted to be there.

Before, we had the Berlin Wall. A glorious thing, people dancing on the ruins, encapsulating history in joy. Now we sit around the dinner table, frown, and recite our whereabouts, how we felt, what we think should be done. A very different “Before”. Politics, everywhere. Always America. The circus in flames.

Duncan and Scott, a Scots-Canadian and an American, have posts I think you should read. I am too lonely, too tired, too emptied by my day to properly have my own words.

I am sorry, world, that we have failed you so. It would have been better to remember the wall.

stood up for dinner, rescued by kung-fu

Biologists Helping Bookstores is a guerrilla effort to reshelve pseudo-scientific books, (like those on intelligent design), by taking them from the Science section and moving them to a more appropriate area of the store, (like Philosophy or Religion).

I have involved my mother in something strange. She’s to appear on television tomorrow in a lime green mini dress as the bass player in a psychedelic band playing Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In. I’m almost certain this makes me an awesome daughter, but I’m not really sure yet. It depends too heavily on how my unexpected social experiments turns out. The scale runs all the way from Entirely Beneficial to Apologies Required.

As a related oddity, I’m apparently to show up to the Odd Fellow’s hall to help construct 500 hand puppets out of brown paper bags. I suspect, only to save my soul, I might skip out. I received an invitation today to a gig, horror of horrors, at The MeatMarket Roxy. As I’ve never been, it might pass as an acceptable excuse an adventure. I need to get out more, see different people. It’s really not you, it’s me. And the constant country music. Not-so-secretly, I’m hoping to be turned away at the door for not meeting dress code. Last I walked past, the requirements seemed to tottering high heels that lead the eye up to a bandage of a skirt and a tiny, glittering lollipop top cut halfway to the navel. (I’m not judging them as much as I’m judging myself. No one needs to see my ass is something like that. Especially me.)

M.I.A.’s new album is growing on me

Summertime folding over, evenings giving way to scarf weather, an end to bikini top afternoons, as if we ever had them here. I woke up in Kitsilano today, Vancouver’s gentrified neighborhood of sixty dollar tank tops that shred in the rain, yoga couture kitchenware, and all organic produce, lovingly handpicked in Venezuela by deliciously photo-shopped young girls with bleached laser light smiles. It’s like an expensive spiritualist camp for eco-hippies who guiltily grew up to be lawyers.

My friend’s apartment, thankfully, nestled in behind the doggie bakeries and out-sourced maternity fashion wear, is nicely anonymous. Crepe white walls, every light on a dimmer switch, it could be found anywhere in North America. I’m always glad to find myself there. Against the rest of the glimmering, heavily marketed neighborhood, it’s a haven.

Yesterday we were at the Fringe Festival, where I saw his show, The Kenny Rogers Experience, (which happens to be Jacques’ show, which happens to be Mackenzie’s show, which happens to be Paul’s show, which happens…), a semi-fictional tour of Kenny Rogers’s life. It starts with a well faked biopic of missing audio tapes he recorded with Jimi Hendrix and casually saunters into an uncanny valley of Country from there. Somehow, hand puppets are involved. Also, five wives. And a beard website. Just go.