Bulte Round-up

Boss Ross Gets in on the “Remixing Sam” Act

I’m not the only one into the commentary-on-Bulte-by-Photoshop game. My boss, Ross, has taken a crack at it and he’s done a pretty nice job:

Ross won’t mind if you copy this graphic and stick it on your own site.

Ross also notes that he took advantage of advance voting and will gladly tell anyone who asks that Sam did not get his vote.

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In This Week’s Macleans: Bulte in the Blogs!

Michael Geist has informed me that along with Cory Doctorow, we’ve been quoted in this week’s issue of Macleans. We were all interviewed by Colin Campbell last week, and our comments appear in a sidebar article titled Bulte in the Blogs: A Dust-Up Over Campaigns and Copyright. Here’s a scan of the bit where your ‘umble blogger gets mentioned:

He sent me a scan of the article [825K PDF], which I have enclosed for your viewing. The scan’s a bit smudged, but I’m planning to buy a half-dozen copies for my portfolio and will see if I can get a cleaner scan posted here.

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Doctorow’s Guest Editorial at the Star

Speaking of Cory, if you haven’t read his Toronto Star guest editorial piece on Sam Bulte — Trademark Political Shenanigans — do so now!

My favourite bit is where he talks about DRM — “Digital Rights Management” or “Digital Restrictions Management”, depending on if you’re one of Sam’s God-fearing content corporation buddies or one of those no-good “pro-user zealots” whom Sam condemns. He’s come up a great way of explaining the ridiculousness of region-encoded DVDs (which is why your North American DVDs won’t play in other parts of the world and vice versa):

These are the technological restrictions put on the media that you buy,

such as games, CDs and DVDs, that seek to control how you use works

after you buy them. These DRMs indiscriminately restrict the

enjoyment of your lawful property, allowing rights holders to control

your private use of media in ways not considered under copyright law.

For example, Adobe’s eBook technology blocks your ability to copy and

paste a quotation, even where copyright law would allow it, e.g. in the

course of criticism or in academic research.

DRM technology on

DVDs prevents you from watching discs bought overseas in a Canadian DVD

player, despite the fact that copyright doesn’t give creators the right

to control where their creations are viewed after they’ve been sold.

That’s why you don’t need to leave your Canadian editions of your

favourite books at home when you go on holidays in foreign countries.