Letter to the Government of Canada Regarding Copyright Reform
May 8, 2010The Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights (CCER) has started a letter writing campaign against the Government of Canada’s impending copyright legislation:
The Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights has updated its online letter writing wizard in light of recent developments in the Canadian copyright reform front. This update is intended to address the Government’s seeming willingness to ignore the voices of thousands of Canadians and proceed with the introduction of anti-consumer copyright reform legislation in as little as 6 weeks. Legislation that goes in a polar opposite direction of what Canadians demanded during the consultation process.
Send your letter now and share this tool with your friends, family and co-workers. It is essential that we all speak up now while we have the opportunity.
The following is a reprint of the CCER form letter, augmented with my personal question about the effect this legislation will have on the future of Canadian culture.
Evolution?
March 26, 2009Full disclosure: I submitted a piece to the CBC Evolution contest that is the subject of this post. I was pretty sure in advance that it was all wrong for the competition (and was correct in that assumption), so I was neither surprised nor disappointed when I didn’t make the cut. This isn’t a grudge post.
I had a chance to hear to some of the CBC Evolution concert this evening. I was teaching during most of it, so I could only listen between lessons, but it had me pondering a question that I’ve been asking for a while now: is “contemporary classical” music relevant anymore?
Note to Commercial Hip Hop
Note to commercial hip hop:
Please stop sampling hit songs from the ’80s. You either sample something good and defile it with inane rhymes about crap that doesn’t matter, or you sample something that was lame in the first place and make us all listen to it for another 3 months. It ends badly either way.
You don’t have to sample. You could produce your own music, or if you lack the necessary talent and skills, you could grab something from any of the thousands of hip hop sample libraries that were designed for no-talent, no-skills fools just like you.
Whatever path you choose, just stop sampling. And stop sucking.
