Some of the Toronto members of the Fair Copyright for Canada group are planning a demonstration against the legislation next Tuesday. With the legislation dead (for now at least), this might just turn into a celebration! 
Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Location: Queen’s Park
Street: 1 Queen’s Park Crescent E
City/Town: Toronto, ON
BoingBoing has the whole debacle archived
According to BuzzMachine a German media magazine, Medium, named a blogger as its journalist of the year because of the work this journalist/blogger (journalogger?) does on keeping tabs on Germany’s largest tabloid style paper. Jarvis worries that this might fuel the fires of the blogger vs MSM debate people still want to keep the words journalist & blogger mutually exclusive.
Google is testing a new internet site for information sharing that is similar Wikipedia, except that users will be able to include in their posts if they agree to share the revenues with Google. Think: you’re reading up on something new and you get to be advertised at, I am definitely going to stop using Wikipedia.
More: Google is releasing some info on the mystery that is AdSense, don’t expect them to tell you how much of the ad revenue the keep for themselves
Minister Jim Prentice is hosting an open house in his office where people can discuss the draconian copyright law the Canadian government is attempting to pass. If you can’t make it out to Calgary here are some things you can do according to Cory Doctorow:
Not in Calgary? NO PROBLEM! Plan on calling the Minister tomorrow or on dropping him an email, expressing your regrets that you can’t attend the open house, but letting him know how you feel. Here are the numbers:
Ottawa office – (613) 992-4275
Calgary office – (403) 216-7777
Minister office – (613) 995-9001
His email address is: Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca. Once you send an email, print it out and mail it (no stamp needed!) to:
Jim Prentice
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
“The word is that the Minister’s office is reeling from the overwhelming, national response to this badly written, badly planned bill.”
Industry Minister Jim Prentice is refusing to address the hundreds of questions received by CBC’s search engine about the upcoming copyright law, he wants to wait until the law is passed first, which is a good way to avoid any actual dialog about legislation that affects most Canadians. Michael Geist has 10 questions for the minister. Geist rightly points out that Canadians have not been consulted on digital copyright reform since 2001 in the pre-YouTube days, which in the digital age is an eternity.
The Globe and Mail has an article on traffic shaping, net neutrality, etc. in Canada. The article quotes Michael Geist who believes that traffic shaping reveals a Canadian ISP dirty little secret about the overselling of bandwidth.
The Canadian government is about to bring down Canada’s version of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and it promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world. It will contain an “anti-circumvention” clause that prohibits breaking the locks off your music and movies in order to move them to new devices or watch them after the company that made them goes out of business. (boingboing)
Facebook’s new aggressive ad program, Beacon, is undergoing some changes because of pressure from its users and advocacy groups like MoveOn.org. Originally Beacon alerted your friends if you purchased something from participating sites, unless you took action to disable it, now Beacon has to be enabled by the user before it sends out alerts. The changes also come from huge advertisers such as Coca-Cola who are severing their ties with Beacon due to all the negative press. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t still privacy issues with Facebook.
NBC and TiVo have struck an interactive deal, NBC has agreed to buy ratings data and other advertising products from TiVo Inc. Under the deal, advertisers who buy television commercials any NBC affiliated television stations will have the option of adding an interactive component to those spots, a TiVo tag that can be clicked on for more info.