Legal To Download Music: Court Sides With Music Swappers

Music, Web & Tech

FILESWAPPING In a victory for the privacy rights of Canadians, the Federal Court on Wednesday, March 31, denied the music industry’s request for Internet Service Providers to disclose the identifty of subscribers alleged to have infringed copyright laws. The court’s decision comes on the heels of the Tuesday release of a study which found that online music sharing does not clearly affect CD sales.
Matthew Ingram, in today’s Globe and Mail, writes “on the topic of downloading, the judge was succinct: Canada’s Copyright Act allows users to reproduce a musical work onto a recording medium for their private use, and thus, “downloading a song… does not amount to infringement.”
Also in the Globe, Janet McFarland tells the Recording Industry Association to …

“Do nothing on the legal front, and let people continue to copy music files just like they have copied songs and movies and TV shows on cassettes for years. It’s a frustrating solution, because a huge amount of revenue is lost when people copy music instead of buying it. But the problem is not easily fixed with legal action. The ruling Wednesday shows the courts have little sympathy for the cause. And the Internet is too large to police effectively anyway; websites and file-sharing service are too easily shifted to plug every hole.”


McFarland goes on to suggest that the recording industry continue to encourage the development of paid music sites on the Internet, such as iTunes and Napster, and the made-in-Canada / G-7 and European Union solution to peer-to-peer file swapping: levies on recordable CDs and on MP3 players, with future consideration being given to the implementation of surcharges on Internet use to further compensate the music industry.

Jeffrey Wells: Cinema’s Last Action Hero

Cinema

JEFFREYWELLS

Previously on VanRamblings, we’d introduced you to David Poland’s The Hot Button, one of the first (if not the first) daily, web-based cinema column. Poland’s been around since 1994 on the web, in one form or another.
Today, we introduce you to Jeffrey Wells, who’s been around almost as long, doing much the same kind of work Poland does, covering cinema on the web. At the end of this item (you’ll have to click on the Continue Reading prompt a few centimetres below), you’ll find Wells’ 2004 Oscar contention ‘balloon’. This is well-worth reading, so look for it.
Both David Poland’s The Hot Button and Jeffrey Wells‘ Movie Elsewhere are available as links on the left, under the Cinema category.
Jeffrey Wells began his entertainment journalism career in Connecticut before moving to New York in 1978, where he wrote for the New York Post, along with other papers. In 1983, he moved to Los Angeles, quit journalism and went to work in the publicity department at Menahem Golan’s Cannon Pictures, then at its height. He married in 1987. In 1991, following a bitter divorce (is there any other kind?), Wells once again returned to journalism, becoming a freelance writer for the Los Angeles Times.
Throughout the early 90s, Wells earned Sony’s enmity by writing tough pieces about Sony chief Mark Canton. He also wrote about the troubled Bruce Willis movie Striking Distance in the Los Angeles Times. Wells is given credit for contributing a scathing column, employing the byline Celia Brady, to Spy magazine, which indicated that Canton had slept through a screening of Martin Scorcese’s The Age of Innocence. Brady/Wells wrote that when Canton was at Warner Brothers, he oversaw Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson. Canton reportedly asked for a plot summary.
While investigating Columbia Pictures executive Michael Nathanson, who was involved in the Heidi Fleiss scandal, Wells had his phone tapped by a private eye, the recently jailed Anthony Pellicano. Pellicano conducted a thorough background search on Wells, looking for information to discredit him, but found nothing. On June 4 1993, Wells wrote a column for the LA Times about a disastrous test screening for the bomb Last Action Hero.
Sony went nuts.

Continue reading Jeffrey Wells: Cinema’s Last Action Hero →

Not Stuffy: A Child-Friendly Museum Going Experience

A & E

DEBRAGALANT Mornin’, Debra (or, afternoon in New York, as the case may be).
Fellow weblogger, Debra Galant, has a story in today’s New York Times, writing on how, as interview subject Dr. Alison Griffiths — an associate professor in the department of communication studies at Baruch College in New York — puts it, “Kids are being specifically targeted as really important museumgoers.”
Debra’s story addresses the issue of the impact of the recent movement towards the “the Disneyfication of museums”, and the consequent lack of intellectual rigour that the more contemporary, and frenzied, multi-media approach to drawing children’s museum-going interests is having on museums today. Obviously, museum traditionalists express frustration and consternation at this ‘unwelcome’ turn of events.
Well worth reading. Check it out.

Zen and the Art of Weblog Maintenance

Weblogs

Downtown Vancouver.jpg
A view of downtown Vancouver, from the vantage point of Kitsilano’s Vanier Park

Concern has been expressed by a handful of readers as to the lack of a monthly archive on the VanRamblings site. Site technician, Michael Klassen, and I continue our discussion on a long-term resolution to this issue, but for the moment, we think we’ve come up with a suitable compromise.
Yes, it’s true that, for the moment, there’s no monthly VanRamblings index. Tomorrow, April 1st, the March calendar will disappear. Even so, you’ll still find yourself able to access VanRamblings’ archives.
The front page of VanRamblings provides readers with ready access to articles published in the past 7 days. Top right on the ‘front page’, under Topics, you’ll find links to every article — published by category — dating back to the inception of the site. Click on Web/Tech, for instance (either the web/tech button in the ‘logo box’ at the top, or under Topics), and you’ll readily find every article ever published on VanRamblings on that topic.
As it happens, many of the archived articles are updated quite regularly, so it’s worthwhile checking out the topic categories from time to time.
Hope this VanRamblings maintenance / archive explanation helps a bit.