Archive for August, 2007

Off the Record

The Prospect features an insightful article into the economics of the recording industry including the growth of performance revenues and the impact of the CD.

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August 26, 2007 Comments are Disabled News

Blogging in the Public Sector

An interesting U.S. report on blogging in the public (and corporate) sectors.

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August 26, 2007 1 comment News

Michael Geist CV August 2007

Geistcvaug07-long.pdf

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August 24, 2007 Comments are Disabled General

The City of Totems

The City of Duncan, British Columbia is a relatively small town of about 5,000 located on Vancouver Island.  With 80 totems scattered throughout city, Duncan bills itself as the City of Totems.  Duncan has begun to generate some press coverage for adopting a new Totem Copyright Policy which apparently states that the City "holds the copyright policy on the totem collection" and that "the use of the totem images in any form requires approval from the City of Duncan."

As a matter of copyright law, this is seemingly wrong as there is no infringement of copyright for taking pictures of movies of a public sculpture or artistic work.  Section 32.2(1)(b) of the Copyright Act provides that:

it is not an infringement of copyright for any person to reproduce, in a painting, drawing, engraving, photograph or cinematographic work a sculpture or work of artistic craftmanship. . . that is permanently situated in a public place of building.

Moreover, the City's claims raise further questions about whether it owns the copyright in the totems. 

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August 23, 2007 5 comments News

Dutch Copyright Collective and Creative Commons Strike Deal

Creative Commons has faced some challenges in gaining acceptance from copyright collectives, which makes news from the Netherlands about a deal with Buma/Stemra particularly noteworthy.

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August 23, 2007 Comments are Disabled News