News

Facing Up To Facebook: The Fight For Fair Copyright in Canada

Last week, I had the pleasure of delivering a talk at Osgoode Hall titled Facing Up to Facebook: The Fight for Fair Copyright in Canada.  The abstract of the talk was:

In December 2007, the Canadian government planned to introduce new copyright legislation that was to have mirrored the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A Facebook group was formed to advocate against such reforms and for balanced copyright laws. Within weeks, nearly 40,000 Canadians joined the group, with members writing and calling their elected representatives, educating their local communities, and staging public protests. In the face of this opposition, the Canadian government delayed introducing the legislation. The “Canadian copy-fight” attracted considerable attention from the mainstream media, with many wondering how copyright had emerged as a contentious policy issue. This talk will assess the Canadian experience in an effort to answer the oft-asked question – “why copyright?”.

A video of the talk has been posted online (WMV format).

5 Comments

  1. Disappointed says:

    Hey,wonder boy, where were you on Friday afternoon? I showed up at the Canadian Music Week panel expecting to hear you ripping the stuffings out of those music industry assholes. But you didn’t show up. The guy moderating the panel didn’t seem to know where you were or what happened to you. Were you off saving the world or something? Or just chicken?

  2. How to view with firefox
    As many will find out, the mms protocol is not supported by firefox, and so the link to the video won’t work. A simple way to get it is to paste directly the url mms://media.osgoode.yorku.ca/events/PTTP-March052008.wmv in a media player like VLC. For VLC, clic on File, then “open network stream”,then choose “http/https/ftp/mms” and enter the above url.

  3. Osgoode IT
    @Promateus
    Forefox should launch an “external protocol request”. If it doesn’t for you, please try switching the mms:// portion of the link to rtsp://
    We are going to upload a non WM version of this talk as well.

  4. account executive
    Wonder Boy… that’s funny. Hey Mr. Michael Geist why do you have your picture on your web site? If I looked like you, I wouldn’t advertise my face like that.

    Also as a sales professional I think you’re one of those idiots who says, “just looking” when you walk into a retail store and someone greets you.
    How do I know that?

    Just look at the clothes you’re wearing in your picture. You clearly picked that out yourself.
    Get some Rogaine, by some new undies and get a real cause while you’re at it…like getting kids of the street or something that is actually beneficial to society.

    Those telemarketing jobs employee students you doosh bag!

  5. Well, It’s nice to see the Internet is still full of angry ignorant assholes as much as ever.

    Only two comments out of these were really worth reading =P, and they were about FireFox.

    Ignore these Internet jerk-offs and keep doing what your doing man, death to spam and intrusive telemarketers.

    PS: It’s ‘douche’ not “doosh’ Chad. I suggest you use http://www.merriam-webster.com a little more and search less porn.