Canada's Debate

In case you didn’t notice, I now have a “Green hosting” icon on my left sidebar. I mention this not to gloat or congratulate myself, but out of a nagging suspicion that it’s utter bullshit. I have no reason do disbelieve Dreamhost’s claims, but I don’t see how a giant building that’s full of [...]

During my semi-regular stroll around the blogosphere I came across this photograph. Looks fairly unremarkable, no? Consider this then: it’s not a photograph at all, it’s a digital rendering. Now, does that make you feel impressed, or a little bit disturbed. If you said disturbed, you’re still human, and you have taken your first step [...]

It’s not often that I get to share tangible good news regarding Intellectual Property or digital media, so you’ll forgive me if I’m relaying this instead of blogging about it extensively:
“The Canadian online music store Puretracks (a store I have generally avoided because of their Microsoft-specific solutions) has announced that it will immediately start selling [...]

… continued from yesterday.
The idea of secure transmission of information across the Internet is one that has been explored and to a certain degree implemented the world over. This has always been done in an effort to control access to information (Doherty 65.) The idea of securing and controlling information informs not only transmission systems [...]

… continued from yesterday.
For any reconsideration of how we share information to take place it is important for a society to have a clear view of how that information is valued. In the case of intellectual property the “information” or content of the property can be seen as the imaginative work undertaken by the author. [...]

“The ‘Net is a waste of time, and that’s exactly what’s right about it.” - William Gibson
It can be said that a waste is effort without work. If we are to define work as effort expended to accomplish some end then a curious dilemma comes to the forefront. For the first time in human [...]

continued from yesterday…
Governing the Internet is not simply a process of guiding the behaviour of individual users however. The tremendous pervasiveness of business and the government must also be considered. It is only appropriate that law and the market best regulate these two interests. The government’s ability to search and monitor is [...]

… continued from yesterday.
It is this supposition that demands an answer to the question posed by this essay. Since the Internet is so fully capable of becoming regulated, it is likely that it will be, so how should we as users go about doing this? Using the model of four forms of control it is [...]

…continued from yesterday
The potential to regulate the Internet unfortunately lies not in the choices made by users (as can be said by government and citizens in a democracy) but the architecture of the space itself. Code as Lessig calls it, the “software and hardware that constitutes cyberspace itself, that determine how people interact, or exist [...]

I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she’s too young to have logged on yet. Her’s what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say, “Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from [...]