world on a whole minute

The Canadian government has indicated that it intends to push ahead and change copyright law – without consulting with ordinary Canadians who will be affected in their everyday lives. But the issues remain unclear to many citizens and journalists. I have put together the faircopy site to help explain what this is about, how it affects all Canadians, and what we can do about it. This is intended to put together a clear overview, augmenting existing efforts like the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group.

The Internet and the technical community are host to a toxic culture. This culture allows and even encourages personal attacks, threats, and misogyny. This week, Kathy Sierra’s experience with death threats forced it into the public discourse. There is of course no excuse for the behavior of the individuals who harrassed and threatened her. Yet they are only part of the problem. The solution rests not in finding, stopping, and punishing them (or helping them, for surely they are sad or sick) – although that is to be hoped for, it may be unlikely here and certainly is for the majority of such cases. It rests with others who give permission to such behavior – permission to hate. …

This speech by David Simon, writer and producer of TV show The Wire, gave a powerful speech about institutional failure and social fragmentation in America’s cities. I highly recommend watching The End of the American Empire at Loyola College. Here’s a sample from the second segment (with 3:10 remaining): . . .

Seven directors of the SFU student society were impeached on Wednesday in a chilly three-hour meeting of over a thousand students. These are my thoughts on the meeting itself and the reaction of those impeached. . . .

Seven members of the Simon Fraser Student Society Board of Directors, including president Shawn Hunsdale, are up for impeachment. They are: . . .

Statistics Canada sent me a letter today. I thought it must be some kind of survey. I opened it to discover junk mail on government letterhead: …

In John Ibbitson’s Globe column on Tuesday¹, he provided what appears to be an argument in favor the invasion of Canada if we were to limit oil exports to the United States (emphasis mine): …

I haven’t commented on Hurricane Katrina before now because I don’t wish to reiterate the obvious: the disaster planning and response have been disgraceful beyond measure. The consequences of a weak community and social web exceeded my imagination. The broken society Cindy and I sensed in New Orleans eight months ago imploded in tragedy. But I want to focus on something else: the dire consequences of crowding the refugees. ...

Paul Graham argues that economic inequality is good because people want to be rich. In order to achieve this, they take risks (both by investing capital and and founding companies); the resulting innovation and growth benefit society. He claims the only way to reduce inequality is to take money from the rich. This reduces the incentives for risk-taking, which in turn threatens growth and the ability of a country to resist poverty and subjugation to others. I recommend reading his original essay: he’s a good writer (though this is certainly not his best).

Graham argues convincingly that inequality encourages risk-taking, and that risk-taking leads to growth. But the argument lacks balance: he treats reducing inequality and eliminating inequality interchangeably. Worse, he doesn’t account for the benefits of reduced inequality and taxation. His reasoning reduces the success of a society to the relationship between inequality, risk, and innovation. …

We just got word from my brother Alexis, who lives in Fukuoka Japan. About an hour ago there was a magnitude 7 earthquake off the coast of Kyushu near Fukuoka. He’s OK, though his chest of drawers fell over. He says the TV and telephone are out, but his Internet connection still works so he was able to send us a message. Now he has to worry about aftershocks. . . .

Gay marriage fills the Canadian papers. I have stated my support. The issue is symbolically important, but materially less so (the young support it: if it comes not this year, it will come soon). But it is only one issue. Why will people stand up for this, when they will not for so much else? . . .

When I first heard about gay marriage I did not think it terribly important. Gay couples should certainly have all the rights of heterosexual couples, but does it matter if they marry? Isn’t this a tempest in a teapot, a debate about semantics? . . .

I just attended a presentation at Surrey City Centre about the plans for the redevelopment of that area. Assuming this goes anywhere, the great shame will be that it took so long for Surrey to wake up to the disastrous results of its failure to stand up to urban sprawl. . . .

Two recent newspaper stories about the death toll from the tsunami are accompanied by a photo of the passports of two Canadian children who survived. In an appalling lapse of judgement, personal details – up to and including passport numbers – are clearly legible. Having survived the tsunami, these children now bear the indignity and risk of having their information (possibly enough to steal their identities) published across the country. This kind of thoughtless behavior is surely not deliberate, but journalists are in the business: they should know better. Two newsrooms with two editors published the photo; a wire service and an image service supplied them; none had the sense to protect the information. I am not a lawyer, but it strikes me this may run afoul of Canadian privacy legislation. Media organizations should be held legally liable for this kind of reckless behavior. The responsible parties – Southam, AFP, and Getty Images – should at least arrange for new passports (with new passport numbers) for their victims.

I read an unbelievably arrogant, self-centered letter to the Globe today – the kind of statement that verges on racism and gives environmentalists a bad name: . . .

This weekend, the Globe & Mail devoted nearly their entire Saturday newspaper to China. The National Post, its main competitor, has been writing about China for the past week. The trigger may be the proposal of China Minmetals, a state-owned Chinese firm, to buy Noranda, Canada’s largest mining company. But the real issue is something else: it is China and America and Canada’s place in the world. . . .

Kuro5hin suggests that the U.S. military in Iraq is modeling its actions on those of the French in Algeria in the 1950s. It says that “the Bush administration telegraphed their intent to use torture on prisoners in Iraq when they screened Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 film The Battle of Algiers.” It concludes that “The French won the battle of Algiers only to lose the Algerian war of independence.” I am not going to argue American politics on this one way or the other. The history is much bigger and darker than this. The Algerian crisis led to an attempted coup in Paris and the collapse of the Fourth French Republic: . . .

It seems Orwell may have been off by 20 years. Britain has the highest density of closed-circuit surveilance cameras. They are introducing ID cards which must be carried at all times. Now we all know the British have their fair share of louts, but new laws do an end run around centuries of justice. . . .

Five people died when their fishing boat capsized last year near Vancouver. The divers from the rescue hovercraft which arrived on the scene recently testified at a hearing into the tragedy. One of them broke down in tears, because although they were allowed into the water to look for the victims, federal regulations strictly forbade them from entering the boat to see whether there might be any survivors in air pockets. . . .