My former colleague Vito Pilieci has a nice little scoop in today's Canwest papers: A musician's group will put forward an idea today that it hopes will solve the illegal music downloading debate: Make every Internet user in Canada pay $5 a month to a musician's fund and, in exchange, you can download all the music you want for free.... "That's a very reasonable amount of money to legally, without fear of any legal repercussions, to be able to download that and share it with [whomever] you want to and as many times as you want," said Eddie Schwartz, president of the songwriters' group.
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Thursday, February 21
by
DavidAkin
on Thu 21 Feb 2008 05:19 AM EST
Saturday, February 16
by
DavidAkin
on Sat 16 Feb 2008 08:58 AM EST
New York Times reporters Matt Richtel and Eric Taub phrase it nicely: HD DVD, the beloved format of Toshiba and three Hollywood studios, died Friday after a brief illness.... The announcement by Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest retailer of DVDs, that it would stop selling the discs and machines in June when supplies are depleted comes after decisions this week by Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer, to promote Blu-ray as its preferred format and Netflix, the DVD-rental service, to stock only Blu-ray movies, phasing out HD DVD by the end of this year. more »Sunday, February 3
by
DavidAkin
on Sun 03 Feb 2008 08:27 PM EST
"...Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets..."
more » Sunday, November 4
by
DavidAkin
on Sun 04 Nov 2007 09:42 AM EST
She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.... As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent. more »Monday, June 18
by
DavidAkin
on Mon 18 Jun 2007 11:52 AM EDT
Two University of British Columbia professors contend that consumers tend to trust the reputations of sellers affiliated with Amazon.com/Amazon.ca more than they trust sellers at eBay. This has important implications for online commerce because, in several studies, one of the significant barriers that inhibit consumers from making ... more » Friday, June 15
Tuesday, May 22
by
DavidAkin
on Tue 22 May 2007 11:17 AM EDT
Monday, April 23
by
DavidAkin
on Mon 23 Apr 2007 09:33 PM EDT
Canada continues to be tops among the G7 group of industrialized nations when it comes to relative number of high-speed Internet connections in the country, according to the most recent stats released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD measured 23.8 broadband subscribers in Canada per ... more »
by
DavidAkin
on Mon 23 Apr 2007 05:53 AM EDT
My good friend Oxblood Ruffin, the top Canuck in that famous hacker outfit The Cult of the Dead Cow, posts an essay accusing search engine giant Google Inc. of aiding in the cultural genocide of Tibet and asking the Silicon Valley-based company to stand up to the ... more » Wednesday, April 18
by
DavidAkin
on Wed 18 Apr 2007 10:54 AM EDT
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Canada.com
National Post Who pays for this blog? I receive no fees, considerations, etc. etc. for the posts on this blog nor do I have any plans to accept any. My salary is paid by Canwest Global Communications Corp. I work for that company as the Ottawa-based National Affairs Correspondent for Canwest News Service. The blog publishing platform used here is called Blogware and it's developed by Tucows Inc. of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Blogware users typically pay a monthly fee for using this platform but I do not as Tucows has kindly provided me with this platform. I may report on Tucows, its associated operations and executives, and on industry issues that may affect Tucows. I am grateful for Tucows' assistance but that's it. No favours were promised for their generosity nor do Tucows executives expect any. I hold no direct equity or stock in any company, Tucows included. If you think other disclosures are appropriate in this space, I'd like to hear from you. All of my contact details are always at www.davidakin.com You can read more about this section |
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Errata, observations and working notes
Just about everyone on Parliament Hill — MPs, political aides, journalists, and so on — rely heavily on their