This post originally appeared at RootsMusic.ca Credit: mgifford [CC BY-SA] Last month, NDP MP (and former member of the Grievous Angels) Charlie Angus shook up Canada’s copyright debate by proposing two reforms. Angus was outspoken against the government’s last copyright bill, but he’s attracted criticism from all sides with this […]
Music
130 posts
My Room This is a bit of a personal ramble. Gerald Klickstein had a great post on the Music Think Tank blog about avoiding avoidance: Do you ever dodge your creative work? Say, your practice time arrives, and you race off to do some chore. It might be a chore […]
Credit: William Hook [CC BY-SA] Honestly, I still have trouble convincing myself that the push by the record industry to implement a three-strikes-and-you’re-out (that is, three-accusations-and-you’re-kicked-offline-for-a-year) system is actually happening, that grown men and women running companies claim—with a straight face—that this will save failing business models. It’s just so […]
I’ve got a new post up at Roots Music Canada, why copyright infringement isn’t theft, which draws on William Patry’s book, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, to explain that theft is a poor metaphor for copyright infringement. Canadian law professor Stephen Waddams, in a well-regarded book about how we […]
Photo by Ed McAskill I’ve been in love with Robyn Dell’Unto from the moment I first heard her voice, and it’s been almost two years now since we became friends and she first introduced me as her secret weapon. This past Thursday, we had the opportunity to perform at the […]
This post originally appeared on Roots Music Canada. When I tell someone that all of my recordings are downloadable for free, I’m often asked, “but… how will you make money?” “Well,” I’ll respond, “since it doesn’t cost me anything, I may as well let people share and listen to my […]
I had a bit of a moment yesterday. It’s just that I’m so incredibly excited and energized right now. I’m starting to move on a variety of really cool projects and endeavours. A little over a year ago, I claimed I was about to “up the diversity” on this blog. […]
This post originally appeared on Techdirt. We were just talking about how SOCAN, the Canadian copyright collection society, was going after gymnastics clubs for kids using music in their practice routines. Now they’re getting some well-deserved attention for other antics. Michael Geist explains how SOCAN tried to keep its submission […]
I’ve tightened up my post on why free music doesn’t mean devalued music for Techdirt. If you’ve read the original, it’s largely the same content, but cleaned up a little and much more concise. Free Doesn’t Mean Devalued: The concept of zero took ages for societies to recognize, let alone […]