rwmtest

If you haven't tried to use them, you might wonder why the websites that Canadian broadcasters (or most often, the BDUs that own them) offer isn't a substitute for the subscription services I've been asking for.  You might ask why I would be willing to pay the BBC to watch Doctor Who when I could watch it for "free" by going to Space.ca/doctorwho .  The problem is these BDU/Broadcaster provided streaming websites are so poorly implemented that even if they were commercial free I would still prefer to pay for a working subscription service. I have become used to well designed content distribution services like Netflix and YouTube which work well on all the devices that I own.  I prefer to watch television on my television, which means my Samsung Smart TV, BoxeeBox or Chromecasts.  I sometimes like to watch mobile with my ASUS Transformer tablet (Android), my Nexus 4 smartphone, or one of the variety of Chromebooks in our family.  The place I least like to watch t...

Some copyright holders and their lobbyists claim the reason people infringe Copyright is because they don't want to pay, and that copyright infringement is the largest single problem reducing their revenue potential. Evidence I've seen in my decades involved in the copyright revision process suggested neither are true, and that barriers put up by the copyright holders are the largest incentive to infringe and the largest barrier to revenue potential. The BBC is an example of a broadcaster I would like to pay money and subscribe to (not only for Doctor Who ), but that continues to put up barriers to me doing so. I am not a subscriber to a BDU , which is one of the common tied sales used by broadcasters. What potential customers like myself want for television and movie content is a subscription service like Netflix which isn't tied to any specific BDU or Internet provider, and which works on enough devices that it works on devices which we own. It's not just millenn...

As Shomi received a lot of advertising in recent months I have been asked my opinion on it. I'm known as someone who has strong opinions on digital content distribution, and as someone who is a subscriber to Netflix and not to any traditional BDU (Broadcast Distribution Undertaking, the term the CRTC uses to refer to Satellite, Cable, and related companies). My shortest answer is to say these these services aren't new, nor are they in the same market as Netflix. These services are an add-on service for existing BDU customers (Must be Television customer for Bell, but can be existing TV or Internet customer for Rogers and Shaw), and not a service that is untied to the BDU. Rogers launched Rogers On Demand Online back in 2009, and I tried it back then when I was still a Rogers cable customer. I could almost watch a movie on my desktop computer with it, but it didn't work on the various devices I had connected to my television. It was a poorly implemented technology which...

I was sent one of those  10 things that will be gone in our lifetime  list from a family member.  There are a variety of   (plagarized) versions circulating around for decades, but I decided to comment on this specific list.  Who the original author is seems to be unknown. I consider these to be wordsmithed, politically motivated lists. One common theme is that there is various types of creative works that will "disappear" because people aren't paying. The reality is that while these creative industries are changing, people still want to pay.  Failures have been largely the fault of the incumbent industries themselves. If there is no more for-profit music, it will be because the currently unnecessary * recording * industry kills it for composers and performers. The recording industry have been fighting a battle for decades against modern technology which makes the * recording * industry redundant, and allows all the money for the continuously commerci...

The following is a comment I added to a Kasterborous editorial: iTunes, BBC? Really? This is not a question of money for me — I have spent $thousands$ in recent years on my love of Doctor Who , and I’m more than willing to pay extra to get early access to these episodes before the DVD’s come out. Unfortunately BBC didn’t give me that option, so I will need to either wait for the DVD’s or get the episodes from an “unauthorized” source. I am not a customer of Apple, nor will I ever be. I’ve spent more than a decade of my life as a political activist in support of IT property rights. As I discussed in a recent submission to the Canadian government on this issue http://c11.ca/brief , Apple is one of the worst infringers of IT property rights. They also actively lobby for legalizing and legally protecting infringements of IT property rights. While Apple is a direct infringer, inducing people into infringing situations puts the BBC in the same league for those of us trying to protect these ...

I was asked in a comment why the CRKN announcement about the new collaboration with Canadiana.org mentioned Creative Commons licensing. Short answer: What is in the public domain stays in the public domain.  What Copyright restricts, this project will be releasing under a Creative Commons license.  It is copyright law which defines the line between the public domain and what must be licensed. Longer answer: I am a system administrator at Canadiana, and not someone involved in policy relating to licensing of the parts of this project that will be covered by Canadiana copyright.  When it is a Canadiana decision, it is our Board of Directors made up of librarians and archivists, and our executive director, who ultimately are responsible for such policies. As someone who has spent more that a decade dedicated to Copyright related policy discussions (see Digital Copyright Canada ), and been involved in the Free Software movement since the early 1990 's, I have my own opini...

For the past few years I've worked at a charity called Canadiana  where we research, digitize, add metadata to and provide access to Canadian works in the public domain (IE: *finally* out of our excessively long Copyright term in Canada) for researchers.  While most of our funding comes from educational institutions, we have also had individual members and donors who help fund our work.  While it would be great if this work were paid for by the government and all this information made searchable and accessible immediately free to all Canadians, this hasn't happened so a charity is the next best option. It's a great place to work.  While I am a technical person, many of my co-workers are librarians and our board of directors are also largely librarians.  I joke with people about how "scary" my employer is, and feel guilty when fellow techies tell me horror stories about some of their corporate employers. Imagine my surprise when the media claimed I was working fo...