Recently Michael has been focused on copyright reform here in Canada.  The Conservative government has proposed legislation that is remarkably similar to the widely discredited Digital Millenium Copyright Act in the United States, and Michael has been asking ordinary citizens to voice their opinion on what Fair Copyright Reform looks like.  In fact, his Facebook group Fair Copyright for Canada has grown to nearly 40,000 members since it was started in December.

Enjoy the interview.  If afterward, you want to get involved, join the Facebook Group, and take a look at Michael's list of 30 things you can do, beginning with writing to your MP.   

• The Register reports half of all European calls will be mobile in 2008. They're raising the alarm for fixed-line carriers. Not exactly surprising, that.
• Microsoft will release Works 9.0 as ad-funded software. Finally. How long has the been speculated about? 
• The US House of Representatives has passed a unanimous motion demanding that Canada stop the slaughter of baby seals.  I guess now that they've debated Bush into a corner on Iraq, they've run out of other work.  Take a vacation, guys.

It began with Janice questioning my choice to label myself as having libertarian views.  She's not the only one either.  A few times recently friends have asked what libertarian on my profile means. The problem is that declared libertarians are frequently perceived to be a little nutty. In fact, that was the source of today's discussion.  Janice pointed out the platform of the Libertarian Party of Canada, which mostly stands for abolishing everything supported by government, including items like abolishing universal education. Of course I don't believe in those things.  And the Wikipedia entry on libertarianism is also full of similar radical views. 

Most political parties today are really about two things — economics and personal freedoms. They tend to define themselves on axes that range from controlled economies to free markets (left to right wing), and individual liberty (or libertarian) to authoritarianism. Traditional conservatives are authoritarian free marketers, for example, which explains the trend in recent years to a loss of civil liberties accompanied by less regulated markets. 

There's a fabulous survey tool at http://www.politicalcompass.org/ that you can take to see where you stand. I scored slightly left on the right vs left scale (-1), and feel deeply about personal liberty (-6.5) on the authoritarians vs libertarian scale. Makes sense, although I was surprised to see myself on the left side of the scale.  While I prefer open markets, I do not believe in the benevolence of corporations.  They exist to serve their shareholders, not society. And while I accept authority as a necessary requirement for society to function, I have a deep belief in civil liberties, individual rights and freedom of thought.  If there's one thing that makes me irrational it's the Orwellian idea that we should do or think something for no other reason than "it's the right thing to do".

So that's me — a small L libertarian. An economically moderate guy with a knee-jerk reaction to the arbitrary application of authority. 

Political Compass also shows where the parties in many countries would chart at various different elections.  Here, for instance, is Canada in 2005.  The chart also helps to explain why I had such difficulty in making a voting choice in the last election.  The Liberals and Conservatives were not that different, and both were much more authoritarian than I find comfortable.  The NDP, too far to the left. The Libertarian Party of Canada would be deeply libertarian and far right. The Greens, while not shown on this chart, were shown on the UK chart… as deeply libertarian and slightly left, and that's where I placed my vote.

It generated a fair amount of debate.  Stephanie Booth pointed out that prudish sex offender laws in many states lump acts between consenting adults into the same category as those preying on children.  You can read her full post, but let's just say that it's hard to imagine that most adults haven't, at one time or another, committed one of these acts.  That's why what MySpace and grandstanding Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal have done is nothing more than a placebo perpetuated on an unsophisticated public that really just wants to protect kids.  Their actions are a fraud.

Brandon Watson, the CEO of IMSafer, wrote an impassioned and lengthy post also. His point? Predators go where they prey is.  He backs it up with some statistics designed to show that the incidence of predation on MySpace may be higher than in society at large.  Like Stephanie, he also notes that it's not the young kids that are vulnerable, but the teens, quoting University of New Hampshire's David Finkelhor:

So these are not mostly violence sex crimes, but they are criminal seductions that take advantage of teenage, common teenage vulnerabilities. The offenders lure teens after weeks of conversations with them, they play on teens’ desires for romance, adventure, sexual information, understanding, and they lure them to encounters that the teams know are sexual in nature with people who are considerably older than themselves.

Given the wide scope of definition around the term sex offender, it's nearly useless for identifying predators and for protecting the vulnerable in society.  Tools like the ones that Brandon's company, IMSafer, provides are whatreally help to keep kids safe.  IMSafer uses sophisticated pattern matching algorithms to look for text that might be considered dangerous in IM messages, and then alert parents to the conversations.  It goes right to the heart of the problem, which are conversations between our kids and strangers.  At the same time, it's not an intrusive or privacy busting solution because it only alerts parents when a potentially dangerous situation is occurring.  The rest of the time, kids privacy is preserved.

Brandon dropped me a note last week to say that since their launch they are now monitoring over 2,000,000 relationships, and have scanned 100 million messages.  What IMSafer is doing is far more meaningful than MySpace's decision to delete a few user accounts.  If you have reason to be concerned about your children's safety online, then you owe it to yourself to check out IMSafer.

Why?

They're protesting a short sighted ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board which threatens to shut down the entire Internet radio industry.  According to Lawbean:

In March, the Copyright Royalty Board announced that it would raise royalties for Internet broadcasters, moving them from a per-song rate to a per-listener rate. The increase would be made retroactive to the beginning of 2006 and would double over the next five years. After the announcement, a group of broadcasters spearheaded by National Public Radio petitioned the CRB for a rehearing, but a panel of judges denied the request less than a month later. Internet radio sites would be charged per performance of a song. A “performance” is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 “performances” for each song it plays.

Internet Radio is still a new medium with new business models associated with it.  Until recently, and option existed to simply pay a percentage of revenues as royalty, which allowed small stations to exist.  However, under the new regime it's a flat rate per listener, and it's a high flat rate as well.   According to Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter:

… the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.

The new royalty rates will go into effect on July 15, 2007, retroactive to January 1, 2006.  More than a few Internet broadcasters will likely cease business on that day.  Or, they may just move offshore. If they do that, though, what that likely means is that terrestrial broadcasters who broadcast a simultaneous internet stream will cut the internet stream.  For me personally that means the loss of KMTT (Seattle's The Mountain), a favorite of mine.   

If you believe in Internet Radio, and want to save it, here's what you can do.

1. Donate to the SaveNetRadio campaign.  If you're a Facebook user, install the Causes app, join the SaveNetRadio cause, donate money and get others to join.  They're both easy!
2. If you live in the US, contact your representatives and senators.  If you don't, you can still join the Save Net Radio coalition. 
3. If you write a blog, discuss this issue.  If you don't write a blog, join the discussion on somebody else's blog.  If you prefer Facebook, join any of the nine Save Net Radio discussion groups that have been created there, and join the discussion. 

Here is a partial list of some of the media organizations participating.   

Yahoo!, Live365 stations, Rhapsody, MTV Online, AccuRadio, KCRW (Santa Monica, CA), Pandora, Radioio, DigitallyImported, RadioParadise, 3WK, myMVY, Wizard Radio, Born Again Radio, Pearadio.com, Ear.fm, WGLI (Bablylon, NY), WMUK (Kalamazoo, MI), Head-On Radio Network, Zecom/Gemz Radio, monkeygrip music cafe, KFCF (Fresno, CA), LuckySevenRadio.com, Blue Power/Guitar Speak, PNA (Oak Park, IL), 60's Chicks Radio/Seasons & Celebrations Radio, STAR 107.9, WRPS/WebRadioPugetSound, Puregold Rock 'N Roll, NeverEndingWonder Radio, RadioMilwaukee, BAGeL Radio, Gotradio/100hitz, KDUN (Reedsport, OR), GDRadio.net, KQLZ (Los Angeles, CA), XPR/KXJZ (Sacramento, CA), NiceNoise.Net, BlackLight Radio, Pure Pop 24/7, Smooth Jazz and More, Reggae Nostalgia, WCH Radio/The Wave, WYGS Southern Gospel Radio Network, BluegrassCountry.org/WAMU.org, WRAJ Internet Radio

The time to act is now.  Today.  Because in three weeks time it will be too late.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a great posting from Yahoo! Music's Ian Rogers. 

At what price?

American airports are starkly reminiscent of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.  People bustle to and fro, under the watchful eyes of security officers, and accompanied by the droning of propaganda.  "The threat level is orange", blare the loudspeakers.  Television monitors tell the stories boys and families damaged by combat.  Even the very name of the border patrol — homeland defence — conjures images of threats and war.

This photograph, taken on the F Concourse at Philadelphia International Airport, shows no fewer than 9 visible surveillance cameras, and as you walk further you will discover more — a dozen in total.  Some of them are less than two yards apart.

My friends in America, as you head to your elections, ask yourselves whether the fear fomented by the current administration is justified.  Is it rational, or paranoid?  Ask yourselves what the right thing is for Iraq, too. 

I am not discounting how hard these problems are, nor would it be appropriate for me to suggest that another could have done a better job than Mr. Bush. He's your President, you elected him, and presumably he's what the majority of your electorate wanted.  Besides, I don't have the right to vote in your country.  

The situation deserves a real debate, that's all. After all, the price of security is liberty.