Vancouver Bureaucrats are Funny as Hell

"Now this is how to advertise your local by-laws. (Thanks, Airtime!)" [Boing Boing Blog]

Three Minutes with Jack Valenti: choice quotes, emphasis is mine:

"Valenti: The copyright issues bubbled up first when the VCR came out. Now there have been a lot of canards about that. At the time we felt we ought to try to put a small levy on blank cassettes and then that would be put into an approved government agency and redistributed to copyright owners in this country.

We felt the best way to get a copyright royalty fee put on blank videocassette tapes was to have the courts declare that VCR machines were copyright infringing. Then you go to the Congress [to impose the levy]. Unhappily, by a five to four decision, the Supreme Court said no....

PCW: Why can't people who legally purchase DVDs make one backup copy? How come the same fair use rights that let you make a backup copy of other media do not extend to DVDs?

Valenti: That question has nothing to do with fair use because a DVD is encrypted and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act says to circumvent an encryption violates that law....

Do you know anything else in the country that if something is abused for any reason they'll give you a backup? If I go down to the hardware store and buy an electric lawn mower and I take it home, and three weeks later my wife runs over it in the driveway, I can't take it back and get a new one. I can't get a back-up....

If you're allowed to make up one backup copy of a DVD all of a sudden somebody makes two and gives one to a friend. And next thing you know file-swappers are trading that film online....

I go on Kazaa every week just to see what's happening. And by the way, they were swapping 850 million files. And a lot of it was pornography, some of it was music, but a lot of it was films....

...we hope that we can buy an association with the best brains in the high-tech business to find some technological protective clothing. We hope that will come about. And that's probably the best way to do it." [PC World]

In an interview full of double-speak and falsifications, the most jarring one has to be the one where Valenti cites the legislation he helped push through (the DMCA) as the reason fair use is not applicable to making backup copies of your DVDs! I guess if we repeal the law, then it's okay! This is exactly why we need amendments like Rep. Rick Boucher's proposal.

TSL is stunned and thrilled to report Steven's tip that Jessamyn caught Zeldman's post from the 19th!

"On 28 June 2003, Carrie Bickner and Jeffrey Zeldman will be married in a small ceremony in New York City."

Carrie Bickner is, of course, The Rogue Librarian.

Koha and the Library of Congress

"I've added a tenth OPAC vendor to the LibraryLookup generator, and this one is kind of special. It's an open source product called Koha, commissioned by the HLT Library in New Zealand....

What got me to revisit my LibraryLookup email folder was a message from David Carter-Tod. It seems that Raymond Yee has been pondering for some time how to write an URL that would address a Library of Congress record. He finally cracked it, and David connected the dots to make a LibraryLookup bookmarklet for the Library of Congress. (Note: the bookmarklet which is the address of the previous link adds three backslashes that Manila evidently swallowed when David posted his item.) Excellent!" [Jon's Radio]

Blogging Presentation for Faculty at the University of Alberta

"Randy and I presented a session this afternoon on edublogging to various faculty, teaching staff, and librarians at the University of Alberta. I think the session went very well, and we were grateful to have so many questions and to see so much interest in blogging tools. I’ve posted an HTML version of the presentation for others to look at.... Also worth noting, Randy has posted a .pdf of 'Throw Another Blog on the Wire,' an article we co-wrote for Feliciter. Feel free to toss comments and feedback our way. For a little less of a library slant, you might be interested in a similar article we wrote for Dispatch, 'Weblogging on Campus and Beyond' (p.13).

Kudos to David Mattison (The Ten Thousand Year Blog has been added to my blogroll) for putting together a great compilation of info and sites related to RSS, blogs and wikis." [blogdriverswaltz.com]

Kudos to Geoff, Randy, and David! I especially like the examples Geoff and Randy provide, and David's compilation is just a flat out great resource.

Sorry that there aren't more new posts tonight, but I'm too busy playing around with PureTunes. While the site definitely doesn't traffic in independent, specialty, or lesser-known acts, there are lots of songs here that I would pay a very nominal amount to own. Heck, for this price there are songs I would own just because I can!

Everything with PureTunes itself has gone quite smoothly (although they could use some serious interface help), but my mouse has stopped working, possibly from all of the clicking. This is no reflection on the site, though. I'm just surprised the RIAA hasn't somehow managed to get the site taken down yet or somehow blocked in the U.S. Could this be a loophole they are unable to close just yet or will the other shoe drop tomorrow?

I agree with Apple Music Store users - buying single songs of your choice rocks!