‘Digital Manners Policies’ is a marketing term. Let’s call this what it really is: Selective Device Jamming. It’s not polite, it’s dangerous. It won’t make anyone more secure — or more polite”

Best argument for open-source software; now what about open-source hardware?

I suppose it could be a coincidence that the show recently directed a lot of heat in Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s direction…

The gist of Geist’s piece is that a lot of Prentice’s proposed legislation sounds good until you read the fine print; then you realize your rights are taken away. This is shameless pandering to foreign interests at the expense of all Canadians.

Prentice is practiced in sounding reasonable — witness his performance on CBC’s As It Happens last night, in which he smoothly side-stepped the question ‘did you talk to representatives of American media companies when preparing this legislation?’ (I’m paraphrasing).

Most amazing to me is how we’re supposed to be relieved that we’re “allowed” to copy our music CDs to our iPods, but since DVDs are “locked”, we’re criminals if we copy our legally-purchased movies to those same iPods. Amazing.

Never mind the fact that the “encrypted” audio CDs that Liberal MP Scott Bryson (on the same broadcast) says are so common in the United States aren’t actually CDs at all: Phillips, the owner of the Redbook Audio standard that defines what is and what is not a Compact Disc, says that if it has copy-protection then it’s not a Compact Disc. But that’s another story.