The GazerBlog

I think Cory Doctorow puts some of his best writing in this piece.   He withholds his more zealous rhetoric and paints a reasoned progression of logical consequence and capability, going from the origins of copy protection to where it is all headed as more and more pieces of technology and our lives becomes micro controller and microcomputer based.

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing – Boing Boing: “

I still think it comes down to respect, something that is lost more and more.   Anonymous taking down the law enforcement websites for taking down MegaUpload, a group that at first look at least appears to have profited excessively and illegally from copyright infringement of others works by charging their download customers and running ads.   What I don’t get with that is why is Anonymous on the side of MegaUpload and the like?   That’s commercial piracy.   The people that created the works you like enough to download aren’t even benefiting, some useless middleman is that’s screwing over everybody.

When customers are respected, and artists are respected, as Tim O’Reilly pointed out in his SOPA explanations for the O’Reilly web properties, when you forego DRM and treat your customers well, you are most often treated well in return.  Yes there are idiots, parasites and even those that simply can’t truly afford to pay for your works, but the majority do value and respect what you create, and your time and effort in doing so, and will compensate you reasonably for that work.   That’s all it’s really about.   iTunes doesn’t make money from lock-in, it makes money from making it really, really easy for me to purchase the goods I want efficiently, and know the benefits are largely going back to the creators and those they work with.   If I can buy from an artist directly for music or the like, I will and still do, but iTunes greases the wheels for the majority.

It’s hard to explain that the copyright war is spitting in the wind as if you can authorize the computer, you can crack the authorization if you control the hardware or the output ultimately.   It’s a fools’ errand.  The law is already there to prosecute the commercial pirates, and other than clarifying some fair use and closing some loopholes, it’s actually working pretty well in reality.

You can ignore me, you can ignore Doctorow, you can ignore Geist, and countless others trying to educate you.   But please, have respect for the creators of things you value, and show that respect for them when they show it for you.   That’s all it takes to make the problem inconsequential.  And we can get on with things that don’t threaten our freedoms with horrid laws and misguided thinking.

Well, the Conservative government is going to introduce the budget (again) and ram it through the commons with their majority in all likelihood.   It’s not a bad budget, but there’s a very poor choice and a selfish one at that made by the Conservatives.   The ending of the per-vote subsidy for political parties.

You can read one story on it from cbc over here.  The short version, any party that gets over a few percent of the national vote is entitled to $2 per vote per year in funding for their party.   This enables those parties to fund staff to more deeply examine information and policy as well as fund their operation as a part of our democracy.

The Conservatives states it was a waste, and wasn’t useful.   He said at one point “Canadians don’t want their money going to parties they don’t vote for” [my interpretation].  The point is this is the ONLY money guaranteed to go to support the party you voted for if it’s got a reasonable chunk of the national vote.   Win or lose.   It allows minority parties to be more effective in debate and policy formation.

There’s no good reason to remove this.   It’s not enough money to affect the budget, and the value of it is very high compared to the cost.   But removing it gives the advantage to the well-funded business-oriented Conservative party.

The Harper government is going to slam this through as he’s never been one to lead on principles, just on what’s good for his party to get and retain power (not unlike the Liberals of the last majority government).   So the funding for parties we voted for (including the Conservatives if you voted for them) will decrease.   Your money will go into the general revenue from your taxes and you won’t even direct those $2 every year.   That little bit of power is lost to us all now.

So turn it around an take $10 a year, or an election, and donate it to the party you voted for in the election.   Keep your views supported financially so they aren’t lost.   Put your money where your vote is directly.   You don’t need to buy a membership in the party, you don’t need to support just one party even.   You are free to support the party or parties you agree with.   But don’t let the government decide who gets the support of the voters.   That’s our job.   Whether the current government wants us to perform that job or not.

Maybe, just maybe the Conservative majority will do something useful for consumers and give our oligopolies a severe kick in the hind quarters.   MAYBE.  Have a read over on Seeking Alpha:

Why Canadian Cable Companies and Telecoms Are in Trouble – Seeking Alpha: Liberalization could prove disastrous for incumbent Canadian telecom and media conglomerates, including Bell, Rogers (RCI), Telus (TU) and Shaw (SJR).

So despite a fear campaign, piles of attack ads, contempt of Parliament, lack of a clear platform in a number of areas, the Conservatives got a majority due in no small part to the LIberals selecting Michael Ignatieff as their leader in the last Alternative-Vote leader election.   That’s right, the major parties don’t use first-past-the-post for their leaders, we just use it for our country.   But that’s another topic entirely.   Check http://fairvote.ca for a different view of things there.

So with a majority, Mr. Harper said all would be well and true and the economy would recover and we’d be out of debt and all sorts of wonderfulness would happen where only pain and woe were to be had if they didn’t get the mandate.   Well, get with the milk and honey already.

Pffft.   The economy is recovering just fine.   The measures were taken last year to soft-land this mess the banking system in the US put us in, and none of the platforms from any of the 4 national parties (Cons, Libs, NDP, Greens that all ran candidates in every riding in the country) would have derailed it.   The one that 40% of Canadians picked is pro-business in the extreme, and the families can wait.   We’ll see how wise the choice was.

I’m hoping some sanity will prevail on the digital copyright reform as there will obviously be something passed, but if it’s bill C-32 without modification, we’ll all wake up to be criminals if you ever want to take a protected digital recording from one player to a different one.   Or keep a recorded TV show for a longer than “reasonable” period of time.   We’ll see if the Conservatives were really listening or waiting until they didn’t have to listen any more with a majority.

Health care?   Status quo.   Transfer payments increasing 6% per year and resigning that agreement.   Doesn’t really address what many people feel are the problems in the health care system.   We’ll cut corporate taxes well below the mean in the OECD instead.   I don’t follow that.   As I pointed out, the figures show that we’re already competitive, so it seems a kickback to the party sponsors, or a needless and useless incentive that will likely go to the bottom line of the corporations and not to any additional jobs in Canada.

No, I don’t think any of the Conservative platform is really terribly useful, and there’s no vision in it.   So I’m wondering what they will do in the tactical bits they didn’t include.

Is there going to be an environmental plan at all?   We need one, with innovation in energy efficiency and alternative energy systems in Canada, and in Alberta at that.   Heck, we even have think tanks recommending what a number of us told Ralph to do with the surplus a decade ago.   I doubt our Federal Government will lift a finger on it.   So that’s out of their hands.

No, I think the areas that are up for grabs are three in number, and the number of the counting shall be three:

1) Foreign ownership on telecom/cable/ISPs.   There’s been rumblings about this and some ad hoc amendments and regulations by the Conservatives before, but it’s time to actually act on this mess and give our cartel of chaos up here a kick in the rear.  This is an opportunity for the Conservatives to really make policy and foster business and competition.

2) UBB – Hot button topic and Shaw is looking at turning on the meter this summer on consumer accounts.   This is largely a profit grab as has been proving numerous times.   It’s also disrupting competitive services like Netflix from competing with cable systems.   I don’t think the Conservatives have a clue what to do here, but it’s another huge opportunity to foster competition and gain some votes if they finally side with the citizens.  My bet is they won’t act unless there’s a near-riot of protests, but again, there’s room to set a policy to foster innovation into the future.

3) Intelligent environmentalism – They talked regulations, but their own studies said that does the most damage to the economy, and a pure carbon tax creates the most efficiency, and would only hit Alberta for about 1.5% GDP for a year until it adjusted.   If you put that with channeling the money INTO Alberta for energy innovations in efficiency, cleaner processing, diversification into renewable and alternative energy production and management, then it’s a win-win.   My bet is they actually drag their heels on all of it and we fall behind the rest of the world in our economy relying and producing fossil fuels with no look to the future.   Fossil fuels aren’t going away soon, but the world is moving and we are giving up a chance at a leadership position by inaction.

There’s an additional pair, but these were in their platform.   Income splitting for families and increasing the child fitness tax credit, both only when the budget is balanced.   Would have been nice to hold off on the SECOND tax cut for business and given those to the voters instead and put the second business tax cut in when the budget was balanced, but we know where the Conservative priorities are, and apparently 40% of Canadians felt that was good enough.   Or they at least believed it was the least scary.

Why do I keep saying 40%?   That’s how much of the popular vote the Conservatives got from people that went to the polls across the country.  39.62%.   In absolute numbers, that’s 5.8 million Canadians.   Not many, but only 61% turned up to vote.   You think it would be more important when so many countries are sacrificing lives for that right.   But if you didn’t vote, your complaints or compliments of the government are incidental in my books.   You didn’t register an opinion officially.

Maybe I’m the only one that’s scared now, but it’s 4 years of a total lack of vision.   Might as well be back in the Chretien era.   They didn’t have one either.    It seems the bulk of the voting populace is happier without thinking too far ahead.

I have had it with Stephen Harper’s rhetoric.   He has run the entire campaign on fear-mongering and mud-slinging across the board.   Anyone he feels is a threat is targeted directly and personally, with the vaguest of innuendo framing the phrases.   It’s pathetic, it’s annoying and it has now progressed to being insulting.   Not just to the candidates, but to all Canadians.

Now the NDP will lead the coalition and “…led by the NDP that will not last but will do a lot of destruction,” Harper said, according to CBC News.   Through the whole campaign, that’s all that has come out of the Conservatives.   Fear of what everyone else will do.   Not what they are planning to do.   “It’s all in our budget the opposition voted against”.   Actually, that’s a bald-faced lie.   Parliament was dissolved due to a non-confidence vote, but that was due to Harper and the Conservative caucus being found in contempt of parliament. Everybody seems to think it’s just a big Liberal/Bloc/NDP game but nobody else has ever been found in contempt of Parliament.

What does that mean?   It means he tabled a budget that didn’t have the costs of the crime bill, the confirmed costs for the F-35 Stealth fighters, and did not include the costing for the corporate tax cut.   The opposition, according to a number of news outlets, asked for this information repeatedly and was not provided with it.   The budgetary committee was not provided with it.   What the contempt finding was that Stephen Harper and his party were standing in the way of parliament properly doing it’s job.    Yet the spin is that they voted against the budget.   They voted to correct an action that was not providing full budgetary figures to the committee responsible for analyzing the budget.

Haper’s terms have resulted in removal of a number of oversight offices.   Anything that might be able to put information out that would cause public commentary against what our government it going has been “unfunded”.  A letter has by Senator Tommy Banks has been mirrored widely.   Here’s one source.  Read it through to find out what our Conservative government has been doing.   With little to no word from the opposition either.   Harper would probably have us believe it’s all overhead.   It’s a check and balance on the government to ensure there are rights and freedoms for everyone, and that we know what’s going on from an independent set of specialist oversight groups.

For the three items that Harper seemed to hide the numbers on,  I don’t see the need for the prisons, as it hasn’t been proving to discourage crime enough and I want to know the cost of it vs. the benefit.

For the corporate tax cuts, let’s debunk some mythology there shall we?   OECD, a generally pretty reputable organization, but together a corporate tax and sales tax chart of many of the industrialized nations.   A nice writeup on an economic blog with the chart can be found here.  You will note Canada is very competitive across the board in taxation, even with the USA.  Surprising?   Don’t believe those long-held myths.   Times change, as do governments.   We don’t need to give corporations a 1.5% tax cut.   It’s not going to create jobs.   That’s another myth.   Corporations aren’t as foolish as they used to be, trying to grow for growth’s sake.   At least not most of them.   They’ll cut people on a slow sales quarter.   Want more sales?  It’s the people that need the tax cuts if anyone, so do what the Greens are proposing out of the gate and allow shared incomes for families/couples.   That’s fair and it gets more money into the families for spending on supporting those families.  Not lining the profitability of the companies.   No company lives or dies by a 1.5% adjustment on corporate taxes.   If they did, they’d be long out of business.

Finally the F-35s.   I support getting proper equipment for our armed forces, but it’s a toss-up.   These are excellent aircraft.   Second only to the F-22 for air superiority.   Multi-role, and likely to be used by a large number of our allies allowing for better cooperation on joint missions.   All good.   Unfortunately, they are quite expensive, and we won’t have the same count of jets as we do of CF-18s.   Canada isn’t getting any smaller.   At least these have a decent range so we can patrol the north and say high to the Russians flying across our northern reaches.   My question is do we need the stealth platform?   We’re a primarily peace-keeping and defensive/sovereignty-oriented armed forces.   I love our armed forces and have complete respect for them.   I want them to have the best equipment for the roles they are asked to take on.   Does that need a stealth fighter or is a different multi-role fighter what is required?   There are alternatives.   Not as stealthy, but just as capable for the majority of purposes.   We are looking to get the least expensive aircraft, although we will need to modify it for short runway capability in the north, but it’s the F-35 A.   The B and C are the VSTOL and the carrier-designed variant.     I just want to know the cost again, and what the benefit is.

I’ve voted green for a number of elections.   Largely to do with Rob Anders being the Conservative in my riding who I have no use for whatsoever, but also because they talk plainly, and they talk sense.   I don’t support all of the platform, but I do support the majority of the platform.   Plus I trust them to have a more open government, and one that has principle and integrity in it much more than the alternatives we have now.

Stephen Harper has broken trust with all of us who voted for him when he said he would have a more transparent and accountable government.   He has delivered neither.   He does not deserve to run the country.   At least not as a majority.   He talks about damage to the country.   A Conservative majority would likely yank us towards the USA political ideologies drastically as well as put us into the dark ages on environmental responsibility, where Canada used to be held in high regard.   I’d like to see an NDP-led opposition, and even a coalition if that represents more than half the government and Stephen Harper can’t handle negotiating the course of our country.

Finally, you may have heard Mr. Harper talk about removing the political party subsidy.   This was put in place some time ago.   Basically, it says that for every vote a party gets, if they have a national basis of more than 2% of the national vote gets $2 per vote per year to fund their offices, research and operation.   This is direct representation funding.   The most fair way to fund a party.   Mr. Harper says people  ”shouldn’t pay for parties they don’t support”.   The point he misses completely and expects Canadians can’t figure out is that for the $2 a year, I actually control that money directly and it is indeed going to exactly what I want it to.   That cannot be said for a good chunk of the rest of my taxes, especially when it comes to paying for the type of government we’ve had under his leadership.  What he is trying to do is silence the opposition parties further and have the corporate contributions take a bigger role in funding, which favours his party primarily.   There is no fairness, no principle, no balance.   This government has become all about what is good for Stephen Harper.  Not for Canada.

Don’t let it happen.   Every vote counts.  Let’s keep it that way.  Get out and vote on May 2nd.   Obviously, I’d hope you didn’t vote to support the Conservatives, but I would rather you vote your conscience and take pride in a right we have in this country that so many other countries are struggling for today.

It’s been 5 years since my Dad left us all behind and went to have a better seat to watch the show of how we’d all continue on and grow and this world he enjoyed so much would continue to change and evolve.  I think it hurts less in some ways and more in others when I take time to reflect on one of the most influential, remarkable and strong people in my life.

I think now I have some perspective on the great circle and how life continues and replaces, extending the chain by losing some links and adding others.   That makes some of the loss more acceptable.   Natural.   Painful, but with a reason.

Yet for 5 years, I’ve been without someone I always could turn to for advice, guidance, perspective, and a huge reservoir of experience and wisdom.  This year I really tried to take some time over the past week to understand more of that, and finally, I think I’ve figured out a few things that really may have me at last stand on my own in my own mind.   Seems ridiculous to many of you I expect for a 41 year old to say that, but in so many ways, I’ve always expected to need to fulfill others expectations and turn to someone to get insight into what I should do.   I finally figured out that my dad expected me to just know that and get it, because that was a core part of him.

Most people would say I’ve certainly cut my own path, but I don’t know that I’ve really sorted out the path that I wanted to take and how to take it.  I never really realized in my core that I have that choice.   That society isn’t always about mapping a path within some role you train for and grow into, but much more you can create that path and steer it in many ways, or given courage and ability, chart a whole new path.   It seems simple and obvious to many I think, but examining the relationship between my dad and I really put it together in my head in a way that really made much more sense.

I think with so much more of being a dad I have a much fuller understanding of many aspects of my dad now.   I just never stopped to think about it as fully as I have this year.   Obviously I should have.   But at least I’ve started and progressed it to some point that makes a lot more sense.

I’ve also gained a better appreciation for what and who my dad was, and also, for a change, who he wasn’t.   I can start to see some of the choices he must have made and have some insight into why he might have made those choices.

Five years gone, and still, he teaches me more and more in new ways and with deeper understanding.   I miss him terribly, but I am even more grateful for all the time I had with him and for the wonderful person that he was.

I still miss you dad.   And thanks for everything you did and still are doing for me.

Well, there’s an interesting read over from GigaOM, but I must say I think the researcher is just as myopic as the bulk of the non-fanboy press.   Have a read first.   Then pop back for my take on it all….

Apple and Steve Jobs… Evil?: Apple «. Wu finds Apple just a little terrifying.

Wu is talking about control and the walled gardens.   That’s all very true, but he’s looking at it from a philosophical context completely disconnected from the actual motivation and effects.   Plain and simple, the bulk of people are tired of the geeks adding complexity, unreliability and security holes.   I’m a computer professional, and any of you who are in the same field know that all those requests you get just shouldn’t have to deal with.   People want an information appliance.   They want a tool that works, not that they have to fix every month or two.

Wu talks about that control.  We haven’t come up with any open way to reliably represent that a vendor is trustworthy and won’t put a trojan with spyware all over your computer.   A lot of inexperienced (and even experienced) computer users have downloaded software, free, paid for, trials, and had their computers crippled or compromised as a result.   Apple stepped up on the iPhone and iPad and said, “We’ll check this stuff, give you a safer, simpler device and a marketplace where we ‘curate’ the software”.  It’s an alternative that’s pretty attractive.   It’s not the only one.   But right now according to earnings and popularity, it’s one of if not the best one.   Not evil.

Death of the PC is another theme he brings up.   This one is possible, but it’s not in the core interest of Apple, at least not for a while.   There’s stuff that pushes the market forward, and creates more opportunity for Apple.   Plus you still need to build for iOS, and by it’s very nature, that’s not currently possible on an iOS device.  If XCode shows up on the iPad, then you might be in a place to worry a bit more, but that’s a ways off.

On top of all this, and most importantly, is just simply market share.   Apple is still single digits on the desktop, and for mobile devices, they are big, but 4th overall on phones.     Fourth.   Not taking over the world.   Not eliminating choice.   They are making a bucket load of money in fourth though.   Fourth in PC sales, and fourth in phones.   Pretty much first in tablets, but that’s still largely uncontested and for practical purposes probably will be for another 18 months.   The first tablets are DOA in my opinion.  Plus the software market on them will take a while to wind up to speed.

The market share says the choice is there.   The success says that Apple is doing things consumers want.   The competitors will be there if Apple goes “evil”.   The trick I think Wu misses is mind share, and Apple, as he proves, is top of the heap there.   Brand identity, desire, mystique, press coverage, all that.   They are top of mind in many ways.   From a company that was supposed to be out of business 10 years ago, and one that Dell’s owner said should be liquidated and the money given back to the shareholders.   The underdog comeback has only added to Apple’s notoriety.

Apple says plainly why they do the things we don’t always agree with, and they make it pretty clear they are doing it.   Slowly the fix some of it (app store approval process has improved significantly).  Some they don’t (Flash isn’t going anywhere, and I think that’s a good thing as that is the biggest walled garden on the web).   I wonder if Professor Wu every tried to bookmark or integrate with a portion of a Flash website?   Yeah, it doesn’t work well.   At all.  Flash is closed and HTML5 is going past it fast.   Jobs and Apple saw that.   If Flash is vital to your interest, go get the Android devices.   You still have that choice.   Apple has stated quite clearly they aren’t going there, and they have said clearly why.

Why is Apple right?   Professor Wu should read the other snipped off of GigaOM for the fact that HTML5 is over half of the video on the web now.   Passing Flash for top spot.  You can look at benchmarks and quality as to why the closed, patented H.264 format (also known as MPEG-4) has succeeded over other standards.

Will Apple be dealt a few setbacks?   Yup.  That’s competition, and that’s why I’m both not worried about Apple getting too evil and also why I’m very happy using their products and developing for their platforms today.   They are the best all around alternative out there.   Competitors will force them to fix the bad parts or at least moderate their behaviour in the critical areas.

Apple isn’t perfect, but at least they are forcing the rest of the industry to actually get off their rears and start foisting cheap piles of crap on us.

So the US piled more cash into the market.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11697483 Reaction is generally unfavourable, which shouldn’t be a surprise, and I think Germany is offering the best assessment to date.   The USA doesn’t have a plan on this one.   The thing that is just so much hypocrisy is China.   I’ve come down hard on them a few times, but really that government needs to get a clue in foreign relations.   They go beating the drum on how foreign interference will not be tolerated, then they come out on this saying:

“If the domestic policy is optimal policy for the United States alone, but at the same time it is not an optimal policy for the world, it may bring a lot of negative impact to the world,” said Mr Zhou.

…

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said the Federal Reserve had the right to take steps without consulting other countries beforehand, but added: “They owe us some explanation.”

Really?   Are you serious?   Why?  We’ve had no rational explanation on a fixed RMB / Yuan other than it’s good for China.  That policy has made it harder for the US to dig out, not to mention the rest of the world.

Let me be clear.   The US policy is a good kick to us in Canada in between the legs as well as it makes it harder to sell our goods to our largest trading partner, and causes US investments to essentially devalue.   it’s not great up here either, but no countries were complaining when the superheated USA deregulated insanity drove all our economies forward at lightspeed before the bubble burst did we?   So now they go to fix it and we complain about it?   We had our free ride, and now we too need to reap the reward of fiscal irresponsibility by the US financial sector.  Germany and Canada at least had a leash of some sort on those idiots so they couldn’t risk a country on behalf of pleasing some shareholders and soaking up bonuses while their companies went under.

We all need to take the medicine one way or another.   Germany has the right to talk about it.  They earned that.   China didn’t, and they need to practice what they preach.   China’s undervalued currency has been harming the industrialized world for quite a while now, so China, don’t try to seize the moral high ground speaking out on behalf of the rest of the world.   You decided to go it alone a while back.

I’m laughing at Germany calling the policy clueless, but it’s a nervous laugh, because we get affected quite dramatically by the US economy here in Canada.   And I’m worried they might be completely right.

This showed up via Michael Geist’s blog (linked below):

CBC Bans Use of Creative Commons Music on Podcasts: “The producers of the popular CBC radio show Spark have revealed (see the comments) that the public broadcaster has banned programs from using Creative Commons licenced music on podcasts.  The decision is apparently the result of restrictions in collective agreements the CBC has with some talent agencies.  In other words, groups are actively working to block the use of Creative Commons licenced alternatives in their contractual language.

(Via Michael Geist Blog.)

I’m pretty sure you can’t legally block a competitor in your contract without running into some serious anti-trust issues if you’re a monopoly, although I’m not at all sure the group in question in this case is such a monopoly, but at any rate it is thoroughly anti-competitive, and simply shouldn’t be allowed or acceded to by a national broadcaster that we fund.

It looks from the comment thread like the CC people are looking into this, and it sounds like it’s every bit as illegal and/or unenforceable as it should be.   Here’s to hoping.   It’s not up to the provider if there are other sources that are used unless some nitwit signed some exclusivity deal, but even that should only be for paid for music or music available through that provider, which I’m pretty sure the CC tracks won’t be available through the “reseller”.

Yeah, you read that right, and no, I’m not being held at gunpoint by the industry goons and I have not been drinking heavily or lost my mind.

I was reading up on Michael Geist’s blog, catching up on things, where he had posted a link to an op-ed on why Pandora, the fungible, responsive streaming media service hasn’t made it to Canada.   You can read it here.   The CRIA thinks it’s because we’re the criminals, stealing music and all that tripe.  Pandora seems to say it’s because they are being charged more than traditional radio for the same rights.   A lot more.  Let’s just say I believe the report from Pandora a lot more than the CRIA stats that are complete nonsense and unsupported by any reasonable amount of research in comparison to how much refutes their position that we are a nation of pirates.

So, all that aside, that still doesn’t give me a reason to thank them.   Well, that same op-ed, in a rather off-hand way, talks about CBC Radio 3.   Never heard of it?   Well it’s only online or on Sirius Satellite radio on channel 86 I think.  I went to http://radio3.cbc.ca myself.   I don’t really buy into satellite radio as in general I prefer my iPhone/iPod as most commercial radio is complete crapola IMHO.

I popped over there because of what Brianna Goldberg, the op-ed author writes about it.   “

It’s a website where Canadian independent musicians go to upload their albums. Users can pick and choose from a huge database, make personal playlists, join the community… or, if they want, they can listen to the virtual radio channel, complete with plucky and knowledgeable hosts, featuring shows programmed with that free uploaded music.

That’s right free.   The artists are charging exactly that much for Radio3 to play their music.   Why?   Better to lose a broadcast fee or two than wallow in obscurity.  Simply put, Radio3 is a venue for new artists, largely indie artists from what I’m seeing, to throw their art up and have an audience get a listen to it without searching so hard for it.   Not perfect, but I tell you, the music on there is a lot more refreshing and innovative in so many ways than anything I’ve heard on radio recently.   The University/College stations seem to be all about hour after hour of special-interest radio programming now, so they’ve kind of lost any general edge in music that way.   CKUA was the other one, but they too have gone either to very narrow styles or to more mainstream music I find.   A general, indie alternative outlet has been a rare find for me, but perhaps I just haven’t looked in the right place.

But now, thanks to the CRIA causing an op-ed to be written because of their completely inane comments and anti-customer rhetoric, I’ve found one.   One where I can buy the tracks I like after a free, full preview and a pre-screening by like-minded peopled interested in new artists and new sounds.  It seems the CRIA isn’t really part of this venue though.

I can’t say I’m surprised.

[EDIT]

There has been a very good and information-rich post put over at the Entertainment and Media Law Signal on some of the more subtle complications surrounding the Pandora situation and the fact that we are entangled further by government intervention in the Copyright Board of Canada.   Well worth the read.   It doesn’t change the focus of this post much in that it’s CBC Radio 3 that I’m excited about, but it’s interesting to note that the whole situation is creating an even more dysfunctional market place.

[/EDIT]

Currently playing in iTunes: CBC Radio 3  - Frazey Ford – Hey Little Mama