First Take on the Public Domain Manifesto

By Joshua Chalifour, 26 January 2010

Communia published its Public Domain Manifesto. The manifesto identifies the public domain concept with respect to historical development and more urgently, its relevance to culture today. I think it makes an important statement, in terms of offering a level, common understanding that could be used widely across society, government, and business. Early in the manifesto, [...]

AOL/Time Warner Missed Opportunity

By Joshua Chalifour, 2 May 2009

I think the opportunity of the AOL/Time Warner merger that kicked off in 2000 and seems to now be undoing itself never really developed in the first place. Time Warner is doing the opposite of what I would have expected–they seem to be divesting themselves of their delivery medium.

Rip Movie

By Joshua Chalifour, 17 March 2009

Just saw the film, Rip, last weekend. The movie explores most of the present day struggles with copyright and notions of ownership of “intellectual property.” I thought it was interesting in how it presented a US government decision in the 90s (through interviews with those responsible) to definitively shift its economy from a manufacturing oriented [...]

Copyright Reform and the Stats Can Report

By Joshua Chalifour, 12 November 2007

Michael Geist posted about the politics in the debate on copyright reform. The point stems from dissonance between the recent Statistics Canada report and a reform-oriented bill expected to introduce more restrictive copyright policy. The report showed some nice Canadian recording industry profits where similar industries in other parts of the world seemed to be [...]

Anti-IP Motivation from Me

By Joshua Chalifour, 29 October 2007

Frustrated with the state of things on the “intellectual property” news front, last week I sent a few letters accompanying copies of Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture book to some Canadian politicians. Is that self-righteous? I really enjoyed the book. Lessig did some sound thinking around all kinds of issues and he wrote about them in [...]