Julianna Yau’s blog

I started to test Postalicious for Word Press, but it didn’t work yesterday. Here are the links I tried to post, and keep your fingers crossed for it working tonight!

• Judge: posting shock jock clip to the web is “fair use” – Copyright meets censorship and politics again
• Patent Office finds voice, calls for software patent sanity
• Privacy for the next decade, not next week
• A new era in defining and applying fair use norms – Tackling fair use from a different angle
• Why scholarship around digital copyright needs ethnography – Re-thinking the approach to digital copyright
• FreeDocumentaries.org – Free indie documentaries. Sweet.
• Google’s problem with permission – John Degen asks “Why didn’t Google talk to writers and publishers before they started scanning?”
• Legal Torrents – Finally, someone trying to get ahead of the game. Via MAKE blog.
• Howard Knopf: Is Torture by Music a “Performance in Public”? Also see Suzanne G. Cusick’s paper on Music as torture / Music as weapon and Knopf’s follow-up.
• Nintendo no friend of homebrew market, sues DS cart makers

The OAC’s strategic plan is available for download from their website. It’s merely 11 pages long and accented by creative work!

I was trying to figure out whether the Buffy Summers profile on Plurk is official (she requested to add me as a friend), and came across the non-DRM, webcast version of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog via Whedonesque, an unofficial blog for Joss Whedon.

Quite some time ago, a few blogs and several of my friends brought my attention to RBC’s EeePC banking bundle — that is, sign up for a bank account with them, and you’ll [eventually] get a “free” EeePC. Exposing myself neither to television or movies in the cinema, I was shielded from the ads… but they’re going full-force on transit systems (notice the asterisk next to “free” in their ad). Typically, I’m excited by technology, marketing campaigns (really… I miss campaigns) and free stuff, but this is getting a bit silly. Not only is RBC’s latest campaign unrelated to banking, but their website is curiously difficult to navigate if you’re looking for the EeePC offer (I had to ask Google to find the page for me). Obviously, their marketing department doesn’t communicate well with whichever department manages their website.

The conditions?

• Setup the new account yourself, or upgrade the account if you’re an existing client
• Transfer or set-up at least 2 (two) pre-authorized payments from your new account.
• Transfer your automated payroll direct deposit or monthly pension direct deposit to your new account.
• Select paperless statement option on your new account.
• Pay at least 1 (one) bill through RBC® Royal Bank Online Banking from your new account.
• Wait 10-12 weeks (that’s up to 3 months) after you’ve done all of the above… so much for instant gratification
• Pay $13.95/month in banking fees

And, hey, it’s only the 2GB 701 EeePC. Of course, a real penny-pincher can see that it’s cheaper to pay the monthly banking fees until they get your EeePC, then switch to a more suitable bank account, but they’re still risking RBC running out of EeePCs before they ship yours

I’m getting closer to that magical number of 0 unread blog posts. I’ve brought the number down from 1000+ to 233 (but will probably jump back to 500 tomorrow). Here are some more highlights:

• Apparently, one-third of us copy DVDs. While this may be part of the reason for declining DVD sales, I suspect services like Netflix, Zip.ca and iTunes are part of it too.
• Counterfeit Chic on the complications of knitted characters
• Senate Considers Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008
• John Degen on “free” vs “free”
• John Degen points to Grace Wescott‘s excellent essay Friction over Fan Fiction. Particularly of note is her summary of fan fiction’s possible impact on the value of authors licensing subsidiary rights. (disclosure: I know both John and Grace offline)

There’s also a ton of stuff on ArsTechnica, and just doesn’t make sense for me to link to all of it here. If you’re curious about which I liked, check out my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia. I didn’t tag them with Ars, so it’s everything bookmarked today from “Bell’s P2P traffic issues “easily and inexpensively solved”" to “DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it”. I found another possible Ma.gnolia plugin for WordPress and will be testing it soonish so that I don’t have to duplicate bookmarking and linking efforts.

A little over a week ago, a friend suggested that I watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, pitching it as a pet project of Joss Whedon’s. Deciding to watch it was a struggle for me, with pros and cons all over the place. In retrospect, I probably over-thought the decision:

• Although I’m not a fan of the premise (or particularly interested in the storyline) of Buffy, I must grudgingly admit that I did find the writing to be witty in the few episodes I’ve been made to watch.
• I hate loathe musicals, but Neil Patrick Harris’s insane level of coolness promised to negate that.
• My primary operating system is OpenSUSE, but I kept Windows so I could still access things that aren’t available for Linux.

So, out of curiosity and boredom, I decided to pay the mere $6 for 43 minutes of entertainment, and it was worth it. Harris plays Dr. Horrible wonderfully, and it was nice to be able to enjoy Whedon’s writing without the supernatural (yes, I somewhat hypocritically make allowances for the world of superheros and supervillans).

The only horrible part was that the show is only [currently and legitimately] available in Apple’s DRM-protected m4v format. This means the $6 is more of a long-term rental fee than an outright purchase. Considering the price of a DVD or a rental from a brick-and-mortar store, it’s not a bad rate…but still leaves a bitter aftertaste.

Contrary to what some might think, I’m not a supporter of DRM. Although I support the right to use it as part of a business model, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I have yet to finish reading Wired Shut, but the chapter “Speed Bump” poses a solid argument against using architectural and technological measures to correct for social behaviour.

My personal opinion is that the use of Technical Protection Measures by individual creators in an attempt to protect their work is misguided and will be more detrimental (in terms of cost and promotional opportunities) than they are lead to believe. What is needed aren’t more barriers to the enjoyment of creative works, but educating people on the real cost of production and the value of a work. The situation, although more ignored, is more clear-cut for visual and media artists, who usually work alone or in small groups.

In the traditional model used by many visual artists, they bear the cost of creating their work and generate income from a variety of sources, including (but not limited to) grants (which are, in Canada, taxable income), teaching, exhibition fees (paid by galleries when the work is for display and not sale), second and third jobs, and the occassional sale. When work is sold through a gallery, the gallery typically takes 50% of the sale price to cover their overhead (rent, staff salaries, etc). In Canada, there is no legislated resale right which would help boost the income of artists when their growing careers increase the value of past work in the resale market.

When I run this information past my non-artist friends, they’re often shocked, particularly at the fact that a gallery gets a commission which is much higher than commissions in other industries. Suddenly, being an artist isn’t so glamorous, and “sticking it to the man” isn’t so chic.

My studio is finally functional again, and I spent the last weekend working with the Communications Coordinator at CARFAC Ontario to completely redesign our website. This weekend, I am determined to get much sculpting done and finally get caught up with my blog reading.

Copyright

• Canadian Conference of the Arts: Bill C-61 – The Devil is in the Details: Revisions to the Copyright Act Finally Unveiled
• Canada Conference of the Arts:  Copyright Reform: from balancing competing interest to establishing a market-place approach to rights?
• Digital copyright: it’s all wrong (Australia)
• Quebec court orders popular downloading website to shut down
• Chinese village masters the art of reproduction
• EBay not responsible for phoney merchandise, court rules
• NDP candidate to make copyright a byelection issue in Guelph, Ont.

Art

• Art Gets Entrepreneurial
• Staff puzzled by National Gallery chief curator’s sudden exit
• Macedonian dig turns up ancient Venus marble
• Czech artists who staged fake blast could face new trial
• NYC implements new rules for film shoots

The past week has reached a pinacle of maddess for me, with my studio still in transition and my computer’s ethernet card not playing nice with Linux. I’m determined to get caught up by the end of the month, both in terms of sculpting and email/blog/etc reading. In the meantime, here’s an exciting press release from CARFAC:

Since October 2007, CARFAC-RAAV have been involved in a productive ongoing discussion with representatives from the Copyright branch of Library and Archives Canada (LAC), concerning a new standard licence for visual artists. You will remember that in the fall of 2007, we publicly recommended that artists not sign the old contract because we strongly felt that it contained unreasonable requests regarding the use of artists’ copyrights, and that they had few options to negotiate its terms. In particular, we objected to the fact that artists were asked to make their work publicly available without financial compensation, and that there was significant potential that their moral rights could be mistreated.

Following our public release, LAC communicated that they were willing to create a contract that is more respectful of the artists they work with, and demonstrated a desire to collaborate with CARFAC-RAAV and CARCC to draft a new contract to ensure that fair practice is upheld. We are pleased to report that this effort has been successful, and that a new contract has been prepared.

First we would like to underline the fact that the new contract is much improved over the previous version, and we commend LAC for working with us to prepare a contract that allows copyright holders to decide upon what terms their works should be used by LAC. It is clear from the new language in this contract that it is negotiable and flexible for the artist, and that the artist’s right to choose is respected at every step. For example, the artist can cross out all the uses he or she is not permitting LAC to use an image for. The artist can also establish the duration of the licence and whether financial compensation is requested or not. Moreover, the information letter of introduction accompanying the licence has been expanded and modified in order to better explain the nature and conditions of the request made by LAC to use copyrighted material.

There is one article in particular that we had questions about, and which the artist has the right to authorize or not. This is regarding the use of an image by educational institutions. The dissemination of content for educational purposes is part of LAC’s mandate, and as such, teachers and students frequently use their online materials for the purposes of study and research. The new licence requests permission from the artist to allow educational institutions to use an electronic image of an artwork, which they may post on the institution’s website, reproduce, present, or publish for educational uses. It is LAC’s practice to make low resolution images available for this purpose. The licence allows for non-commercial uses only, and if someone asks to reproduce it for commercial or advertising purposes, the copyright owner must be consulted and permission must be obtained apart from this licence. Under this article, the artist is given the choice to give authorization or to deny it, and we recommend that artists carefully consider the full implications of giving such permission. CARFAC-RAAV also welcome artists who have questions about any contractual agreement to consult with us about what their options are.

All in all, this new contract is a drastic change from the initial one and we are glad that the action we took brought about a change in LAC’s approach regarding visual artists’ rights. Following this conclusive experience, CARFAC-RAAV look forward to collaborating with LAC in the future.

For more information:
carfac@carfac.ca
1 (866) 233-6161
www.carfac.ca

My studio is very close to completion, and I’m struggling to catch up on my emails and blogs. Here are some things that have been sitting around for weeks (with, according to Google Reader, 1000+ posts to be read):

Conferences

• Presentations from the conference on Education, Culture and the Knowledge Economy are available online (my notes are still sitting on my EeePC)
• Session materials from the Technology in the Arts Conference are also available (my notes here)

Copyright – Canada

• Not all sides are represented in debate on copyright bill
• Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights Letter Wizard for C-61 Updated To Include Hardcopies & Personalization, plus their summary of media reactions
• CBC’s Search Engine Copyright Quiz: “what if I ________: is that illegal?”

Orphan Works bill in the US

• The Art Newspaper on the Orphan Works bill
• Counterfeit Chic on the Orphan Works bill

C-10

• Alberta considers tax credits for film production

• Arts subsidies ­– Why do we need them?

Tech

• NDP calls for net neutrality

• Bill C-555

For the past few weeks, I’ve been drained and in dire need of a revival… and it turns out some fine films were all I needed. While stone is my favourite medium for creation, film is my favourite medium for “consumption” and I haven’t been exposing myself to enough fine film recently.

Tonight, I attended Double Vision, presented by The Images Festival, CFMDC and CAFKA. The films screened tonight were extremely fine and well-crafted.

Notes in Origin (Ellie Epp, 1987) was my favourite because of Epp’s playfulness and superb grasp of time and timing. At the end of each “note”, I hoped there was another, until I fell into Epp’s rhythm and understood how many notes there would be. The length of each note was perfect, and her punctuation of the end of the film was direct without taking the audience out of the film.

Christina Battle’s the distance between here and there was crafted with a brilliant crescendo and ended with a similar grace and firmness. With both Epp and Battle, I didn’t quite know where they were taking me or how they would resolve the film, but I knew for certain I was in good hands.

Kitchener-Berlin (Phil Hoffman, 1990) was an absolute feast for the eyes. The interlacing of images was done with immense purpose, and I had a distinct sense that Hoffman knew exactly what to show us and when. At the end of Part 1 was a short film-within-a-film which I absolutely adored. The film was The Highway of Tomorrow or, How One Makes Two, a self-proclaimed amateur film by Dent Harrison. It was wonderfully playful, and the R100 makes me yearn to see Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 1 to search for a connection which probably doesn’t exist.

There is another set of films tomorrow, starting at 8pm at The Gig.