CS and the City

Puretracks – Canadian Online Music Retailer goes DRM-less on indie offerings
Moosehead tackles last Canadian holdout: Saskatchewan
How to get iTunes to sort your albums (almost) exactly how you want it
Ariel Atom coming to Canada for a test drive
Dynamic languages hitting home on the desktop

The IIPA, a powerful group representing Software, Movie, and Music companies in the states wants Canada black-listed alongside Russia, China, and Belize for not *modernizing* our copyright policy.

I believe that Canada’s copyright policy is acceptable and properly protects fair-use rights. My fellow Canadians should be damn happy the CRIA can’t just sue the pants off anyone who owns an iPod like the RIAA does in the states.

I can’t sum up how ridiculous this is enough to do it justice, so I’ll let poster “rumblin’rabbit” on the slashdot article do it instead:

“So they want Bush to blacklist Canada, their biggest trading partner (last I heard), their NATO ally, whose troops are now fighting in Afghanistan against the Taliban, possessor of the second largest petroleum reserves in the world, and whose government is one of the very few who are not overtly hostile to the Bush administration?

Over video games?

Cool.”

Let your MP know that you do not respect a Government that bows to every US whim. While you’re at it, ask them to can Bev Oda, before the media companies buy her soul.

And would someone please put Michael Geist in charge of copyright legislation?

Odd Job Jack, a cartoon sitcom on The Comedy Network (Canadian TV channel) produced by Smiley Guy Studios, has released all of the artwork for the TV series under the Creative Commons license. As far as I know, this is the only show currently in production to do so. Futurama next? *crosses fingers*

Master flash files and bitmaps of every piece of art used in this season of Odd Job Jack. Every character, prop, and background from every episode plus tutorials and other support material. All free to hack, use, remix under a share-friendly license.

The content package weighs in at around 800 MB per episode and will be released weekly alongside its weekly broadcast. You can download the torrent which is being hosted on Legal Torrents and The Pirate Bay (Canadians love Sweden!).