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Astroturf Bill C-32 groups started by CRIA

There are a number of citizen’s groups that have formed around the new Canadian copyright bill C-32, nicknamed the DMCA for Canada. Most of these groups are real people concerned about changes to Canadian copyright policies in the digital age. Now, via Michael Geist, comes the story of Balanced Copyright for Canada, a group preteneding to be ordinary citizens, but apparently created by the CRIA (Canadian Record Industry Association don’t you know). They’re making use of the same social media tools that grassroots organizations on either side of the argument…

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Climatology of a Cultural Ice Age, core sample #2

A trial is convened in Sweden, in which the co-founders of filesharing directory The Pirate Bay face two years in jail and a €100,000 fine for “assisting copyright infringement”. YouTube begins crippling the audio on all of its content, whenever it auto-pattern-matches with any audio pattern claimed by a record company, sparking fears of the ‘End of Mashup Culture‘ and reports of the first massacres of teenage digital dreams. Then, just weeks later, as if to reassure any who might be in doubt as to whether there is room in…

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