Timeline of Conservatives’ Deeds Against Science

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In the Confessions of a Science Librarian blog, John Dupuy writes about the Harper Conservatives’ war against science. He’s logged and linked activities from 2006 to 2013 that show how the Conservatives have muzzled, cut budgets, and otherwise attacked Canada’s scientific research programs. The article is good, the situation is awful. But one area that is a little misleading is the article’s ... Continue Reading

Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal

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This is the third part in a series of three posts. Part 1 — The TPM Environment and Copyright Change from C-11 Part 2 — Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs Part 3 — Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal Download the whole document (PDF). The Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) identifies five categories of appraisal criteria. Some of these criteria mix poorly with copyright law and TPMs on th ... Continue Reading

Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs

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This is the second part in a series of three posts. Part 1 — The TPM Environment and Copyright Change from C-11 Part 2 — Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs Part 3 — Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal Download the whole document (PDF). Archives face inexorable problems with the duty to preserve massive quantities of information, stored on frail digital media. There is at once, the archives ... Continue Reading

How Recent Copyright Legislation (C-11) and TPMs Prevent Digital Preservation

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Recent copyright legislation prevents archives from legitimately fulfilling key requirements for the long term preservation and provision of access to digital fonds. Bill C-11 (An Act to amend the Copyright Act)[1] changed many elements of copyright law but the area posing the greatest problems to archival practices is the portion that prohibits circumventing technological protection measures (TPMs). The problems s ... Continue Reading

Coalition! I Was Wrong about Being Wrong

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In my last post, I said that I was wrong about Dion’s political strategy in the last election. It turns out that while I wasn’t exactly right, I also wasn’t wrong. I’d imagined a scenario in which the conservatives were unable to win a majority, thus putting us back in the same, unworkable situation in which we entered the election. That part happened. In my imagined scenario the Liberals wo ... Continue Reading

Polishing Up the Political Remains

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Looks like I was wrong about Dion’s political strategy. Even if I was right, it didn’t turn out as I thought. I waited until today to proclaim my wrongness because I thought the last likely possibility it could unravel as I theorized would be with the speech from the throne. Today the NDP, Liberals, and Bloc could have banded together to undo the Conservatives’ minority but from the news I’v ... Continue Reading

Vote Swapping Breaks Democracy

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I’ve always thought the concept of vote-swapping was problematic. Not only is it flawed in its own right but treating it as an acceptable strategy is like snuggling up to the idea that one party can function as a spoiler and that somehow, certain parties are entitled to votes. This is endemic to thinking of politics in a left/right dichotomy. Continue reading “Vote Swapping Breaks Democracy” ... Continue Reading

Unravelling Dion’s Political Strategy

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Though my attention is tuned to our federal election, this post doesn’t continue the IP political issues I wrote detailing a stance against certain sorts of “intellectual property” regulation (NDP seems to address it best, though Dion provided a reasonable response to my letter). I’ll go on a tangent today: Stéphane Dion’s campaign strategy is so shrewd he’s already slashed thro ... Continue Reading

Some Notes on the Canadian Digital Information Strategy Draft

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I’ve been reading the draft consultation version of the Canadian Digital Information Strategy (PDF). The strategy proposes strengthening content, ensuring its preservation, and maximizing its access and use. These are important for many reasons the report addresses regarding culture; the report also has some anchors in industry, stating that “nations that nurture their digital information assets and inf ... Continue Reading