JUNE 2006
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COPYRIGHT - CLA Condemns Captain Copyright - June 27, 2006 by Drew Wilson of SlyckNews -- Captain Copyright has become one of the more controversial moves made by Access Copyright. Adding to the debate, the Canadian Library Association passed a resolution to condemn the website and concept as a result of negative responses from the public. The CLA describes itself as “...Canada's largest national library association, representing the interests of 57,000 library workers. It also speaks for the interests of the 21 million Canadians who are members of libraries." On the Captain Copyright website, there are comics for children to read which have been perceived as extensively one sided. Additional lessons in the teachers section contained one particularly controversial lesson of sending pro-copyright letters to newspaper editors. The lessons were for students in grades 1-8.Another aspect that caused concern was the anti-linking policy in the website. The website had claimed that one could only link to their website only with permission. Other things outside of these points were flaws in the arguments and the lack of information on things like "fair dealings", Canada's version of "Fair Use.” Some even claim that Captain Copyright is in violation of other people's copyrighted content which extends from other superheroes all the way down to the Goetse. Concerned with the potential impact Captain Copyright may have on young minds, the CLA (Canadian Library Association) has decided to act against the cartoon character. The fourth resolution in a public document (PDF) states: "Resolution 2006 - 4: Access Copyright's "Captain Copyright" "Whereas Access Copyright has created the Captain Copyright advocacy site (http://www.captaincopyright.ca/) without consulting CLA and which many Canadian researchers, academics and librarians have condemned as a biased approach to copyright advocacy; "Whereas the terms of use of the Captain Copyright website shamefully purports to restrict linking to the site, stating "permission to link is explicitly withheld from any website the contents of which may, in the opinion of access Copyright, be damaging of cause harm to the reputation of Access Copyright;"Whereas this website poses a threat to our shared information commons by providing biased copyright information to the Canadian public, particularly children and schoolteachers; "Therefore Be It Resolved that the President of CLA write an open letter to Access Copyright, to be drafted by the Copyright Working Group, to condemn the Captain Copyright initiative;" The CLA also stated that they were interested in the Copyright Working Group to have some level of control over the character. "Be It Further Resolved that the Copyright Working Group be mandated to monitor and critique the views expressed by Access Copyright, in order to provide reliable copyright information to Canadian libraries and the broader public;" In short, the CLA is against some of the key points expressed by Captain Copyright's website. They deemed it to contain biased information that was pointed out by others and was created without the CLA's approval. It is possible that this may be a sign of things to come. The CLA became vocal about DRM (Digital Rights Management) that was mentioned in a previous Copyright reform bill just last week amidst a large number of open letters sent to the Minister of Heritage. When it seemed that few people had an official differing opinion on the issue of copyright just a couple of months ago, now there seems to be a gradual movement amongst different organizations to express differing opinions. This move appears to signify that action is starting to be taken by organizations as well.
MUSIC & COPYRIGHT - Is the RIAA in p2p retreat? source: p2pnet.net 27jun06 -- Are the members of the Big Four record label cartel finally seeing the insanity of trying to sue their own customers in bizarre attempts to get them to buy 'product," as the Big Four Organized Music cartel members call their grossly over-priced low-fidelity digital music offerings? Are they at last backing away from their sue 'em all campaign? Their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) 'trade' unit has been especially active on Capitol Hill, but strangely silent on file sharing, says Digital Music News, noting that the RIAA normally, "routinely publicizes its sweeps". It does indeed, announcing victim groups which usually amount to 750 or so men, men and even children, on an almost monthly basis. So far, close to 19,000 Americans have been subpoenaed, events Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG use the mainstream media to suggest are successful criminal prosecutions, although there's no such offense as file sharing, criminal or otherwise, nothing has been stolen, no money has changed hands and corporate music industry problems have been created entirely by the music industry itself. Meanwhile, the last formal announcement surrounding individual lawsuits dates back to February 28, the story points out, going on: "That development raises some questions, though an RIAA representative pointed Digital Music News towards a quieter, more local approach. 'We are filing lawsuits on a weekly basis now,' the representative said, while pointing to a 'more local push'." The lawsuits date back to September, 2003 and have been singularly unsuccessful in curbing file-sharing volume, but they have put, "considerable pressure on the organization and industry," says the story, adding: " 'The lawsuits simply don't scale,' opined one top executive in the space. Meanwhile, the RIAA has been pointing to a 'containment' of file-sharing volume over the past year, part of its continued message on the matter."
COPYRIGHT - Digital Security Coalition Issues Open Letter Calling for Balanced Copyright - submitted by Russell McOrmond, 2006/06/26 Ottawa, Ontario – The Digital Security Coalition, an alliance of Canada’s leading technology security companies, has released a joint open letter addressed to Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, and Maxime Bernier, Industry Minister, calling on the Canadian government to adopt balanced copyright policies and to reject calls for extreme copyright laws. The open letter was released in response to ongoing lobbying efforts to convince the Canadian government to adopt extreme copyright laws that would make it illegal to circumvent technological measures protecting content, such as software, without the consent of the content copyright owner. Brian O’Higgins, spokesperson for the Digital Security Coalition and Chief Technology Officer of Third Brigade, Ltd., a Kanata , Ontario , security software company, states that “security research is too important to Canadian public policy to place it at risk. The work of security researchers lies at the heart of Canada ’s efforts to build trust and confidence in new technologies. Copyright laws that make security research a risky activity undermine those efforts.” Mr. O’Higgins observes that “malware is getting ever-more sophisticated, and is using encryption and other security technologies to infect consumer and enterprise systems,” and goes on to note that extreme copyright laws like the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act have had a demonstrably negative impact upon academic researchers, and upon security research generally. “Security researchers improve the security of new technologies by testing and circumventing those technologies. Canada does not want to create an environment, like that in the United States , where security researchers shy away from important research for fear of incurring liability.” The open letter has been posted at the Coalition’s website at www.digitalsecurity.ca. About the Digital Security Coalition: The Digital Security Coalition is an alliance of Canada ’s leading technology security companies. The DSC’s mandate is to advocate on behalf of its members and on behalf of all Canadians for sound public policies and laws affecting digital security technologies. DSC members include Third Brigade, Ltd., VE Networks, Inc., Bob Young, Co-founder of, Red Hat, Inc., Founder and CEO of Lulu, Inc., and Owner, Hamilton Tiger-Cats Football Team, AEPOS Technologies Corporation, Synomos Inc., Borderware Technologies Inc., Random Knowledge Inc., Credentica, Innusec Inc., Elytra Enterprises Inc., Certicom Corp., Cogneto Development, Inc., and Q1 Labs Inc.
MUSIC - Michael Jackson Sued for Financial Misdemeanors source: DailyD 23jun2006 -- Pop superstar Michael Jackson is facing further court scrutiny after a former associate sued for nearly $4 million in unrepaid loans and expenses. The troubled singer is alleged to owe $3.8 million after the services of F. Marc Shaffel on a charity record and two TV endorsements went unremitted. In pretrial hearings, for which Jackson has been absent, Schaffel's lawyer Howard King claims the star is inept and manipulative. His brief reads, "Jackson carried no credit cards, wrote no checks, carried no 'walking around money' and had people attending to his every need. "Jackson hired competent advisers to make business decisions then frequently ignored the decisions being made and ... incurred expenses without regard to any rational limits or accountability, as though funds were endless. "Although the public may perceive Jackson as a soft-spoken artist concerned only about his creative endeavors, the evidence at trial will show that Jackson is a master at manipulating the people around him." Jackson denies the claims, insisting Schaffel is a "professional swindler" who, on the contrary, owes him money. His spokeswoman, Raymone K. Bain, reveals the singer is not expected to testify in the Santa Monica trial, although he'll be seen in videotaped depositions. Jury selection begins next month.
COPYRIGHT IS AN INTERESTING CONCEPT and it isn't very difficult tounderstand. Many new authors are preoccupied with two questions: 1. How much of someone else's work may I safely use? 2. How can I protect my work from plagiarists?Copyright covers a sequence of words. It does not cover facts or ideas.Most nonfiction is simply a reformulation of existing facts and ideas.Nonfiction is written from research.Copy fact, copy ideas but don't copy words. "Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation." -Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), British writer and prime minister. source: Dan Poynter Para Publishing
COPYRIGHT - Intellectual Property Piracy by UPI WASHINGTON, DC -- The U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday it is making progress in the fight against intellectual property piracy. A new department report said all of the recommendations from an earlier task force report on intellectual property theft have been implemented. Intellectual property theft includes the trading and online piracy of copyrighted movies, music and video games. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in prepared remarks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, said the department attempted to implement all 31 recommendations, and, 'I am proud to announce that the Department of Justice has achieved this goal.' Gonzales cited 'The 2006 Progress Report' on intellectual property theft. Among the highlights, Gonzales said, was the fact that the task force increased the number of prosecutors in the field by not only creating the five additional Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property, or CHIP, units recommended in the 2004 report, but also created an additional seven CHIP units. That nearly doubled the number of CHIP units - from 13 to 25 - in less than two years, he said.
FILM & COPYRIGHT - Syriana plagiarism suit dismissed source RTE 20jun2006 -- A French scriptwriter who claimed that Middle Eastern geo-political thriller 'Syriana' plagiarised her script has lost her case. Stephanie Vergniault claimed that the Oscar-winning film was based on her screenplay, 'Oversight', and claimed 2 million in damages. A Paris court ruled she had not provided sufficient evidence of plagiarism. The judge said the scripts were "obviously different" and ordered Vergniault to pay 3,500 in court costs to Warner Bros and George Clooney's production company Section Eight. Clooney won an Oscar for his role in the political thriller.
MUSIC & FILM & COPYRIGHT - Holst Foundation Sues Film Composer for Copyright Infringement by Vivien Schweitzer for Playbill Arts 15 Jun 2006 -- The London-based Gustav Holst Foundation is suing composer Hans Zimmer, claiming that part of his score for the film Gladiator infringes copyright on a movement from Holst's The Planets. In an email, Peter Carter, a partner at Finers Stephens Innocent, confirmed that G&I Holst Ltd. and music publisher G. Schirmer Ltd. issued proceedings in the High Court in London on April 12, 2006, alleging that part of Zimmer's Gladiator soundtrack infringes copyright on the opening movement of The Planets, "Mars, the Bringer of War." The proceedings are against Hans Zimmer’s publishers and various Universal entities involved in the distribution of the film and the CD soundtrack. Composed around 1915, The Planets includes a movement for each of the seven planets (excluding Earth) that were known at the time. Holst wrote music to reflect the characters of the Roman gods after which the planets were named. "Mars, the Bringer of War" is a brashly martial piece with lots of brass and percussion. John Williams's score for Star Wars, to name one example, also evokes Holst's "Mars." Zimmer, a veteran film composer, most recently wrote the score for The Da Vinci Code. His credits also include The Thin Red Line, Batman Begins and Backdraft.
MUSIC & TV - USA playing Virgin's tune: Label to provide music for hit shows by S.Zeitchik, Variety 16jun2006 -- Product placement meets licensing in an unusual deal for USA Network. The cable net has signed Virgin Records as the exclusive provider of music for all on-air marketing. Instead of licensing music separately for promos of hit shows like "The 4400," "Monk""Monk" and "Law & Order: SVU," net will exclusively use Virgin artists. In return, Virgin gets significant product placement on the net through the music itself as well as info about artists that will pop up onscreen during promopromo spots and interstitial content. The innovative deal suggests the bold possibility of sponsors garnering product placement by trading services, like permissions, for airtime. A section of the USA Web site will be dedicated to Virgin artists and steer traffic to the label. PactPact could also lead to USA offering ringtones for Virgin artists and other new-media content, execs said, which would suggest that new platforms are extending beyond usual suspects like MTV to other nets. "We realized we have a lot of airtime and a lot of reach," said USA senior VP of marketing and brand strategy Chris McCumber, "and we thought, wouldn't a record company want to try to use that?" Terms were not disclosed, but McCumber calls the pact "almost a barter deal." Unlike a traditional licensing pact, this deal solves very different problems for each party. For USA, it allows a cable net that's pouring more money into original programming to save money on the escalating costs of licensing. For Virgin, it offers a new type of product placement for its artists at a time when traditional spots can be expensive and ineffective. This is also the first known instance in which a network has committed to using one label for all its music, though the WWE, whose "Monday Night Raw" actually airs on USA, has a deal with Sony Music. The pact will not affect music used in programming. Pact resembles a movie output deal in that it makes an entire catalog available to a network. It goes further than a traditional output deal, however, and ensures no other record company will have music featured in the net's spots. Move is part of USA's larger effort at branding; net launched ShowUsYourCharacter, a MySpace-ish attempt to attract user-generated content and give the general-interest cablercabler greater brand identity. Music from the Virgin deal will appear in some of the on-air interstitial programming that follows some of the people from larger "Characters Welcome" campaign around the country. Virgin, part of the British-based EMI Group, has a number of established artists such as Janet JacksonJanet Jackson, Fountains of Wayne, Gorillaz and the Rolling Stones, as well as newer musicians like We Are Scientists, KT Tunstall and 30 Seconds to Mars. USA has made a foray into promoting lesser-known artists on TV before. Net leased airtime to producers for the turn-of-the-century skeinskein "Farm Club," a high-profile effort at synergy with a digital-music Web site that was meant to give unknown artists more mainstream exposure. That show quickly went off the air. But McCumber said the integration will give a boost that show didn't, and also said that further into the partnership the emerging artists themselves could be featured on the air. "We have a lot of time to play with," he said.
TV & MERCHANDISING -- 13jun2006 Wall Street Journal - Mattel, Cartoon Network ink licensing deal Toy maker Mattel Inc. today is expected to announce a multiyear global licensing pact with Cartoon Network that will result in the production of games, puzzles and various toys based on most of the cable network's TV shows. The deal is a departure from Cartoon sister company Warner Bros.' typical approach of licensing shows on an individual basis.
COPYRIGHT - EU Trade Chief Warns China on Copyright Piracy by Luis Ramirez, VOA News, Beijing 08 June 2006 -- European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has warned China it may face a backlash if it does not stop pirating trademarked products or improve market access for European goods. The warning came as the EU trade chief met with officials in Beijing. The EU Trade Commissioner told reporters at the end of his four-day visit Thursday, that he will keep coming back to China as many times as it takes to "get Europe's trade relationship right." Mandelson met with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi and other top officials, stressing the need for China to live up to the commitments it has made to stop the pirating of copyrighted products and open its markets further to European goods and services. He said that not doing so would fuel protectionist sentiment in Europe. "If we are going to remain in Europe as open as we are, what matters in the end is what China does, how China acts, that will determine whether we can defeat the arguments of those in Europe and elsewhere who fear China's growth and want to build barriers to China's exports," he said. The EU trade chief said there is much impatience and frustration in Europe about what many believe is the Chinese government's inadequate action to tackle product counterfeiting. Mandelson praised efforts the Chinese government says it is making to stop counterfeiting copyrighted products. However, he said, "there is still a mountain to climb" before the widespread infringement of intellectual property rights is conquered. The United States has also made similar calls on China, saying intellectual property right violations cost American companies billions of dollars each year in lost sales of items ranging from movie videos to designer clothing and pharmaceuticals. Washington and Brussels also have both continued to push for China to grant better access to their products. EU officials on Thursday said they have concluded preliminary consultations with China on resolving a tariff dispute over car parts. The EU and the United States have filed complaints with the World Trade Organization, WTO, alleging Beijing unfairly forced Chinese automakers to use Chinese-made parts.
MUSIC - New CD swap site to give back to struggling artists by Yinka Adegoke June 7, 2006 NY (Reuters) -- A new Web site that aims to transform music industry economics is set to go live on Thursday, giving musicians a major cut of the proceeds while largely freezing out record labels and other intermediaries. Lala.com, which allows fans to trade music discs for just $1, plus shipping, pledges to give a fifth of its sales to all the musicians, including lesser known session studio players, involved in the making of CDs exchanged on its site. In a move that is certain to stoke controversy with music promoters, the founder of the Silicon Valley start-up said Lala will circumvent traditional copyright and royalty payment systems to compensate identifiable working musicians. The site works something like an eBay auction exchange as it encourages consumers who sign up for the service to list all the CDs they may want to exchange as well as ones they would be interested in receiving. Once an exchange is arranged, the recipient pays $1.49, of which 49 cents pays for shipping the disc, leaving $1 for the company for musicians, administrative costs and its own cut. Lala said 20 cents of each $1 will go into a charitable fund for the musicians. It is looking to pay the musicians via a charitable organization it has set up called the Z Foundation. It plans on keeping 20-30 cents for itself, with the remainder going on administration. "We all have this music that sits in our homes - wouldn't it be great if people can exchange those CDs," said founder Bill Nguyen, a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He's a veteran of start-up companies including Seven, a mobile e-mail rival to Blackberry maker Research in Motion and OneBox, which was sold to Phone.com, which is now known as Openwave. Lala has been testing the service for several months with nearly 100,000 people and claims to already have another 200,000 people waiting to join the service when it goes live. The service is bound to raise eyebrows at record companies which have stepped up their anti-piracy drives in the last few years to combat both CD and digital music piracy. But a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America said that, "To date we have declined comment on Lala.com - and will hold to that here as well." Nguyen admits his company has had a mixed reaction from the record companies, with some viewing his plan as a threat along the lines of the pioneering peer-to-peer music file sharing service Napster. "One label thought it would help them to know their customers for the first time," Nguyen said. "But others' view of us is as the devil, more like peer-to-peer services." Lala argues that it offering a vibrant new way for consumers to discover new music and that if successful, it will encourage robust sales of new music, unlike the culture of pirated CDs and downloading that followed in Napster's wake. Nguyen claims that Lala's research shows that for every five CDs exchanged on the server a new CD was bought. Though Lala is a for-profit business, Nguyen envisages a community of fans and musicians running many key elements of the site with a relatively skeletal paid staff that he plans to keep under 30 employees. For instance, fans and artists will jointly decide whether a musician who applies for compensation will get paid under the system. Nguyen described the site as having a business model inspired by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia built from editorial contributions by its users. Lala has received up to $9 million in venture capital funding, Nguyen said.
MUSIC - Eminem Hangs Up Ringtone Suit by Josh Grossberg, Eonline Jun 6, 2006 -- Eminem is ringing in a compromise. Lawyers for the Slim Shady's publishing empire, Michigan-based Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, have settled a lawsuit with one of five companies his camp sued to halt them from illegally hocking ringtones of Eminem's biggest hits, the Detroit News reports. As part of the settlement, which must be approved by U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen in Detroit, Colorado-based Cellus US has agreed to stop manufacturing the ringtones and selling them over the Internet. Because the terms of the deal are under wraps, it's not known whether the company paid any monetary damages to the hip-hopster. "The provisions of the agreement are confidential," Mary Margaret O'Donnell, Cellus' attorney, told the Detroit News. The rap superstar's attorney, Howard Hertz, confirmed that both parties have reached "an amicable settlement." Ringtone sales have taken off in the past two years, generating millions of extra revenue for the music business. A recent study from Jupiter Research revealed that the new format raked in $217 million in 2004 and will reach $724 million by 2009, leading Billboard magazine to add a ringtone chart, but also prompting artists to crackdown on any ill-gotten songs. Also named in Eminem's complaint were ringtone makers FanMobile, Nextones.com, MyPhoneFiles and MatrixM LLC. Nextones, headquartered in New York, reportedly failed to respond to the suit and Rosen subsequently entered a default judgment in the amount of $195,000 on May 16. Hertz said Eminem would seek to collect payment. New Jersey-based MyPhoneFiles is reportedly in the process of negotiating a licensing agreement with Em's publishing firms, which it hopes to announce soon. In an encore, Emiinem's camp launched a similar legal salvo in February against a sixth company, Florida-based Phattones Media Productions. No word whether a settlement in that case is in the offing. The entertainer, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, isn't just targeting cell phones, but according to Hertz, is planning to sue karaoke companies in the next few months for spinning his tunes without first obtaining a license. Eminem has been consistently vigilant about protecting his work. In 2005, he took legal action and eventually settled with Apple for using a song in an iTunes commercial without permission. He also sued to stop The Source magazine from publishing lyrics from unauthorized, racially charged tracks from his early years as a rapper.
Eminem also moved up the release date for his last two albums in an effort to battle Internet piracy.
BOOKS - Authors and Publishers must get Online by Victoria Ahearn, Canadian Press Jun. 7 2006 Toronto -- The Internet remains the best tool for authors and publishers who want to get closer to their readers, yet many still aren't taking advantage of it, say experts scheduled to speak at BookExpo Canada 2006 in Toronto.
"The era of the reclusive author is quickly becoming an anachronism," Kevin Smokler, author and founder of the Virtual Book Tour, said ahead of the four-day annual trade book conference and fair, which starts June 9.
"Every author must have a website - there's no question about that - and every author must have, at the very least, an e-mail address and a way to communicate with their readers because their readers expect it now. Smokler, who gives tours in cyberspace for authors of fiction and narrative fiction, attended the Expo last year, telling the crowd, "If you are dealing with readers who are under the age of 40 and your books and your authors are not on the Internet, they don't exist to those readers." This year he plans to place an emphasis on online brand recognition, the importance of reaching out to lit bloggers and how to "play in that game, in that fierce, fierce battle for people's attention." "I'm the last generation who will remember life before a personal computer," the 33-year-old said over the phone from San Francisco. "To not use the Internet to promote particularly young adult books or pop culture books or books that appeal to a younger audience is just foolish because that's where that younger audience is. Any young adult author who doesn't have a Myspace page is sort of sealing themselves off from a huge percentage of their readership." Michael Cader, creator of the daily Internet publishing newsletter publishersmarketplace.com, will address similar issues at the Expo, specifically the importance of publishers and authors making a direct online connection to readers - without the aid of a retailer or intermediary. "Most of the innovation and how to use the Internet to reach readers and develop communities of interest and bring readers and authors closer together has taken place through the hands of others," he said over the line from New York. "The Internet makes it possible to literally develop deep, meaningful, one-to-one content-driven relationships between actual readers and actual authors and publishers." Electronic books that are available for download are not the way to do that, though, as it is still an emerging technology, say both experts. And the president of the Canadian Booksellers Association - a national trade association that represents trade and campus booksellers and provides content for the Expo - says it won't be a huge topic of discussion at the four-day event. "Everyone is waiting to see exactly ... how it will unfold. I mean, as a means of disseminating books and a means of reading books, the technology is to date, largely stillborn," Paul McNally, who is also co-owner of McNally Robinson Booksellers, said from Winnipeg. "But I think there's a wide expectation that it will show signs of life some day and maybe quite soon, who knows?" There's no doubt EBooks have become a bigger commercial venture over the years. Many websites are starting to sell downloadable bestsellers and several companies have created small, compact handheld devices specifically for reading the digital novels. But the technology doesn't seem to be catching on that quickly with readers yet, said McNally. And Sean Sundwall, a spokesman for Amazon.com, said their EBook sales are "certainly a minority compared to what we sell on the physical book side of the house." "Some of the reasons I think behind that are whether EBooks are even made available by the publisher and ultimately we are sellers of what is published," he said from Seattle. "I think as (EBook) devices become better at being able to be read off of and things like that, perhaps EBooks will pick up." Cader doesn't see that happening any time soon though. "Electronic books, right now, are a product so insignificant that they're not worth any of the ink that's been shed discussing them," he mused. "And by the time they're anything important, what they are will probably have changed so much that anything one says about them today will be like meaningful discussions of an automobile in 1901." BookExpo Canada, which is called the largest event of its kind in the country, takes place June 9-12 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It will include educational sessions, hands-on technology seminars and high-profile author breakfasts, including a Sports Breakfast with Canadian gold-medal-winning swimmer Mark Tewksbury, goalie Martin Brodeur and NHL linesman Ray (Scampy) Scapinello. Authors Wayne Johnston, David Adams Richards, Diana Gabaldon, Peter James, Linda Hall, Giles Blunt, Robert Wiersema and Canadian theatre star Sean Cullen will be among those discussing their writing careers.
ENTERTAINMENT - Canada's Walk of Fame by cbc.ca 05jun2006 -- Actress Pamela Anderson, David Letterman sidekick Paul Shaffer, humourist Eugene Levy and others joined the list of Canada's most famous stars and had their names engraved in a Toronto sidewalk. The awards weren't limited to entertainers. Olympian skier Nancy Greene Raine came from her home in Whistler, B.C., to welcome the members of the Crazy Canucks ski team, Dave Irwin, Ken Read, and Steve Podborski, who amazed the world with their skiing prowess in 1975. Fellow skier Dave Murray died in 1990 after a lengthy bout with cancer. The show has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1998, when the first dozen celebrities were inducted. They included famed figure skater Barbara Ann Scott, impressionist Rich Little, director Norman Jewison and ballerina Karen Kain, comedian John Candy and Canada's most famous pianist, Glenn Gould. The Walk of Fame was founded by Toronto businessman Peter Soumalias, who has said this year's honorees were chosen from over 100,000 submissions received from around the world. To qualify, a candidate must have been born or spent his or her formative years in Canada, and have been successful for a minimum of 10 years. Previous recipients include Alanis Morissette, Paul Anka, Jim Carrey, Shania Twain, Wayne Gretzky and Michael J. Fox.
FILM - Feature Film Downloads by MovieNews 01jun2006 -- CinemaNow, Inc., a broadband video-on-demand provider of feature films, announced May 31st, an agreement with Buena Vista Home Entertainment (a Disney company), to offer select movies on a download-to-own basis through its web site. Buena Vista Home Entertainment will also offer select new movies beginning with ‘Glory Road’ on June 6th, which will coincide with the timing of its home entertainment window. The agreement will also allow on-demand viewers to download the movie onto approved portable devices. Movies initially offered on a download-to-own basis will include recent hits such as ‘Flightplan,’ as well as catalog favorites such as ‘The Insider.’ Additional movies available the same day as their DVD release will include ‘Eight Below’ on June 20th and ‘Annapolis’ on June 27th. Customers will be able to purchase and download a legal, permanent copy of a Buena Vista Home Entertainment movie for unlimited playback. "We are pleased about this broadband distribution opportunity which allows Buena Vista Home Entertainment to provide viewers with more flexibility in viewing their favorite new releases and catalog movies on this emerging distribution platform," commented Pat Fitzgerald, executive vice president of sales, distribution and trade marketing, Buena Vista Home Entertainment. CinemaNow legally offers content from a library of more than 4,000 new and classic movies, television programs, music concerts and music videos from 20th Century Fox, ABC News, Disney, HDNet, Lionsgate, MGM, Miramax, NBC Universal, Sony, Sundance Channel, Warner Bros. and more than 250 other licensors for downloading or streaming.
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COPYRIGHT - CLA Condemns Captain Copyright - June 27, 2006 by Drew Wilson of SlyckNews -- Captain Copyright has become one of the more controversial moves made by Access Copyright. Adding to the debate, the Canadian Library Association passed a resolution to condemn the website and concept as a result of negative responses from the public. The CLA describes itself as “...Canada's largest national library association, representing the interests of 57,000 library workers. It also speaks for the interests of the 21 million Canadians who are members of libraries." On the Captain Copyright website, there are comics for children to read which have been perceived as extensively one sided. Additional lessons in the teachers section contained one particularly controversial lesson of sending pro-copyright letters to newspaper editors. The lessons were for students in grades 1-8.Another aspect that caused concern was the anti-linking policy in the website. The website had claimed that one could only link to their website only with permission. Other things outside of these points were flaws in the arguments and the lack of information on things like "fair dealings", Canada's version of "Fair Use.” Some even claim that Captain Copyright is in violation of other people's copyrighted content which extends from other superheroes all the way down to the Goetse. Concerned with the potential impact Captain Copyright may have on young minds, the CLA (Canadian Library Association) has decided to act against the cartoon character. The fourth resolution in a public document (PDF) states: "Resolution 2006 - 4: Access Copyright's "Captain Copyright" "Whereas Access Copyright has created the Captain Copyright advocacy site (http://www.captaincopyright.ca/) without consulting CLA and which many Canadian researchers, academics and librarians have condemned as a biased approach to copyright advocacy; "Whereas the terms of use of the Captain Copyright website shamefully purports to restrict linking to the site, stating "permission to link is explicitly withheld from any website the contents of which may, in the opinion of access Copyright, be damaging of cause harm to the reputation of Access Copyright;"Whereas this website poses a threat to our shared information commons by providing biased copyright information to the Canadian public, particularly children and schoolteachers; "Therefore Be It Resolved that the President of CLA write an open letter to Access Copyright, to be drafted by the Copyright Working Group, to condemn the Captain Copyright initiative;" The CLA also stated that they were interested in the Copyright Working Group to have some level of control over the character. "Be It Further Resolved that the Copyright Working Group be mandated to monitor and critique the views expressed by Access Copyright, in order to provide reliable copyright information to Canadian libraries and the broader public;" In short, the CLA is against some of the key points expressed by Captain Copyright's website. They deemed it to contain biased information that was pointed out by others and was created without the CLA's approval. It is possible that this may be a sign of things to come. The CLA became vocal about DRM (Digital Rights Management) that was mentioned in a previous Copyright reform bill just last week amidst a large number of open letters sent to the Minister of Heritage. When it seemed that few people had an official differing opinion on the issue of copyright just a couple of months ago, now there seems to be a gradual movement amongst different organizations to express differing opinions. This move appears to signify that action is starting to be taken by organizations as well.
MUSIC & COPYRIGHT - Is the RIAA in p2p retreat? source: p2pnet.net 27jun06 -- Are the members of the Big Four record label cartel finally seeing the insanity of trying to sue their own customers in bizarre attempts to get them to buy 'product," as the Big Four Organized Music cartel members call their grossly over-priced low-fidelity digital music offerings? Are they at last backing away from their sue 'em all campaign? Their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) 'trade' unit has been especially active on Capitol Hill, but strangely silent on file sharing, says Digital Music News, noting that the RIAA normally, "routinely publicizes its sweeps". It does indeed, announcing victim groups which usually amount to 750 or so men, men and even children, on an almost monthly basis. So far, close to 19,000 Americans have been subpoenaed, events Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG use the mainstream media to suggest are successful criminal prosecutions, although there's no such offense as file sharing, criminal or otherwise, nothing has been stolen, no money has changed hands and corporate music industry problems have been created entirely by the music industry itself. Meanwhile, the last formal announcement surrounding individual lawsuits dates back to February 28, the story points out, going on: "That development raises some questions, though an RIAA representative pointed Digital Music News towards a quieter, more local approach. 'We are filing lawsuits on a weekly basis now,' the representative said, while pointing to a 'more local push'." The lawsuits date back to September, 2003 and have been singularly unsuccessful in curbing file-sharing volume, but they have put, "considerable pressure on the organization and industry," says the story, adding: " 'The lawsuits simply don't scale,' opined one top executive in the space. Meanwhile, the RIAA has been pointing to a 'containment' of file-sharing volume over the past year, part of its continued message on the matter."
COPYRIGHT - Digital Security Coalition Issues Open Letter Calling for Balanced Copyright - submitted by Russell McOrmond, 2006/06/26 Ottawa, Ontario – The Digital Security Coalition, an alliance of Canada’s leading technology security companies, has released a joint open letter addressed to Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, and Maxime Bernier, Industry Minister, calling on the Canadian government to adopt balanced copyright policies and to reject calls for extreme copyright laws. The open letter was released in response to ongoing lobbying efforts to convince the Canadian government to adopt extreme copyright laws that would make it illegal to circumvent technological measures protecting content, such as software, without the consent of the content copyright owner. Brian O’Higgins, spokesperson for the Digital Security Coalition and Chief Technology Officer of Third Brigade, Ltd., a Kanata , Ontario , security software company, states that “security research is too important to Canadian public policy to place it at risk. The work of security researchers lies at the heart of Canada ’s efforts to build trust and confidence in new technologies. Copyright laws that make security research a risky activity undermine those efforts.” Mr. O’Higgins observes that “malware is getting ever-more sophisticated, and is using encryption and other security technologies to infect consumer and enterprise systems,” and goes on to note that extreme copyright laws like the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act have had a demonstrably negative impact upon academic researchers, and upon security research generally. “Security researchers improve the security of new technologies by testing and circumventing those technologies. Canada does not want to create an environment, like that in the United States , where security researchers shy away from important research for fear of incurring liability.” The open letter has been posted at the Coalition’s website at www.digitalsecurity.ca. About the Digital Security Coalition: The Digital Security Coalition is an alliance of Canada ’s leading technology security companies. The DSC’s mandate is to advocate on behalf of its members and on behalf of all Canadians for sound public policies and laws affecting digital security technologies. DSC members include Third Brigade, Ltd., VE Networks, Inc., Bob Young, Co-founder of, Red Hat, Inc., Founder and CEO of Lulu, Inc., and Owner, Hamilton Tiger-Cats Football Team, AEPOS Technologies Corporation, Synomos Inc., Borderware Technologies Inc., Random Knowledge Inc., Credentica, Innusec Inc., Elytra Enterprises Inc., Certicom Corp., Cogneto Development, Inc., and Q1 Labs Inc.
MUSIC - Michael Jackson Sued for Financial Misdemeanors source: DailyD 23jun2006 -- Pop superstar Michael Jackson is facing further court scrutiny after a former associate sued for nearly $4 million in unrepaid loans and expenses. The troubled singer is alleged to owe $3.8 million after the services of F. Marc Shaffel on a charity record and two TV endorsements went unremitted. In pretrial hearings, for which Jackson has been absent, Schaffel's lawyer Howard King claims the star is inept and manipulative. His brief reads, "Jackson carried no credit cards, wrote no checks, carried no 'walking around money' and had people attending to his every need. "Jackson hired competent advisers to make business decisions then frequently ignored the decisions being made and ... incurred expenses without regard to any rational limits or accountability, as though funds were endless. "Although the public may perceive Jackson as a soft-spoken artist concerned only about his creative endeavors, the evidence at trial will show that Jackson is a master at manipulating the people around him." Jackson denies the claims, insisting Schaffel is a "professional swindler" who, on the contrary, owes him money. His spokeswoman, Raymone K. Bain, reveals the singer is not expected to testify in the Santa Monica trial, although he'll be seen in videotaped depositions. Jury selection begins next month.
COPYRIGHT IS AN INTERESTING CONCEPT and it isn't very difficult tounderstand. Many new authors are preoccupied with two questions: 1. How much of someone else's work may I safely use? 2. How can I protect my work from plagiarists?Copyright covers a sequence of words. It does not cover facts or ideas.Most nonfiction is simply a reformulation of existing facts and ideas.Nonfiction is written from research.Copy fact, copy ideas but don't copy words. "Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation." -Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), British writer and prime minister. source: Dan Poynter Para Publishing
COPYRIGHT - Intellectual Property Piracy by UPI WASHINGTON, DC -- The U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday it is making progress in the fight against intellectual property piracy. A new department report said all of the recommendations from an earlier task force report on intellectual property theft have been implemented. Intellectual property theft includes the trading and online piracy of copyrighted movies, music and video games. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in prepared remarks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, said the department attempted to implement all 31 recommendations, and, 'I am proud to announce that the Department of Justice has achieved this goal.' Gonzales cited 'The 2006 Progress Report' on intellectual property theft. Among the highlights, Gonzales said, was the fact that the task force increased the number of prosecutors in the field by not only creating the five additional Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property, or CHIP, units recommended in the 2004 report, but also created an additional seven CHIP units. That nearly doubled the number of CHIP units - from 13 to 25 - in less than two years, he said.
FILM & COPYRIGHT - Syriana plagiarism suit dismissed source RTE 20jun2006 -- A French scriptwriter who claimed that Middle Eastern geo-political thriller 'Syriana' plagiarised her script has lost her case. Stephanie Vergniault claimed that the Oscar-winning film was based on her screenplay, 'Oversight', and claimed 2 million in damages. A Paris court ruled she had not provided sufficient evidence of plagiarism. The judge said the scripts were "obviously different" and ordered Vergniault to pay 3,500 in court costs to Warner Bros and George Clooney's production company Section Eight. Clooney won an Oscar for his role in the political thriller.
MUSIC & FILM & COPYRIGHT - Holst Foundation Sues Film Composer for Copyright Infringement by Vivien Schweitzer for Playbill Arts 15 Jun 2006 -- The London-based Gustav Holst Foundation is suing composer Hans Zimmer, claiming that part of his score for the film Gladiator infringes copyright on a movement from Holst's The Planets. In an email, Peter Carter, a partner at Finers Stephens Innocent, confirmed that G&I Holst Ltd. and music publisher G. Schirmer Ltd. issued proceedings in the High Court in London on April 12, 2006, alleging that part of Zimmer's Gladiator soundtrack infringes copyright on the opening movement of The Planets, "Mars, the Bringer of War." The proceedings are against Hans Zimmer’s publishers and various Universal entities involved in the distribution of the film and the CD soundtrack. Composed around 1915, The Planets includes a movement for each of the seven planets (excluding Earth) that were known at the time. Holst wrote music to reflect the characters of the Roman gods after which the planets were named. "Mars, the Bringer of War" is a brashly martial piece with lots of brass and percussion. John Williams's score for Star Wars, to name one example, also evokes Holst's "Mars." Zimmer, a veteran film composer, most recently wrote the score for The Da Vinci Code. His credits also include The Thin Red Line, Batman Begins and Backdraft.
MUSIC & TV - USA playing Virgin's tune: Label to provide music for hit shows by S.Zeitchik, Variety 16jun2006 -- Product placement meets licensing in an unusual deal for USA Network. The cable net has signed Virgin Records as the exclusive provider of music for all on-air marketing. Instead of licensing music separately for promos of hit shows like "The 4400," "Monk""Monk" and "Law & Order: SVU," net will exclusively use Virgin artists. In return, Virgin gets significant product placement on the net through the music itself as well as info about artists that will pop up onscreen during promopromo spots and interstitial content. The innovative deal suggests the bold possibility of sponsors garnering product placement by trading services, like permissions, for airtime. A section of the USA Web site will be dedicated to Virgin artists and steer traffic to the label. PactPact could also lead to USA offering ringtones for Virgin artists and other new-media content, execs said, which would suggest that new platforms are extending beyond usual suspects like MTV to other nets. "We realized we have a lot of airtime and a lot of reach," said USA senior VP of marketing and brand strategy Chris McCumber, "and we thought, wouldn't a record company want to try to use that?" Terms were not disclosed, but McCumber calls the pact "almost a barter deal." Unlike a traditional licensing pact, this deal solves very different problems for each party. For USA, it allows a cable net that's pouring more money into original programming to save money on the escalating costs of licensing. For Virgin, it offers a new type of product placement for its artists at a time when traditional spots can be expensive and ineffective. This is also the first known instance in which a network has committed to using one label for all its music, though the WWE, whose "Monday Night Raw" actually airs on USA, has a deal with Sony Music. The pact will not affect music used in programming. Pact resembles a movie output deal in that it makes an entire catalog available to a network. It goes further than a traditional output deal, however, and ensures no other record company will have music featured in the net's spots. Move is part of USA's larger effort at branding; net launched ShowUsYourCharacter, a MySpace-ish attempt to attract user-generated content and give the general-interest cablercabler greater brand identity. Music from the Virgin deal will appear in some of the on-air interstitial programming that follows some of the people from larger "Characters Welcome" campaign around the country. Virgin, part of the British-based EMI Group, has a number of established artists such as Janet JacksonJanet Jackson, Fountains of Wayne, Gorillaz and the Rolling Stones, as well as newer musicians like We Are Scientists, KT Tunstall and 30 Seconds to Mars. USA has made a foray into promoting lesser-known artists on TV before. Net leased airtime to producers for the turn-of-the-century skeinskein "Farm Club," a high-profile effort at synergy with a digital-music Web site that was meant to give unknown artists more mainstream exposure. That show quickly went off the air. But McCumber said the integration will give a boost that show didn't, and also said that further into the partnership the emerging artists themselves could be featured on the air. "We have a lot of time to play with," he said.
TV & MERCHANDISING -- 13jun2006 Wall Street Journal - Mattel, Cartoon Network ink licensing deal Toy maker Mattel Inc. today is expected to announce a multiyear global licensing pact with Cartoon Network that will result in the production of games, puzzles and various toys based on most of the cable network's TV shows. The deal is a departure from Cartoon sister company Warner Bros.' typical approach of licensing shows on an individual basis.
COPYRIGHT - EU Trade Chief Warns China on Copyright Piracy by Luis Ramirez, VOA News, Beijing 08 June 2006 -- European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has warned China it may face a backlash if it does not stop pirating trademarked products or improve market access for European goods. The warning came as the EU trade chief met with officials in Beijing. The EU Trade Commissioner told reporters at the end of his four-day visit Thursday, that he will keep coming back to China as many times as it takes to "get Europe's trade relationship right." Mandelson met with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi and other top officials, stressing the need for China to live up to the commitments it has made to stop the pirating of copyrighted products and open its markets further to European goods and services. He said that not doing so would fuel protectionist sentiment in Europe. "If we are going to remain in Europe as open as we are, what matters in the end is what China does, how China acts, that will determine whether we can defeat the arguments of those in Europe and elsewhere who fear China's growth and want to build barriers to China's exports," he said. The EU trade chief said there is much impatience and frustration in Europe about what many believe is the Chinese government's inadequate action to tackle product counterfeiting. Mandelson praised efforts the Chinese government says it is making to stop counterfeiting copyrighted products. However, he said, "there is still a mountain to climb" before the widespread infringement of intellectual property rights is conquered. The United States has also made similar calls on China, saying intellectual property right violations cost American companies billions of dollars each year in lost sales of items ranging from movie videos to designer clothing and pharmaceuticals. Washington and Brussels also have both continued to push for China to grant better access to their products. EU officials on Thursday said they have concluded preliminary consultations with China on resolving a tariff dispute over car parts. The EU and the United States have filed complaints with the World Trade Organization, WTO, alleging Beijing unfairly forced Chinese automakers to use Chinese-made parts.
MUSIC - New CD swap site to give back to struggling artists by Yinka Adegoke June 7, 2006 NY (Reuters) -- A new Web site that aims to transform music industry economics is set to go live on Thursday, giving musicians a major cut of the proceeds while largely freezing out record labels and other intermediaries. Lala.com, which allows fans to trade music discs for just $1, plus shipping, pledges to give a fifth of its sales to all the musicians, including lesser known session studio players, involved in the making of CDs exchanged on its site. In a move that is certain to stoke controversy with music promoters, the founder of the Silicon Valley start-up said Lala will circumvent traditional copyright and royalty payment systems to compensate identifiable working musicians. The site works something like an eBay auction exchange as it encourages consumers who sign up for the service to list all the CDs they may want to exchange as well as ones they would be interested in receiving. Once an exchange is arranged, the recipient pays $1.49, of which 49 cents pays for shipping the disc, leaving $1 for the company for musicians, administrative costs and its own cut. Lala said 20 cents of each $1 will go into a charitable fund for the musicians. It is looking to pay the musicians via a charitable organization it has set up called the Z Foundation. It plans on keeping 20-30 cents for itself, with the remainder going on administration. "We all have this music that sits in our homes - wouldn't it be great if people can exchange those CDs," said founder Bill Nguyen, a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He's a veteran of start-up companies including Seven, a mobile e-mail rival to Blackberry maker Research in Motion and OneBox, which was sold to Phone.com, which is now known as Openwave. Lala has been testing the service for several months with nearly 100,000 people and claims to already have another 200,000 people waiting to join the service when it goes live. The service is bound to raise eyebrows at record companies which have stepped up their anti-piracy drives in the last few years to combat both CD and digital music piracy. But a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America said that, "To date we have declined comment on Lala.com - and will hold to that here as well." Nguyen admits his company has had a mixed reaction from the record companies, with some viewing his plan as a threat along the lines of the pioneering peer-to-peer music file sharing service Napster. "One label thought it would help them to know their customers for the first time," Nguyen said. "But others' view of us is as the devil, more like peer-to-peer services." Lala argues that it offering a vibrant new way for consumers to discover new music and that if successful, it will encourage robust sales of new music, unlike the culture of pirated CDs and downloading that followed in Napster's wake. Nguyen claims that Lala's research shows that for every five CDs exchanged on the server a new CD was bought. Though Lala is a for-profit business, Nguyen envisages a community of fans and musicians running many key elements of the site with a relatively skeletal paid staff that he plans to keep under 30 employees. For instance, fans and artists will jointly decide whether a musician who applies for compensation will get paid under the system. Nguyen described the site as having a business model inspired by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia built from editorial contributions by its users. Lala has received up to $9 million in venture capital funding, Nguyen said.
MUSIC - Eminem Hangs Up Ringtone Suit by Josh Grossberg, Eonline Jun 6, 2006 -- Eminem is ringing in a compromise. Lawyers for the Slim Shady's publishing empire, Michigan-based Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, have settled a lawsuit with one of five companies his camp sued to halt them from illegally hocking ringtones of Eminem's biggest hits, the Detroit News reports. As part of the settlement, which must be approved by U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen in Detroit, Colorado-based Cellus US has agreed to stop manufacturing the ringtones and selling them over the Internet. Because the terms of the deal are under wraps, it's not known whether the company paid any monetary damages to the hip-hopster. "The provisions of the agreement are confidential," Mary Margaret O'Donnell, Cellus' attorney, told the Detroit News. The rap superstar's attorney, Howard Hertz, confirmed that both parties have reached "an amicable settlement." Ringtone sales have taken off in the past two years, generating millions of extra revenue for the music business. A recent study from Jupiter Research revealed that the new format raked in $217 million in 2004 and will reach $724 million by 2009, leading Billboard magazine to add a ringtone chart, but also prompting artists to crackdown on any ill-gotten songs. Also named in Eminem's complaint were ringtone makers FanMobile, Nextones.com, MyPhoneFiles and MatrixM LLC. Nextones, headquartered in New York, reportedly failed to respond to the suit and Rosen subsequently entered a default judgment in the amount of $195,000 on May 16. Hertz said Eminem would seek to collect payment. New Jersey-based MyPhoneFiles is reportedly in the process of negotiating a licensing agreement with Em's publishing firms, which it hopes to announce soon. In an encore, Emiinem's camp launched a similar legal salvo in February against a sixth company, Florida-based Phattones Media Productions. No word whether a settlement in that case is in the offing. The entertainer, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, isn't just targeting cell phones, but according to Hertz, is planning to sue karaoke companies in the next few months for spinning his tunes without first obtaining a license. Eminem has been consistently vigilant about protecting his work. In 2005, he took legal action and eventually settled with Apple for using a song in an iTunes commercial without permission. He also sued to stop The Source magazine from publishing lyrics from unauthorized, racially charged tracks from his early years as a rapper.
Eminem also moved up the release date for his last two albums in an effort to battle Internet piracy.
BOOKS - Authors and Publishers must get Online by Victoria Ahearn, Canadian Press Jun. 7 2006 Toronto -- The Internet remains the best tool for authors and publishers who want to get closer to their readers, yet many still aren't taking advantage of it, say experts scheduled to speak at BookExpo Canada 2006 in Toronto.
"The era of the reclusive author is quickly becoming an anachronism," Kevin Smokler, author and founder of the Virtual Book Tour, said ahead of the four-day annual trade book conference and fair, which starts June 9.
"Every author must have a website - there's no question about that - and every author must have, at the very least, an e-mail address and a way to communicate with their readers because their readers expect it now. Smokler, who gives tours in cyberspace for authors of fiction and narrative fiction, attended the Expo last year, telling the crowd, "If you are dealing with readers who are under the age of 40 and your books and your authors are not on the Internet, they don't exist to those readers." This year he plans to place an emphasis on online brand recognition, the importance of reaching out to lit bloggers and how to "play in that game, in that fierce, fierce battle for people's attention." "I'm the last generation who will remember life before a personal computer," the 33-year-old said over the phone from San Francisco. "To not use the Internet to promote particularly young adult books or pop culture books or books that appeal to a younger audience is just foolish because that's where that younger audience is. Any young adult author who doesn't have a Myspace page is sort of sealing themselves off from a huge percentage of their readership." Michael Cader, creator of the daily Internet publishing newsletter publishersmarketplace.com, will address similar issues at the Expo, specifically the importance of publishers and authors making a direct online connection to readers - without the aid of a retailer or intermediary. "Most of the innovation and how to use the Internet to reach readers and develop communities of interest and bring readers and authors closer together has taken place through the hands of others," he said over the line from New York. "The Internet makes it possible to literally develop deep, meaningful, one-to-one content-driven relationships between actual readers and actual authors and publishers." Electronic books that are available for download are not the way to do that, though, as it is still an emerging technology, say both experts. And the president of the Canadian Booksellers Association - a national trade association that represents trade and campus booksellers and provides content for the Expo - says it won't be a huge topic of discussion at the four-day event. "Everyone is waiting to see exactly ... how it will unfold. I mean, as a means of disseminating books and a means of reading books, the technology is to date, largely stillborn," Paul McNally, who is also co-owner of McNally Robinson Booksellers, said from Winnipeg. "But I think there's a wide expectation that it will show signs of life some day and maybe quite soon, who knows?" There's no doubt EBooks have become a bigger commercial venture over the years. Many websites are starting to sell downloadable bestsellers and several companies have created small, compact handheld devices specifically for reading the digital novels. But the technology doesn't seem to be catching on that quickly with readers yet, said McNally. And Sean Sundwall, a spokesman for Amazon.com, said their EBook sales are "certainly a minority compared to what we sell on the physical book side of the house." "Some of the reasons I think behind that are whether EBooks are even made available by the publisher and ultimately we are sellers of what is published," he said from Seattle. "I think as (EBook) devices become better at being able to be read off of and things like that, perhaps EBooks will pick up." Cader doesn't see that happening any time soon though. "Electronic books, right now, are a product so insignificant that they're not worth any of the ink that's been shed discussing them," he mused. "And by the time they're anything important, what they are will probably have changed so much that anything one says about them today will be like meaningful discussions of an automobile in 1901." BookExpo Canada, which is called the largest event of its kind in the country, takes place June 9-12 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It will include educational sessions, hands-on technology seminars and high-profile author breakfasts, including a Sports Breakfast with Canadian gold-medal-winning swimmer Mark Tewksbury, goalie Martin Brodeur and NHL linesman Ray (Scampy) Scapinello. Authors Wayne Johnston, David Adams Richards, Diana Gabaldon, Peter James, Linda Hall, Giles Blunt, Robert Wiersema and Canadian theatre star Sean Cullen will be among those discussing their writing careers.
ENTERTAINMENT - Canada's Walk of Fame by cbc.ca 05jun2006 -- Actress Pamela Anderson, David Letterman sidekick Paul Shaffer, humourist Eugene Levy and others joined the list of Canada's most famous stars and had their names engraved in a Toronto sidewalk. The awards weren't limited to entertainers. Olympian skier Nancy Greene Raine came from her home in Whistler, B.C., to welcome the members of the Crazy Canucks ski team, Dave Irwin, Ken Read, and Steve Podborski, who amazed the world with their skiing prowess in 1975. Fellow skier Dave Murray died in 1990 after a lengthy bout with cancer. The show has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1998, when the first dozen celebrities were inducted. They included famed figure skater Barbara Ann Scott, impressionist Rich Little, director Norman Jewison and ballerina Karen Kain, comedian John Candy and Canada's most famous pianist, Glenn Gould. The Walk of Fame was founded by Toronto businessman Peter Soumalias, who has said this year's honorees were chosen from over 100,000 submissions received from around the world. To qualify, a candidate must have been born or spent his or her formative years in Canada, and have been successful for a minimum of 10 years. Previous recipients include Alanis Morissette, Paul Anka, Jim Carrey, Shania Twain, Wayne Gretzky and Michael J. Fox.
FILM - Feature Film Downloads by MovieNews 01jun2006 -- CinemaNow, Inc., a broadband video-on-demand provider of feature films, announced May 31st, an agreement with Buena Vista Home Entertainment (a Disney company), to offer select movies on a download-to-own basis through its web site. Buena Vista Home Entertainment will also offer select new movies beginning with ‘Glory Road’ on June 6th, which will coincide with the timing of its home entertainment window. The agreement will also allow on-demand viewers to download the movie onto approved portable devices. Movies initially offered on a download-to-own basis will include recent hits such as ‘Flightplan,’ as well as catalog favorites such as ‘The Insider.’ Additional movies available the same day as their DVD release will include ‘Eight Below’ on June 20th and ‘Annapolis’ on June 27th. Customers will be able to purchase and download a legal, permanent copy of a Buena Vista Home Entertainment movie for unlimited playback. "We are pleased about this broadband distribution opportunity which allows Buena Vista Home Entertainment to provide viewers with more flexibility in viewing their favorite new releases and catalog movies on this emerging distribution platform," commented Pat Fitzgerald, executive vice president of sales, distribution and trade marketing, Buena Vista Home Entertainment. CinemaNow legally offers content from a library of more than 4,000 new and classic movies, television programs, music concerts and music videos from 20th Century Fox, ABC News, Disney, HDNet, Lionsgate, MGM, Miramax, NBC Universal, Sony, Sundance Channel, Warner Bros. and more than 250 other licensors for downloading or streaming.
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