Category: Life

As the interviews draw to a close, I’m faced with a difficult dilema:

To go Creative Commons, or not to.

Here’s why this is an issue. I have so far contacted 36 corporate/governmental/individual entities. These people have given me permission to film them, or on their location (well not all – see a few posts back). They’ve given me this permission knowing that the film would be distributed. If I release it CC, and someone plays with the video and releases another version out, then they’d have to get permission from all those people too to release their film. Even though this is their problem, I’d be seen as a conduit to promote some kind of infringement. I have no qualms people playing with my video – in fact I want this to go public domain in 5 years.

That’s assuming I don’t use any copyrighted materials in the movie of course. I was in the midst of negotiating with CTV and G4TechTV to get some footage of theirs on my film. If I release this under the CC, I cannot use any copyrighted materials like that at all. That’s because I would become a conduit of copyright infringement, as it would be illegal for others to re-release the film without first getting permission from those TV corps. (Yet under the CC lisence I’d have, others can re-distribute – you can see how I would be the one pursued here.)

And another issue: distribution. If I go CC, or even mention public domain, then my hopes of distributing the film via the National Film Board are scrapped. If I don’t go CC, I can’t use the music I have from Magnatune for the initial non-commercial stage of this film. This music is a big key to the film. Your thoughts?

Either way I’m screwed.

Even though I’m only halfway through the interviews, I put up a sneak peak to show you what’s been done so far.

You can see the full screens here. Now keep in mind that this is all raw footage: the brightness, contrast, and colour balance will all be edited for the final release.Release date is April 1st.

I’ve updated the website backend. WordPress has been upgraded to version 2.0, and I replaced the Invisionboard Forums with the Open-Source k4BB [k4bb.org].

The biggest thing I’ve noticed with the move to WordPress 2.0 is the WYSIWYG editor. Finally – no need for lots of HTML coding if I want something to look a certain way. It also features a few nifty graphical updates. The transition was extremely painless – you write over the old files with the new install, and use a certain special upgrade PHP page. That’s it. I’m also planning to do a few tweaks to the Mambo frontend. Namely adding an RSS feed for the forums.

Update: Ran into serious issues with k4BB, and will have to reinstall it. Looks like the db got corrupted. Meanwhile, I’m back to the old software.

Update – Feb 21: Fixed WordPress bug. You can now post comments again!

Went to Montreal to interview the CMPDA. It was shorter than expected – once there, and once the initial opening questions were addressed, there really wasn’t much to talk about. Part of it had to do with the confusion of the CMPDAs Anti-Piracy Division’s role in things, part of it had to do with the fact that alot of the topics were already covered by other interviewees.

That said, it was a good interview; and Serge Corriveau (guy in charge of antipiracy division) was a good speaker. On a side note: MONTREAL/BROSSARD WAS FOOKIN COLD. It was at least -25°C.

Today I interviewed CHUO and Michael Geist. Both interviews went great.

I’d especially like to thank Erin Flynn, the CHUO station manager, for taking extra time to give me an impromptu tour of the studio. It’s more footage for the film, and very much appreciated.

As I do these interviews, I’ve come to notice how working spaces are defined by their inhabitants. In the office of the CRIA president, he had all these serious posters and whatnot, but hidden among them was that one picture of Buffy. Michael Geist’s office had more texts crammed in it than most libraries… all manner of interesting books on copyright reforms, the DMCA, posters about. It’s a sharp contrast from the slick office of the CRIA, but not necessarily better or worse. Simply different. That variety, and the fact that people differ so, is quite a wonderful thing.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Montreal, filming the CMPDA.

In other news, I’ve lost about 80% of my hearing. Got it checked out, and I’m now on meds for the next 10 days.