Canadian DTCA Charter Challenge Indefinitely Adjourned…and a tree falls in the forest

The News
In the middle of financial turbulence, potential bankruptcy, and a storm of management changes, CanWest Global has decided to seek indefinite adjournment of their court case challenging Canadian restrictions on direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs.  In summary, CanWest was alleging that the ban on certain types of DTCA was infringing on their freedom [...]

About that blank media levy

This weekend my 6 year old and I made a mix CD of his favourite music. We’re swapping it with a handful of other families we know who value music that is palatable to both kids and parents. This type of thing is how we discovered a mutual parent-child love the pop-punk band ALL (we [...]

YouTube videos on CanWest info issues

I don’t have a television, but I do love to watch stuff on my computer.  Back in the last millenium, when I did have a TV, I didn’t have cable anyway, so I am easily impressed with the amazing diversity of media to which I have access via the Internet.
As you may have noticed from [...]

Canadian Election Advocacy Resources

While there’s been a lot of coverage of the US Election (in particular the, er, interesting choice of an apparent wannabee book-banner as Republican VP nominee), the relatively un-showy and non-flashy Canadian Federal Elections aren’t getting much press in the LIS blogosphere. October 14, 2008 is not just the first Open Access Day, it’s also [...]

Tomorrow’s History & the Role of Public Libraries

I’ve been thinking about digitization and history; specifically the trusim that history is written by the victors (aka the privileged), and what that means for our current era.
With literacy and war-conquests-slash-oppression on the part of literate groups, orality became devalued as “official” history in most of the mainstream, dominant, Western societies.  Non-literate or illiterate people [...]

Irresponsible health news reporting redux: the CBC on bone density & breast cancer

Can you stand to hear me kvetch again about irresponsible health reporting?
Today it’s the CBC (among others), whose health headline screams: Bone density level may act as predictor of breast cancer
It’s one of those articles without a byline, and the nameless reporter who penned this brief article clearly has no idea what they are [...]

The Vancouver Sun parody & SLAPP

When I moved to Canada, I was shocked to learn that parody is not a specially protected form of speech here. It is in the US, and I like to think I made pretty good use of that principle over the years. You may already be aware of some of the freedom of expression [...]

Net Neutrality in a Nutshell

Here’s the backgrounder I pulled together for the BCLA Resolution on Network (Net) Neutrality. A great debt is owed to Danielle Dennie (of LibrarianActivist fame) for her assistance in writing both the resolution and this backgrounder. Yes, this has been cross-posted in a couple of other places. -Greyson

Net Neutrality in a Nutshell:
Backgrounder for the BCLA [...]

Brand Sponsorship of YA Novels?

As a major YA novel fan, this made me want to cry.
A NYT article this week discusses what happened with the innovative and bestselling “Cathy’s Book” and what is in the plans for a new tween series, “Mackenzie Blue.”
After Running Press/Perseus Books, publishers of Cathy’s Book, revealed that they had agreed to have the characters [...]

Freedom of expression lawsuit irony

I’m still planning to deliver a post talking more in depth about the freedom of expression claim CanWest Global is making in their DTCA lawsuit, as I promised here, but this week’s commencement of the British Columbia Supreme Court case in which Adbusters is suing Global Television, the CBC and the CRTC begs my attention.
Who?
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