Category: News

December 14, 2009, New York Times
By Brooke Barnes

Paramount Pictures, looking for new ways to turn its old movies into cash, especially as DVD sales continue to decline, is creating an online video clip service that will allow users to search hundreds of feature films on a frame-by-frame basis.

Feeling the need for speed, as Tom Cruise put it in Top Gun? Log on to ParamountClips.com, search for the exact video snippet you want and press the checkout button. Within minutes – with the price depending on the type of licensing use you have in mind – Paramount will electronically deliver the selection in the format and resolution desired. Most scenes are available in multiple languages.

The site, to be introduced on Tuesday, is powered by VideoSense, an automated indexing tool developed by the technology company Digitalsmiths. Using proprietary video interpretation systems, Digitalsmiths allows films to be quickly searched by specific actor, line of dialogue, location, genre or product, among other criteria.

Michael Geist | November 10, 2009

Last week Canadian officials travelled to Seoul for the latest round of closed-door negotiations on an international treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Battling commercial counterfeiting would seem like a good idea, but leaks have revealed that ACTA – which has been conducted with unprecedented secrecy – is really about copyright, rather than counterfeiting.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that from the moment the talks began last year, observers noted the approach was far different from virtually any other international treaty negotiation. Rather than negotiating in an international venue such as the United Nations and opening the door to any interested countries, ACTA partners consisted of a small group of countries (Canada, United States, European Union, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Morocco, and Singapore) meeting in secret and opposed broadening the process. The substance of the treaty was also accorded the highest level of secrecy. Draft documents were not released to the public and even the locations of negotiations were often kept under wraps. In fact, the U.S. government refused to disclose information about the treaty on national security grounds.

Despite the efforts to keep the public in the dark, there has been a steady stream of leaks. Earlier this year, it was revealed criminal provisions would target both commercial and non-commercial infringement, creating the prospect of jail time even in cases where there was no intent to profit. Further, border guards would be given new powers to search people and seize products as they enter a country.

For more see: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4525/135/

An MP3 version of his interview on CBC’s As It Happens on Acta is available.

From Induatry Canada | June 11, 2008

The Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry, and the Honourable Josee Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, and Minister for La Francophonie, will deliver brief statements and answer media inquiries shortly after the tabling of a bill to amend the Copyright Act. Members of the media will also be able to attend a technical briefing and lock-up prior to the tabling of the bill to amend the Copyright Act.

More:
National Post – June 11, 2008

Report of Business | June 11, 2008

CBC | June 11, 2008

From National Post

The Canadian government is set to introduce new copyright legislation as soon as this week that will include provisions to target users with a $500 fine for illegal files transferred online, a move that legal experts say could see Canadians sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars if found guilty of infringement. Sources have told the National Post that one of the provisions in the government’s updated Copyright Act of Canada will include a fine for each “personal use download” found to be shared online through peer-to-peer software programs.

From Wired BLOG

Indiana University says that starting on April 21, the Recording Industry Association of America began sending 80 legal notices a day to the university, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Typically, the university handles less than 100 such notices a month from the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association of America and HBO combined.

Chronicle of Higher Education Report – April 30, 2008

Throughout the Summer and Fall of 2006 we worked on revising Theses Guidelines, revising our Partial Copyright License, customizing UVicDSpace, and adding more graduate theses to our ETD Collection. At the end of 2006, we delivered our UVic ETD Project Implementation Report. We had not met all our deadlines, but the project was moving forward. In the Spring of 2007 we met with the Graduate Secretaries to tell them about digital submission for theses and dissertations. Now the word is out and they are encouraging their grad students to submit their theses to UVicDSpace. By Summer we hope to have all our procedures in place and encourage every student to submit their thesis to UVicDSpace.

The ETD Pilot Project was completed in Dec. 2005. An ETD Result Report was presented to the Graduate Executive Committee on Jan. 16, 2006. There was enthusiastic support for an ETD submission option at UVic. An ETD Implementation Plan was drafted and presented to the Graduate Executive Committee on Apr. 19, 2006. The Implementation Plan outlined the tasks to be accomplished during the Summer and Fall of 2006. As tasks are accomplished they will be posted to the blog. The goal is to have a fully developed ETD option for Graduate students by Dec. 2006.

The next meeting for the ETD Pilot Project Management meeting will be on Tues. Nov. 8 in Rm. 210 in the Library. Here is the Agenda