strangely entangled

Well it’s all over the news now. Jim Prentice, the Canadian Minister of Industry recently unveiled his proposed amendments to the Canadian Copyright Act, and they’re terrible. The amendments are even worse than the US DMCA, and if enacted into law, would make it illegal to do things like watching an out-of-region DVD, or even unlocking a cell phone for use on a different network! For a good overview, check out Dr. Michael Geist’s blog entry on the subject.

I’m not very politically-motivated, but after reading about these amendments I had to write to my MP to express my disapproval. I’m all for maintaining reasonable rights for the copyright holders, but I also want fair-use for individuals. Why? Let me tell you about my entertainment system.

I cancelled my cable TV subscription over a year ago and bought an AppleTV media player. I watch a lot of podcasts, and now I even use it to rent movies (thanks Apple Canada). In addition to all the free (and legal) podcast content, my wife and I have a rather sizable DVD collection. As we live in a small Vancouver condo, we don’t have room for a large entertainment system. Our fireplace mantle only has room for our television and AppleTV, nevermind a DVD player. So, we copy the video from our legally-purchased DVDs to our AppleTV for viewing, and store the DVDs for safekeeping.

Under Jim Prentice’s new Copyright Act, this behaviour (watching videos I own on a device I own) would be illegal. That is unacceptable to me.

If it’s unacceptable to you too, and you happen to be Canadian, then you can do something about it. You can use this website to send an email to Jim Prentice and your local member of parliament, and tell them how you feel. It’s quick and easy to do.

What really bugs me about all this is that Minister Prentice chose not to consult the Canadian people when drafting these amendments. Instead, he reportedly spent most of his time consulting with big media companies, US lobbyists and the US ambassador to Canada.

I am forced to wonder why Minister Prentice would draft a bill that would make criminals of ordinary Canadians, based solely on the input of US lobbyists? What’s in it for him? Obviously not the support of the Canadian people, based on the responses I’ve seen on the net and elsewhere. Maybe a shiny new car?

Here’s a YouTube video of a heated debate in Parliament over this issue.

For those not in the know, Richard Feynman was one of the world’s great physicists and by all accounts quite a character. I came across this essay, describing his time spent working for the Thinking Machines Company (TMC) in the 1980s.

What I found really interesting was how Feynman, a physicist, found himself working in computer science and engineering roles at TMC - and was able to apply his physics background to solve problems in new and unusual ways. When I went into physics, I was told that there weren’t many jobs in my field of study. To some extent, that is true. But there are many fields where physics knowledge comes in particularly handy, and can actually give you an edge, as Feynman showed back in 1983.

By the end of that summer of 1983, Richard had completed his analysis of the behavior of the router, and much to our surprise and amusement, he presented his answer in the form of a set of partial differential equations. To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a bit strange. Feynman’s router equations were in terms of variables representing continuous quantities such as “the average number of 1 bits in a message address.” I was much more accustomed to seeing analysis in terms of inductive proof and case analysis than taking the derivative of “the number of 1’s” with respect to time. Our discrete analysis said we needed seven buffers per chip; Feynman’s equations suggested that we only needed five.

The latest episode of commandN has just been posted, and I just wanted to know who that sharp-looking guest star at 10:40 is?

(oh right, it’s me!)

I had a great time at mesh08, except for an unfortunate food-poisoning incident on my last day there. Made some new friends, attended some really great talks, and even got a t-shirt. How can you go wrong with that?

My thanks to Amber, Will, Jeff and Chris of commandN, both for the conference ticket, and for being so welcoming. The one word that comes to mind when I think of those guys is genuine. They genuinely love what they’re doing, and it shows in their work. Thanks again guys!