Google vs China: A Battle of Two Evil Empires

Google did something rather unexpected this week. They told the People's Republic of China where to stick their censorship. Google's Gmail service had a major breech of security several months ago. It was discovered last week that the Chinese government had been behind it. Of the email accounts hacked, several belonged to Chinese democracy advocates. Google claims that no critical information was stolen.

In response to the hacking, Google launched back more than a warning shot. They shut down all censorship on Google.cn, the Chinese portal. Several years ago, the company had instituted censorship on the search engine to appease the PRC. People visiting Google.cn were barred from searching for terms such as democracy and the Tienanmen protests. That is until last week when Google refused to comply in retaliation. The company is now debating whether they should continue to operate in this country. Google's mission has always been to give people free and easy access to information. That's why they came under such heavy criticism from Western human rights and free speech activists when they volunteered to comply with Chinese censorship in the first place.

There is some debate as to why Google is pondering leaving the PRC. Some say that it's because rival Chinese search engine Baidu is taking over their market in that country. Regardless of the case, it's a major blow to a country who has often considered itself invincible to foreign criticism over its poor human rights track record. If Google pulls out, it leaves a huge gap in Chinese access to information. China has been aggressively attempting to muzzle anything online that sheds the Communist Party in a bad light, that the government finds immoral (such as pornography or Falun Gong), or inspires reformers and democracy advocates. However, much like in Western nations (such as wired neighbour's South Korea and Japan), the Chinese have come to rely on the convenience and economic benefits that the internet provides. Much of those benefits are provided through companies like Google. Stopping the information flow would be a major setback.

Of course Google leaving does benefit the PRC somewhat, in that they can gain tighter control content through domestic, or even state owned search providers. It's bad for people who were talking advantage of Google's supposed security to hide their pro-democracy and pro-human rights activities. In fact, the Communist Party may end up on top eventually should Google leave. In the mean time, they've exposed themselves wide to attacks from reformers and Western critics after this little international incident. Maybe more will be inspired to oppose the socialist oligarchy that has held an iron grip on the country for 60 years. Now if only other Western IT companies would show the same balls and refuse to bow to censorship, we'd be laughing. I'm looking at you Mr. Gates and Mr. Balmer.

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My Stew Tastes Like Bark

It wasn't that long ago that dog was a common sight on the menu in China. Today, most Chinese are repulsed by the idea of eating their pet. How regressive they've become!

Here's an interesting article from the BBC of course. Who else would publish this? The article advocates that eating your pets may not be a bad idea in terms of reducing carbon emissions. The article is written tongue-in-cheek obviously. It refers to a book written by Robert Vale titled "Time to Eat the Dog?", which argues that dogs and cats should be treated like pigs or chickens. They keep us company only later to be made a tasty meal. Supposedly it reduces carbon intensive ranching.

This just so typical of the climate change garbage that's published on their service weekly. So now owning a pet is being demonized as destroying the planet. Please. They're just getting even more ridiculous, as if that were possible. I guess more shocking/disturbing is that people actually buy into this rubbish.

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The Best Political Shows: Penn & Teller's Bullshit

I thought I'd do a rundown on some of the best political shows on TV. Not the serious programs for a change but instead those that make light of politics. Today, we're looking at Penn & Teller's Bullshit. The show airs on The Movie Network's main station (Bell TV channel 300/840) Thursdays at 11pm.

In Bullshit, Penn Jilette and his partner Teller take commonly held beliefs and debunk them. The show is unabashedly biased with a heavy libertarian slant. The show always keeps this out in the open though, unlike so many others. The episodes follow a current affairs documentary format with a comic twist. Use of swearing, crude jokes, and even nudity are all there to prove a point. In a typical episode Penn & Teller will take a misconception or controversial topic, express their viewpoint, and interview those who support & oppose them. The show tends to take a far deeper look at people who do not support their argument. The duo then make fun of them and support their position with facts presented in an academic manner.

The show has covered topics ranging from silly misconceptions such as colonics, lawns, and hair, to more serious topics such as terrorism, cults, drugs, and climate change. It's different from the usual current affairs shows as it mixes serious issues with humour without being overbearing. It's also rare in that it's overtly biased but neither conservative or liberal. Teller has admitted that the duo think their own show is bullshit in that regard, which will likely be the focus of their final episode. However, the show is vary fair in its presentation. Bullshit won a Writers Guild of America award for best comedy/talk show in 2004 and has been nominated for Emmy Awards for outstanding reality and writing several years running. It's one of the best current affairs shows on TV right now and is definitely worth checking out.

Here's one full episode from Season 2 about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It's been broken down into four parts. Below is part one.

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Canadian Broadcasting: Radio Raise Further Questions

I wasn't sure whether I was going to post this story or not but it ties in with my article of TV versus radio in Canadian broadcasting. Sorry for this story being a couple of weeks old. In that article, I looked at the double standard between radio and TV. Namely that TV is given certain protections, notably against international broadcasting, that radio does not. Despite Canadian radio stations being fed to the international wolves, they are actually making money, in fact considerably more money even though we are in a recession. According to the Financial Post, radio profits before taxes for 2009 are up 12%. Revenues are up 5% across the board. Higher ad revenues are being credited for the success. Television by contrast is loosing money and saying that their ad revenues are declining. Therefore they are demanding we pay more for TV to compensate. Canadian radio faces stiff competition from satellite and Internet radio providers while TV is protected from this. This seems to point to the fact that perhaps it's because Canadian TV is being poorly managed. It could be argued that TV content costs more to produce, which is true. Most radio stations, music ones anyway, don't produce their own programming and they require less equipment to operate. However, CTV's claims that ad revenues are down don't hold up if they're actually increasing in another, similar medium. TV networks need to take a serious step back and reevaluate their business practises. Enough trying to squeeze more out of the recession battered consumer.

Source: Financial Post via Canada.com

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The Curious Case of Canadian Broadcasting

Internet radio is great. I can listen to thousands of stations anywhere in the world right from my computer. Even Canadian radio stations have grown a small international audience judging by the ones who phone in to talk programs. Try watching international TV on your computer and you'll get a completely different and wholly negative experience. I use IGN a lot for my MMNTech site but I find a lot of the videos they've been using to show clips and trailers of TV shows are through Hulu. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns both Hulu and IGN so naturally they're going to use the service. Unfortunately, Hulu is not available in Canada or anywhere else for that matter besides the United States. Pretty stupid for a website with an international audience. Copyright problems are usually blamed but I don't buy this since audio falls under the same umbrella as video. So why am I free to access international audio broadcasts online but not international television?

To answer this question, you have to go a few years back with a struggle over Apple Corp.'s iTunes and the Canadian networks. When Apple launched the iTunes video store back around 2006, they wanted to put TV shows up for all customers. However, this was blocked in Canada because Canadian networks refused to hand over broadcasting rights. As usual, CTV was the leader, meaning popular American shows like South Park took a long time to reach Canadian internet shores. It doesn't matter that CTV doesn't own the copyrights to these shows. They had been handed exclusive broadcasting privilege from the CRTC. Much of it has to do with laws concerning Canadian ownership of broadcast outlets and Canadian content laws. Apple is an American company after all. What confuses me is why such a double standard exists between TV and radio in Canada. To tell Apple they can't sell TV episodes in Canada would be equivalent to them saying they can't sell music on iTunes because it would hurt Canadian record stores and radio stations. Obviously that never happened. The problem still exists today with a great deal of television content moving online. Direct feeds from American networks are off limits to Canadians let alone huge archive sites like Hulu. Canadians are met with the message that they are not permitted to use the service. So let me get this strait. We live in a multicultural society that praises our international heritage but the government won't let me watch international broadcasts online. Does that make sense? I didn't think so.

The CRTC recently decided that it would not try to regulate new media at this time, although they are already doing it by proxy. They also left the door open for future regulation. As I've said many times before, the whole Canadian content rules are anti-multicultural and are vastly outdated for our current international society. The laws only exist at this point to keep the likes of CTV, Bell, and CBC in exclusive communications monopolies. It is worth noting that radio doesn't have the lobby power that the TV networks do. The CRTC needs to get with the program and open the doors to international television broadcasting, no matter what the medium, to put it on equal ground with radio.

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CTV Gets Warning Shot Across Her Bow

According to the Financial Post, Canadian cable operators have filed a formal complaint with broadcast authorities against CTV regarding their recent advertising campaign. They are accusing CTV of violating journalistic principals by only airing their side of the story, constantly. Any avid couch potato will have seen their ads running 24/7 on each station the network owns. They have also inserted the pro cable tax ads into all their news casts. Presumably this is what has gotten cable companies irked. They have filed a letter with the CRTC asking them to take "immediate action". I'm definitely siding with the cable providers on this one. CTV is certainly not going to win many friends in the public. One thing I've come to learn is that Canucks hate it when anyone tries to raise the costs of their holy trinity: Tim's Coffee, beer, and TV. When Canadians hear cable TV and bill increases in the same sentences, they tend to get riled up.

I had considered filing a complaint myself with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, of which CTV is a member. Their fee hike commercials do seem to violate clauses 6 and 7 of the CBSC's code of ethics which require balanced coverage of issues. Being a journalism student who will be looking for work in a year's time, that's probably not the wisest thing for me to do. Perhaps my readers could be persuaded into doing so. It's gone beyond simply a matter of money to something I would equate to as deceptive propaganda and extortion by this network. CTV is hosting an open house this Saturday (May 23rd) so that would also be a good platform to politely voice concerns about their methods.

Source: Financial Post

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Are Canadian Broadcasters BS'ing the CRTC?

For all the talk about the death of media, there seems to be no shortage of it. HDTV is surging, the Internet is growing, even print media is expanding to a certain extent even if its future is no longer on paper. However, we kept getting told that advertising revenues are down and threaten to destroy Canadian television/newspapers/radio as we know it. Tell that to the fifty commercials they make you sit through during the average half hour TV show. Now, Canadian broadcasters are up in front of the CRTC trying to drastically hike your cable and satellite fees or else pull over-the-air television from the airwaves in some markets. I don't buy the argument that the death of conventional media is imminent. Even if it is, a lot of it has to do with how the media industry is operating rather than how people are consuming content. Take CTV for example who just accomplished a hostile take-over of the CHUM network and auctioned off former CITY stations to Rogers Television since they couldn't hold more than two network stations in the same market by law. Canada went from four major networks to three (soon to be two as some claim) as CHUM went the way of DuMont. Legendary rock station 1050 CHUM in Toronto was closed down and replaced by CP24 radio, an all news station owned by CTV, and most CITY shows were liquidated or replaced with new personalities. Arguably, the content on CTV controlled networks has gotten worse, not better since the takeover. They currently now own half the channels in the country including flagship CTV stations, the Comedy Network, Space, Bravo, the A Channel network, the Much Music network, MTV Canada, CP24 News, CTV Newsnet, TSN, and the Discovery Channel. That's not the mention the fact that they already owned Canada's largest direct-to-home pay satellite provider as well. CTV, owned by Bell Canada, spent hundreds of millions on the deals to buy up Canadian media and now has nothing to show for it except mountains of debt. Talk about a case of their eyes being bigger than their bellies.

Of course, CTV is not the only network in trouble. We've been hearing for a while now that Canwest Global is on the verge of bankruptcy and cannot even pay employee salaries. However, they have continued to operate as normal so I can only assume that what we've been hearing is not the whole truth. CBC is threatening cuts despite their executives being caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, abusing their expense accounts to the tune of $60,000 on frivolous things. We are in a recession but I just cannot accept that it is the only reason they are in trouble. Nor can I accept that Internet sites like Youtube are stealing business away from them. Just as it is with the auto industry, most of the problems seem to stem from a long string of poor business decisions. Also like the auto industry, the networks are trying to put the government up against the ropes (read blackmailing) by threatening to take down over-the-air television unless they either get a bailout or get additional fees from cable companies to carry network stations. If there's one thing CTV is good at doing, it's tooting their own horn. After the CRTC denied the increases last week, they've launched an advertising campaign to argue that cable fees should be hiked. CFTO in Toronto is even hosting an "open house" where they will brainwash... er, inform the public on their side of the issue.

The reason there are no cable fees for network stations is because they are seen as a vital link between the state and their citizens as a tool for informing the electorate and providing information on disasters. Television networks are obligated to offer their network stations for free regardless of whether it is by antenna or cable. The same is true within the United States. It's also worth noting that it is unfair to make people pay for a service that is already available for free to everyone. Despite the government having a vested interest in keeping network TV available for free, television stations are under no obligation to keep over-the-air facilities operational. As Canada approaches the DTV switch-over date in 2011, certain networks may refuse to upgrade their equipment in less profitable markets, leaving many in the dark. A large number of these less profitable markets do not have cable access and the costs of satellite TV are prohibitive for many. (Basic satellite is roughly double the price of basic cable, not including taxes and box rental.) Large swaths of the country, namely in markets such as the Prairies, the Maritimes, and the Far North in particular may see themselves without access to television. To many, it seems unfathomable that TV would simply disappear.

One has to question CTV's true motives, given they are the only network that has really been openly trying to win public support for the fees. They are owned by Bell, who also owns Canada's largest satellite provider. Increasing cable costs to make it more comparable to their satellite service would certainly be beneficial to them. It would potentially solidify Bell's monopoly over information utilities within Canada. A monopoly that the CRTC has all but openly endorsed. BCE and its various utility subsidiaries have been facing slipping sales and growing consumer dissatisfaction in recent years. Regardless of their motives, blackmail is not exactly the best tactic to win political support and CTV's gamble borders on being outright shameful. If CTV wants to save some cash, they should instead sell off some of the assets they foolhardily bought in their attempt to build a media monopoly. They are the ones who are being greedy and anti-competitive. All the hikes would do is punish consumers. Unfortunately, that's just situation normal when it comes to Canadian politics. If media is dying, it's media monopolies that are doing it. Not the cable companies and certainly not consumers. Of course now that HDTV is available for free over the air, what would happen if people ditched cable and satellite all together. Don't laugh, I've seen more and more antennas going up in my neighbourhood. More people switching to free alternatives would effectively wipe out all the money CTV gets from their speciality stations and Bell ExpressVu. Maybe they'll be demanding we ban antennas next and lable people who use them as pirates.

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Turner Getting Sued, Well... Maybe, Hopefully

The Odyssey of Garth Turner never seems to end. The trend now for washed up celebrities and politicians is to write the tell-all-book, and Garth is no exception. The book, titled Sheeple: Caucus Confidential in Stephen Harper's Ottawa, naturally takes a stab at the Harper government. However, it has landed Turner in legal hot water with the Canadian Press. As you probably already know, Turner was ousted from the Harper caucus in 2006 for violations of caucus confidentiality through the use of his blog. Turner is now blaming the media for his ouster. He claims that the confidentiality violation was made up by the PMO and leaked to the media. The media is at fault, according to him, for not fact checking that tid bit of information. The Canadian Press is threatening to pursue legal action against the comment.

Turner himself is no stranger to controversy. He made a mockery of the Canadian parliamentary system in 2006 by jumping ship to the Liberals after his constituents advised him to remain an Independent. Turner had promised he would abide by their wishes which were voiced at a series of his "Town Hall Meetings." He was nearly kicked out of the Dion Caucus a year later for making inflammatory remarks against Quebec and Alberta on his blog, calling them "separatist losers". Turner was defeated in the 2008 election in his home riding of Halton by Lisa Raitt, current minister of natural resources. He lost by a significant margin of 12%. In my own opinion, after shamefully campaigning for the man when he was a Conservative in 2006, I think Turner has gone insane. There is a clear difference between being outspoken and mad. I'm outspoken but hardly crazy. I don't make claims that there was a conspiracy against me when I screw up. Garth seems to be a vary bitter person who is borderline paranoid. I really think he needs to seek professional help; and I'm not being cheeky when I say that.

Updated April 25th: I've come across a review of the book. Kudos to this fellow who actually read it. As you know, I have a severe allergy to BS that would cause my head to explode if I picked it up. According to the Creeple blog, the book is garbage and far more poorly written than some of Turner's other works. It reads like a compilation of his blog posts. Can you believe that at one time Turner was actually a respected journalist? How the mighty have fallen.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

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Pirate Bay Ruling Shows Flaws With Modern Copyright Law

I never thought I'd be talking about Sweden on here but here we are. A court in the Scandinavian country has convicted Pirate Bay's co-founders and have found them guilty of accessory to breeching copyright laws. For those who don't know, Pirate Bay is like Google for torrents. A torrent is a peer-to-peer downloading service. Pirated music and movies are often provided through such services though torrents do have a large legitimate following within the open source software community as it is cheaper than conventional direct download distribution for large files. The Pirate Bay's founders have been sentenced to a year in prison each as well as hefty fines of $3.58 million US. This case exposes a lot of the problems with current global copyright law. Under Canadian and US law, copyright infringement is punishable with a five year prison sentence and stiff fines, up to $50,000 per instance I believe. This puts it as an indictable crime in line with serious offenses such as armed robbery. Many argue that copyright infringement is theft and should be treated as such. However, those convicted of petty theft rarely receive sentences of more than two years less a day, a summery conviction in line with minor drug possession. Most never receive prison terms, just probation and maybe house arrest. So what's the difference between shoplifting a DVD from a store and downloading it from the Internet? Why is the latter treated far more harshly by the justice system than the former? Also, how can Pirate Bay be held responsible? It is important to keep in mind that they were not the ones actually providing the copyrighted material. Pirate Bay is simply a search engine for torrents. They did not create the files and they were not offered for download from their servers. Are they encouraging people to download it? Most certainly yes, but I feel there is a huge legal grey zone here. They're only providing a means to an end. It would be as if I were to casually suggest to someone in a bar you can kill someone by putting a plastic bag over their head. If they actually go do it, am I guilty of murder as well? No reasonable jury would say so provided there was no proof that I was egging that person on. Google can easily be accused of doing the exact same thing, same with Microsoft or in fact any computer manufacturer or Internet service provider. Egging someone on is considered to be a crime, but does the punishment fit the crime?

I believe that Pirate Bay has simply become an entertainment industry pariah. It's not the first time they've done so. Copyright trials in the United States tend to resemble three ring circuses more than a court of law. Groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America have been known to uses spy tactics to obtain data. There have been several high profile cases in which these tactics have been used to falsely accuse people of copyright infringement. Most notoriously was the case of a deceased grandmother who never owned a computer. This sort of evidence gathering is technically illegal to begin with. The problem is that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to private citizens. However, that sort of data is also technically not admissible in court either, something judges in the US are beginning to enforce. The Recording Industry alone has filed literally thousands of suits in the past five or so years, which have clogged the courts, something judges are growing increasingly intolerant of. Those who are convicted often face unreasonable sentences. Take a mother who was forced to pay up several hundred thousand dollars for allegedly downloading a handful of songs. Far more than what they would be worth at retail, even if you include people who downloaded the songs off her. (that's how P2P works) Groups such as the Electronics Frontier Foundation (a group that defends fair use rights in the US) have argued that this violates her Eighth Amendment rights to be free from excessive bail & fines and cruel & unusual punishment. The original conviction was overturned and a new trial has since been ordered.

The problem is that despite the fact that groups such as the RIAA engage in unscrupulous activities to gather evidence, they more often than not get their way. The entertainment industry has a huge lobby pushing governments to strengthen sentences for copyright infringement and reduce fair use rights. Originally appearing to want to soften copyright law and to add more fair use exceptions, Barack Obama has since decided that more needs to be done to strengthen copyright. Unsurprisingly his campaign for president received large donations from Hollywood. The way the law is set up now, anybody could be considered guilty of copyright infringement. Last month, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore caused a stir when he admitted he likes to use his digital video recorder (DVR/PVR) to record his favourite shows and watch them at a later time. He also admits he likes to port these shows to watch on his iPod. Under Canadian law, recording TV shows using a DVR is illegal. This unintentional gaffe exposed the issues with last year's Bill C-61, which has since been dropped by the Harper government. C-61 would have brought Canada in lock step with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of the United States, passed by the Clinton administration in 1998. While the DMCA did clarify copyright law, it severely reduced consumer rights. Notably, it made it illegal to rip commercial DVDs and put something so common as ripping CDs to your iPod into a legal grey zone. I personally admit that I have ripped my favourite DVDs to store them on a personal media server. Doing this has a huge benefit in terms of convenience since I can have all my favourite films and TV shows accessible from my Playstation instantly on demand. No digging through discs, no risk of getting them scratched or dirty. I have purchased all these movies legally but in some jurisdictions, I have committed a crime just by transferring them to my server. If I travel to the US and save one of these movies on my laptop's hard drive to watch during the flight, US customs officials are allowed and encouraged to search and confiscate my computer. Imagine being told that the movie you copied is worth more than your $1400 laptop and all your work on it. I am not selling or giving away the film copies, I am using them only for my own personal use. However, I am still guilty of a crime punishable by five years in prison. If you copy a photo off the Internet to show a friend, that's illegal. If you copy text from a news article to put on your blog, even if you cite it, that's illegal. Not all of these are enforced but the law permits that they can be, and that they are all subject to harsh punishment. The entertainment industry has been pushing global governments to enforce every detail of copyright to the maximum letter of the law, and they have spent billions in lobbying for it. On the Moore issue, keep in mind that the entertainment industry once tried to have VCRs banned way back in the 1980s and audio cassette tapes a decade before that. They cited that these technologies would cause rampant copyright infringement, even though they never did. Both cases against these devices were thrown out of court. More recently though, the US government has allowed for the use of broadcast flags for over the air DTV signals which prevent certain programs from being recorded; the choice being left up to the content provider. The flags are not widely adopted and most current DVR systems ignore them. However, there was a controversy last year when Windows Vista users tried to record Medium and American Gladiators using the operating system's built in video recorder. The software is one of the few instances where the flags are supported and these people were prevented from recording their programs. This was the first time a large portion of the general public were introduced to the restrictions.

The problem with copyright law is not so much it trying to prevent actual piracy but rather that it has ultimately ended up treating ordinary people like common criminals. What we consider to be day to day activities when we use our media are crimes and can actually be punished with severe jail time. I argue that this violates basic legal and consumer rights of individuals in favour of the rights of large, powerful lobby groups. This is wrong. Dowloading a song off the internet does not justify jail time. A small fine and probabtion at most but these people do not deserve to have their lives ruined by powerful media cartels. It doesn't say much about our society when we value intellectual property or cartels more than say the physical property of the average Joe; or that we put drunk drivers and violent offenders away for less time than those who copy a few movies. Copyright law needs to be reformed to enhance consumer protection, not to limit it. The system we have now is broken, plain and simple.

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An Unpublished Letter to the Champion on Urban Sprawl

It's been a while since I've written anything local but sometimes something just boils your backside so much that it just has to go to print. So let me give you a bit a background information. A developer is trying to build a huge mall behind my house that nobody wants or needs. Local residents, the hospital, housing developers, and local councillor Gary Carr have been strongly opposed to the mall. However, the town council has shown little to no interest in helping these people and the developer just ran off to the OMB when they failed to get the zoning changed. So myself and my neighbours have been trying to get a sound barrier put up since we back on to a major road. I have particular interest in this since the entrance to the mall (one of three!) is facing the back of our house, meaning we're going to get headlights shining in our back windows at night and 24/7 traffic noise. I was woken up at 6am this morning by the developers construction crew. I know some readers will think "aww, poor baby". I worked in construction for several years and by law, when working in residential areas, you cannot start earlier than 7am. We've tried to get the town and developer to put up the barrier for Bronte St residents. It would cost some $120,000 for the whole street from Derry Rd. to Vanier Dr. The developer has only put up $20,000, which is quite frankly an insult. The fence would cost us $6,000 to put up on our own property, which is a lot for us but a pittance for the developer. However, it looks like we're loosing this war.

Below is a letter on the subject that I submitted to the Milton Canadian Champion. They refused to publish the letter stating that it was "inaccurate". All the information it contains comes from meetings and official letters and our own discussions on the subject. It was 100% accurate, as everyone I showed it to agreed. To add salt to the wound, they actually published a notice in the paper saying that all letter submitters should ensure the information contained is accurate! That was a major slap in the face to myself and our cause. This leads me to believe that the Champion is in bed with the developers or is just incompetent. The last part is a guarantee, the first one likely but impossible to prove. I think this letter needs to be published so it's going to go up here, where I'm in control. On the plus side, this whole issue has given me a lot of new inductees for the Idiots Hall of Shame.

When plans to grow Milton were announced nearly a decade ago now, the Town Council stressed that they would try to keep the small town feel. Now that we can look at this plan with twenty-twenty hindsight, I can say this promise has been completely and utterly broken. Milton is walking down the same path Brampton did several decades earlier. It is a poorly planned jumble of development, snarling traffic, and increasing rates of crime. The common excuse is that this naturally comes with growth. In reality, this is the byproduct of the Town and the province turning over our humble little community to large developers who have no interest in preserving it as a small town. When it was on the other side of town, the development was easier to ignore. I guess the statement “not in my backyard” always holds true.
I have lived in Milton my entire life. My current house had a lovely view of the escarpment. Now there is a housing development there and half the view is gone, taking away much of the appeal of living in south Milton. So much for Dalton McGuinty's Green Belt; though his Places to Grow Act is what has been trumping it. The last straw for me is the proposed First Capital shopping centre development at the corner of Derry and Bronte. The plan seeks to cram a Milton Mall sized plaza on a plot of land half that size. Myself and my neighbours have been fighting this proposal tooth and nail. The land in question was originally zoned for light industry, which we were fine with as that only meant nine-to-five traffic. The plan for the proposed plaza calls for five large buildings, three entrances off Bronte, more traffic snarling lights, and more noise pollution. It has already gotten to the point where I am no longer able to use my backyard in the summer due to noise and the town refuses to erect a sound barrier. Originally the plaza was planned to be open 24-hours, which would lead to constant noise and light pollution, and possibly attract crime. After a meeting with the council, it was determined that nobody wanted this plaza, including the housing developers, and the town supported us. So naturally, First Capital took their fight to the OMB and the Town was forced to rezone the property. One cannot really blame the Town for this as the province has constitutional right to override the decisions of local councils. We have people unfamiliar with the community making decisions that affect us directly, without members of the community having any real input. The developer came back with “changes” to their proposal, which was now an “office development” that would include shopping. In reality, the plan has not changed at all since we originally voiced our concerns back in 2007. Indeed it was worse than the original as it included adding islands to Bronte and pushing the property buffers closer to the road. The Town's and First Capital's answer to our complaints? We'll plant some trees so you don't have to look at it. Lovely. We loose our escarpment view, our quality of life declines dramatically, but at least we will have some trees that do nothing to stop noise pollution, which is the primary issue. At the vary least they should be putting up an eight foot sound barrier along Bronte; at the developer's and the Town's expense, not ours. It's the only practical method for solving the pollution issue. Nothing is being done to adequately address our concerns.

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FOX Makes Jackass of Self.... Again

FOX News is controversial to put it lightly. It is currently the only major conservative TV news station within the United States. The network has come under fire once again, this time for insensitive remarks about Canadians in Afghanistan made on program Red Eye. According to Wikipedia, Red Eye, hosted by Greg Gutfeld, is a late night comedy show that airs on the 24-hour news channel. Gutfeld blasted Canada for saying it wanted to take a break from Afghanistan after its mission was over in 2011. Well, it's hard to put into text exactly what he said so I'll let Mr. Gutfeld speak for himself.


Now it's easy to get outraged by this, especially since it was aired just after four brave Canadians lost their lives when a roadside bomb exploded in Kandahar. The statement is insensitive at best and ignorant at worst. However, I really can't get too upset by this. Red Eye is a comedy show primarily, not a news program. Plus it airs at 3 AM. In all likelyhood, vary few Americans watched this broadcast. It only came to the attention of us here north of 40 when the clip, aired last week, appeared on Youtube. The question is whether Gutfeld is alone among Americans. Do they even realize how much Canada is contributing to the war effort over there? A hell of a lot more than they are. Canada was essentially left holding the bag while the US went off to fight Iraq. Afghanistan went from hunting Osama Bin Landen and bringing him to justice to some hack kneed nation building exercise. Most of our boys have been killed by these IEDs rather than in actual battle. Little progress is being made to fix this backwards country and war supporters, including Steven Harper, admit that it is unwinnable in the conventional sense. I think we need to take a long, hard look not at why we went there to begin with (which in my opinion was a just cause) but why we are still there now. It's starting to look like we're wasting our time. Our military is still badly underfunded and under-equipped so we do indeed need a break from the fight to reorganize ourselves. If the United States wants Canada to keep involved in Afghanistan, they're going to have to start pulling their weight there.

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Is the CBC Still Relevant?

The National Post had an article today about troubles at the CBC. I mentioned it in my article on the CRTC. As I noted, it was originally created as a counter to "low brow" American radio content, which during the 1930s was all that was available to Canadians. In fact, up until about the 70s, it was the only truly nation wide network available to the majority of Canadians. However, technology marches on and when it evolves, many get left in the dust, obsolete and destined for obscurity. The change that marked the slow demise for the CBC was the advent of cable and satellite television. Hundreds of stations from all over Canada, the US, and the world were now available to Canadians. Around the same time, Pierre Trudeau gave the CRTC the mandate to control the minimum amount of Canadian content the new mediums had to broadcast. When that happened, the CBC was officially put on life support. The next blow was the growth of Web 2.0, which allowed a previously unimaginable amount Canadian content to be broadcast world wide at very little cost. Thanks to YouTube and better, cheaper camcorders, anybody can make their own TV show or movie and upload it to the Internet. Despite a massive number of Canadians logging on and producing content for the web, the CRTC is mulling over whether it needs to be regulated as part of Trudeau's Canadian content mandate. What is the CRTC protecting though? As they did with cable, satellite TV, and satellite radio, the sole reason for trying to regulate the Internet is, once again, to keep the CBC on life support.

How much trouble is the CBC in anyway. Without even reading into it too much, you can gauge it by just asking ordinary Canadians what they watch on the network. The vast majority will say Hockey Night in Canada, but nothing else. That's not to say the CBC hasn't produced some good shows. Obviously This Hour Has 22 Minutes must have something to it regardless of it's recent gaffes. After all, John Stewart thought it was good enough to rip off. The now cancelled Red Green Show is a cult classic in the US, though it's important to note it started life on Global. Other shows were allowed to go from Canadian classics to downright embarrassments, such as Air Farce. After John Morgan died, the show should have ended. However, the CBC let it keep going to preserve Canadian content, even after it devolved to a half hour of Bush bashing ever Friday, and it's cast ballooned to a whole host of unfunny actors. Shows like jPod were quickly cancelled and nobody stands around the water cooler discussing what happened on Being Erika, Heartland, or Little Mosque on the Prairie. By contrast, both CTV and Global recently scored huge US deals with CBS and NBC to air all-Canadian shows Flashpoint and Howie Do It respectively. If CBC shows do end up shown in the US, it's usually on backwater PBS affiliates. In an ironic twist, the CBC seems to air an awful lot of American content, such as Martha Steward, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, and The Simpsons. Irritating British soap Coronation Street also airs on the network.

The debate regarding the relevance of the CBC has been going on for as long as I can remember. The problem is that the network receives tax dollars from the government to fund it. People are upset due to this because it does air American content, while others see the supposedly neutral network as having a pro-Liberal bias. The CBC has now come to describe itself as a government subsidized commercial network. Indeed, that is what it has always been. The CBC was never a public broadcaster. It continued to receive most of it's revenue from advertising, just as all other commercial networks do. It is also the quintessential example of what goes wrong when governments subsidize "critical" private enterprises. Take the Hockey Night in Canada fiasco for example. It's the most popular show by far on the network. Last year, the CBC dumped it's world famous theme song, often jokingly called Canada's second national anthem, because it didn't want to pay $500 in royalties to its composer each time it was played. The cost spent on that probably works out to around $100,000 per year, which is peanuts relatively speaking for such a big organization. Loud mouthed hockey twit Don Cherry makes several times that in salary. Then they ran a contest to find a new theme song, where the winner would get something like $10,000. I'm curious how much they spent on running the contest, because I can guarantee it was a lot more than they were paying to use the Hockey Night theme. What about the money wasted on unpopular shows, such as Air Farce, that ran well past their best before date. This is the same network that gave David Suzuki a job, and a soap box for his eco-fascism, so should we really be surprised by this idiocy? The CBC knows if it screws up, the government will just rescue it. Insert tongue-in-cheek reference to General Motors and Chrysler here.

However, the National Post claims the CBC's national per capita subsidy is actually quite low. Just $33 per person compared to $77 average in France for it's counterpart broadcaster. The BBC by contrast uses a TV licensing scheme. I have always thought this to be unfair though. While the BBC does provide high quality, commerical free programming, I don't like the idea of being forced to pay for services you don't use or approve of. The BBC is hardly the politically unbiased entity it claims to be. Just type "Global Warming" on the BBC News Online search box to find out why. The question still is whether the CBC should get any government funding at all. I say no. The network has outlived it's original purpose and has actually gotten to the point where it has betrayed it. If the CBC is to survive in the digital age without Canadian content intrusion from the CRTC, it needs to start producing higher quality programming that people actually want to watch, not what they think people should watch. CTV has done vary well for itself after recent changes and has proven it can viably go up against the big American networks. Canada should follow a US model when it comes to public TV. The vary same model that networks such as PBS and TVO follow. Privately owned and funded entirely by donations. This model maximizes consumer choice, rather than forcing things nobody wants down people's throats. The CBC is not needed to preserve Canadian content anymore. Right now, most TV networks are deep in the red due to the recession. The CBC is currently at an unfair advantage when it should not be. If the CBC can't survive, innovate, and thrive under this proposed system, then it should be allowed to fail.

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Canadian Content Laws Foolishly Archaic

Flashpoint, an action/cop drama TV series was picked up by CBS before CTV did. Apparently, it's quite popular in the United States. It's also a Canadian show following a fictional group of elite Toronto police officers, filmed in Toronto, and produced by CTV. Degrassi: The Next Generation, another CTV program, is also hugely popular in the US and has been picked up by many so called "Superstation" networks. This is why it puzzles me when the CRTC keeps saying that there need to be Canadian content regulations on Canadian airwaves in order to protect Canadian media from being overshadowed by the United States. This sort of concept is just so mind bogglingly archaic in the information age. The CRTC now wants to try and project this power to the internet, an impossible task which would likely involved increased censorship online, opening up a huge can of worms if they limit what sites Canadians can visit.

Back in the 1940s & 1950s, Canadian airwaves were dominated by by American broadcasts. It was thought that these were poisoning the minds of Canadians so the CBC, the government subsidized network, was created to provide Canadians with more "highbrow" programming that was exclusively Canadian. However, laws limiting what could and could not be broadcast didn't come in until much later. They appeared in the 1970s under everyone's favourite liberal fascist Pierre Trudeau. Since then, the government mandates that media providers in Canada must be Canadian owned and must dedicate a minimum percentage of broadcast hours to Canadian programming. I do not have the data in front of me but I believe it is about 8% to 20%. Off course, these laws were created at a time before satellite TV became popular, and long before the internet became a third television medium. We claim to be a multicultural society yet we still hold onto these archaic laws. I'm sure many Canadians would love access to TV programming from their own countries without being harassed by the CRTC for it not having enough "Canadian" content. Canadians who wish to use American satellite services are harassed for buying "grey market" dishes just so the CRTC can keep Starchoice and Bell in a duoopoly.

Shows like Flashpoint have proven that Canadian content can succeed internationally in the internet age without the long arm of the government propping them up, as they do with the never ending list of bad CBC programming. Arguably, the Internet has been a powerful medium to broadcast our content through sites like Youtube. It costs very little for Canadian artists to produce their own TV series and upload them to the web. Any sort of web regulation protecting this is totally unnecessary and just another case of a government body attempting to overregulate. Forcing Canadians to watch Canadian content is no longer an appropriate way to go about things. Rather, the government should be encouraging investment in our nation's media industries to encourage them to produce more high quality content that people would actually watch. US networks have shown that Americans do enjoy our stuff as long as it's not about weird sex and snow shoes, as one movie title on the Canadian film industry put it. Lets end broadcast censorship in Canada and openly embrace the digital age as a new way to showcase our tallent to the world.

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The Dangers of Fairness

Those following American politics might be familiar with something known as the Fairness Doctrine. The nuts and bolts of it would basically require radio broadcasters to devote equal time to differing opinions. The Democratic party is strongly pushing for this bill as they feel they are being underrepresented on the nation's airwaves. For many years, radio has been dominated by right wing talk shows. Liberal shows such as Air America have been introduced but are considerably less popular. Therefore, the Democrats feel the need to force broadcasters to give them an equal voice, or so they say. There has been a lot of talk about the Fairness Doctrine lately but it is nothing new. To my knowledge, the concept was originally introduced during the Clinton administration but was later shot down by house Republicans. Now that the Democrats, who control the executive and both houses, want to resurrect it.

On the outset, such a law would make sense as you don't want one view to have too much air time. However, it is curious in the fact that the Doctrine singles out radio. Most major television and print media in the United States has a liberal bias. The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC are all liberal. It is commonly claimed that they are in fact Conservative despite no proof to back this up. Sean Hannity hardly anchors all of CNN alone and Ted Turner is as much a raving liberal lunatic as you can get. FOX News is the only mainstream Conservative TV news network in the country. If the Fairness Doctrine was truely fair as it claims to be, it would also apply to the liberal dominated television and print media, yet it does not. I applies only to conservative dominated radio. So I guess controlling 95% of all media is not enough for liberals and to make things truly fair and balanced, they need to control 97.5% of it. What we have here is blantant censorship by liberals to try and scilence conservatives. If it had been a case of the other way around, there would probably be mass outrage. The media is still a business and should give consumers what they want without government control impossed on it. If liberals can produce a successful program, they should fully be allowed to do so. Conservatives have done this, with hugely popular radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh. For a group that always claims to be under attack, it seems that American liberals are the ones launching most of the attacks, and abusing their law making powers to do so. Of course this is different from political ads during elections, where a demand for balance accross all networks in regards of allowing advertising is reasonable.

Canadian media is a little different. Could this happen here? Possibly but the Canadian government has done a pretty good job at staying out of the media, notwithstanding the ludicrous "Candian content" rules.

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This Song Goes Out To Obama...

Being a fan of South Park, this song by Issac Hayes couldn't help but remind me of Obama and how the mainstream media treats him. Boom baby.

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