Canadian version of the US DMCA coming soon?

Head over to Michael Gist’s site for information about a new bill that could be introduced as soon as tomorrow that will have huge impacts on peer to peer file sharing in Canada. The main bullet point is that file sharers would be fined $500 PER copyrighted file they shared.

I have a hard time believing something like this, at least in it’s current state, would get passed in Canada without any controversy.

Bridging Media

I’ll be heading down to the Centre For Digital Media on Saturday to attend the Bridging Media event organized by Megan Cole and Erica Hargreave. I think you can still register if you’re interested in attending this free event.

I’m looking forward to a number of the sessions as I’m contemplating a couple of side projects that harken back to my ‘roots’ as a film school grad and a film nerd. More and more the techy stuff I do around here and other stuff I am interested in seems to cross back over into the film world so it will be interesting to see where this all goes.

Creative outlets FTW.

What’s on the Apple TV?

I’ve been looking for a better way to use my HDTV lately. The Xbox360 (and XBox 1 running XBMC) I currently have works fine but the biggest issue I have with it, when watching any kind of media is how loud it is. Specifically the fan(s) inside it and the (now obsolete) HDDVD drive. It’s fine when you’re playing Halo 3 or Team Fortress because the games are usually loud and I have the stereo cranked. But when you’re trying to watch a movie or tv show, the fans are just annoying.

So after hearing from Tod about his experience with the recent ‘Take Two’ software upgrade, I decided to take the plunge and pick one up - the 40gb model since that’s all the store had in stock. I figured I could always return it if it wasn’t quite was I was looking for (and/or upgrade to the 160gb version if I decided I need more storage).

Setup was quick and simple. The package consists of the Apple TV unit itself, a remote (just like you get with most Macs) and a power cable. That’s it. No other cables are included. It has a number of connection options on the back as you can see above. I connected to my TV via a HDMI cable. My TV’s audio is connected to my stereo separately so I was done with the setup. I powered it on and was treated to a cool, but brief, intro movie and then a menu similar (but different) to Front Row on a Mac. I figured I would need to download the software update since it had just come out and that process took about 10 minutes.

Once I was back up and running again (after 3 restarts while the firmware upgraded) I started connecting things up. If you launch iTunes on another local machine on your network, you’ll be given the option to add the Apple TV to your iTunes. The Apple TV will provide a pairing code that you need to enter on your computer in order to allow them to talk to each other. Once that was done, it started syncing my iTunes library from my iMac to the Apple TV (which you can turn off if you just want to stream content).

I was most interested in the Flickr integration and so far, it almost makes the purchase worthwhile for me on it’s own, let alone the other things which I’ll talk about in a minute. There is a Flickr option in the Photos menu. While you can easily access any photos you have on your other computers (PC or Mac), having the ability to pull in Flickr directly is amazing. You add Flickr accounts to the menu screen and by simply putting in your username, it goes and grabs all your public photos (well, links to them at least). You can browse all your sets and photos from here. You can also browse your contacts as well and add them to the accounts list. There is a ‘recent photos’ option at the top of your list so you can view the last 500 (!) photos on the account. I wish there was a ‘your contacts latest’ option like there is on the Flickr homepage. Once you start viewing the photos, you can set the transitions, music, speed, etc of the slideshows. There is a much cooler screensaver option built into the Apple TV that I wish was a transition option which is simply a random bunch of images (from a set you choose or the recents) that just float up the screen in various sizes. Then after a minute or two, the images rotate around in 3D and keep floating up. It’s really pretty cool. I made a quick video of it:

Another compelling thing was that I had seen online was the podcast functions were vastly improved and that there is quite a lot of cool HD content available. To me, this is where the future of online media is going. Despite my HD DVD purchase, I had pretty much given up on physical media as a way to get video content and the Apple TV seems to be one of the better ways to access that online repository. Sure the Xbox has movie rentals but it doesn’t have access to Podcasts or easy access to the rest of my ‘digital life’ like my music or my photos. There is something to be said for seamless integration across my network.

There is also the ability to rent movies directly off the device, with many available in HD. Unfortunately, you need a US iTunes account to access all the really good stuff but Canada is supposed to get more later this year. Fortunately I have a US account although someone managed to spend the last of the store credit so I won’t be able to try out the HD movie rentals until I get a refill card next time I’m across the line. There is a fair bit of free content available and you can preview everything which is great.

I’ll let you know if a few weeks if it was worthwhile but so far I don’t see this thing going back to the store.

Larry Lessig is my hero

Today, I had the pleasure of seeing Dr. Lawrence Lessig give the keynote for the Privacy & Security conference I’m attending in Victoria (albeit from the back of the room due to a huge coffee lineup). I’ve been aware of Dr. Lessig’s work for a long time now as he is one of the original ‘copyfighters’ and founder of Creative Commons among other things.

I almost got to see/meet him in person a number of years ago while I was in San Francisco. While visiting a friend, we made plans to be in the studio audience of “The Screensavers” on TechTV. I was excited to hear that the guest on the show the day of our taping was Dr. Lessig but unfortunately, it was a taped interview so I didn’t actually get to see him in person.

That changed today when I got to watch his keynote and also finally see the ‘Lessig method‘ of giving a presentation. He truly sets the bar high for giving a great, compelling presentation. Dick Hardt of SXIP (and fellow iPhone user) has also used the Lessig method to give a very engaging presentation (and a great topic in it’s own right).

In his presentation, he talked about privacy and how it’s similar to copyright. He started with a little bit of history, followed by a story (or two) and finished with an argument. I hope it’s made available in some form as I’m not even going to try to paraphrase it. It was that good and I couldn’t do it justice.

I decided to pick up his “The Future of Ideas” book after the presentation and he signed it for me which is pretty cool. Of course, I found out while gathering info for this post that the book is available for free to download now. At least mine is signed.

While today’s presentation isn’t online (yet) and I don’t think it was recorded on video, I was able to find a presentation he gave at TED that captures his style very well and is also a great topic:

It’s a 20 minute presentation so you may want to download it to watch later (plus you can get it for your iPod as well).

Another highlight of the keynote was Dr. Lessig playing the following mashup video to illustrate copyrights:

Imagine a room full of suits watching this. Yeah, it was awesome.

Digital copies included on the DVD…finally

Tonight I picked up the Family Guy Blue Harvest Special Edition dvd set. This is the Family Guy version of Star Wars that opened the current season and was fantastic.

It comes with a digital copy of the episode that you can use on your computer - and it’s Mac compatible for a change!

Strangely, it comes on a second dvd that you have to put in and you then still need to enter a serial number included in the dvd package to redeem on iTunes and download it. Seems like a waste of a second dvd.

If this had happened a few years ago, people might not have bothered with bit torrent and ripping….okay maybe not but still this seems like a no brainer that most likely got stalled as lawyers figured out how to lock these files down with craptacular DRM.

Why did it take so long for this to happen?