In January, the makers of the P2P project formerly known as Pirate Bay launched ipredator, a pay-service that allows complete anonymity while sharing files through P2P networks.
As most of our readers will be all too familiar with, P2P networks have emerged as significant and alternative distribution channels for all kinds of cultural and artistic materials – films and documentaries, music, texts, etc. – a strategy that has pitted intellectual property merchants against advocates for a more expansive cultural commons. And while anonymity may be the new arms race in this battle of online wits, the real gamble is whether or not people will be willing to pay a price for the privilege of secrecy. Ipredator costs about 5 euros a month to join.
In a recent article on TorrentFreak, ipredator said that they will encrypt not only the connection between individual users and the ipredator network, but also all data leaving the network. The weak link in the identity chain will be the host of the network, and this is how ipredator wants to set itself apart in the market of virtual networks: ipredator will apparently not keep data logs or user details. If the servers are seized, there will be no records of how the network was used, by whom and for what.
It is a challenging parry in the ongoing dual between information freedom fighters and the intellectual property police. It raises many important questions about the balance of interests between privacy, lawfulness, the privatization of collective intellectual endeavor, and personal security.
The webite offers little information. If any of our readers sign up for the service, we’d love to hear about it – drop us a line and tell us about it.
When klezmer troubadour Geoff Berner sings that “the dead, dead children were worth it”, he does so with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Berner’s “Official Theme Song for the 2010 Vancouver Whistler Olympic Games” mockingly lauds the BC government for dismantling the Children’s Comission—a provincial body that investigated children’s deaths—in order to pay for the Olympics. And this is just one of many programs that have been scaled back or eliminated as the government makes cuts to compensate for a Olympic-sized deficit.
I caught up with Geoff in Saskatoon last week as he kicked off his latest tour, which will see his trio criss-cross the prairies before heading to Norway in early March. With the Vancouver Olympics just around the corner, I wanted to know how he felt about the long-term economic legacy of the games in BC, and how artists could get involved in speaking up against cuts to arts funding and social programs.
Leon sets his revolution forth by asking, “Does school suck? Should it?” In this vein, do political comedies suck? The answer is, yes, more often than not, but fortunately, not this one. The Trotsky is part history, part autobiographical (the filmmaker’s life that is), and part funny fiction.
From Montreal filmmaker Jacob Tierney comes a tale of wit and longing. Young Leon, played in earnest by the talented Jay Baruchel (of recent apprentice fame), has from a young age, been convinced that he is indeed Trotsky reincarnated. On his adolescent bedroom wall he’s built an action plan: a bulletin board with to-dos such as “start a revolution” and “find a Lenin.” He even eagerly awaits his own assassination. To eke out his existence as Trotsky redux, Leon begins by first taking on his evil capitalist father’s business and moves on to unionizing his high school.
The film is very funny and charming, and surprisingly manages to valorize direct action activism, even duct-taping your principle and holding him hostage until negotiations resume (played in awesomely funny villain-ness by Colm Feore of Bon Cop, Bad Cop). The film connects youthful political ideals with action instead of ridiculing activism or reducing activists to two-dimensional stereotypes as so many other comedies (and so many fiction films in general) would have easily resorted to.
Today we’re kicking off a new weekly feature, our Friday Film Pick. Each week we’ll suggest a movie for your weekend viewing pleasure. And we’ll try to recommend films that you’ll be able to find with relative ease, whether at your local video store, cinema, or on the web.
This week’s pick falls into that final category. The NFB recently made the entirety of RiP: A Remix Manifesto available for online viewing. For free. In HD.
The film became a platform for discussion on copyright reform as it played to audiences worldwide, and sparked a pretty good debate on this blog last year. If this is the first you’ve heard of RiP, here’s the brief synopsis from the NFB.
Join filmmaker Brett Gaylor and mashup artist Girl Talk as they explore copyright and content creation in the digital age. In the process they dissect the media landscape of the 21st century and shatter the wall between users and producers. Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow also come along for the ride.
Enjoy the movie, and we’ll see you back here in a week’s time for our next Friday Film Pick!
The Olympics are coming to Vancouver in just three weeks and almost no one I know is super thrilled about it. For some, it’s the traffic, for others, it’s the feeling that the only way we’ve been told to help is to “go on Vacation,” “take time off work,” “go to work earlier or later than usual to reduce traffic,” or “don’t drive your car.” It could also be that the City of Vancouver passed a by-law which prohibits the distribution of handbills in designated Olympic zones or lanes, and requires the removal of graffiti or posters that cause a “disturbance… with the enjoyment of entertainment on city land.”
For years leading to the Olympics, we’ve been seeing this “enjoyment disturbing” graffiti all over the city. (I actually quite enjoy them.)
So far, my best friend is the only exception to the city wide Olympic hate-on. It could be that her aunt is Olympic gold medalist Nancy Greene, or it could be that she and her family are generally excitable about winter sports. Truth be told, there is going to be some amazing things happening in Vancouver. If you happen to be in town, there will be some free visual art to look forward to thanks to the Cultural Olympiad, which will be running from January 22 to March 21.
One day prior to the earthquake in Haiti last week, Darren Ell’s art exhibit Haiti: Holdup opened in Concordia University’s Media Gallery. His photographic documentary pieces were a prescient warning about the vulnerability of Haiti’s fragile infrastructure — a fragility directly caused by American, Canadian and French manipulation.
Ell’s exhibit consists of three enormous photographs, seven feet wide and five feet high to be precise. Each is intended to make the viewing experience as immediate as possible, to enable viewers to enter the scene. Two photos deal with UN-led arrest operations in the slums of Port-au-Prince. They are meant to bring the viewer close to the reality of foreign occupation and ongoing colonial control. The third photo is more romantic, with smoke billowing around a beautiful tree and flung open gate. The light beauty of the scene sets the viewer up for a thud when one realizes that the smoke comes from extinguished fires following a student demonstration against the high cost of living. This protest was one of many during the food riots of 2008.
Is the juggernaught of Olympics coming to town? Police clamping down on activists? Olympic security denying your reporters press clearance? Then the W2 Culture + Media House is the place for you.
Set across the street from the soon to be reopened Woodwards housing redevelopment in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, the folks at W2 have rented four floors in a building for a month-long cultural party and 24/7 service hub for the hundreds of local and international journalists and bloggers coming to Vancouver to cover the Olympics. This is the media centre for journalists who can’t get accredited by VANOC or the BC government.
The Culture + Media House will also host free cultural exhibitions, workshops and conferences during the day. At night, some of the space will be transformed into a performance and event venue to showcase Vancouver’s diverse culture scenes.
Highlights include African Dance Party, Bikes Inside, Hot One Inch Action, Abandon Normal Devices Conference (with Liverpool), visual arts exhibits, DJ parties, workshops, screenings, and the Feb 22 Fresh Media Olympics conference — altogether 40 events in 28 days.
This is going to be a great party and vital part of getting alternative information out during the Olympic Winter Games about how police and ramped up Olympic security are behaving towards activists and in one of Canada’s poorest neighbourhoods.
There is one reason, above all the others, that the Academy Awards are not worth paying any attention to this year: the documentary Dreamland is not up for best picture, best documentary, or best anything.
Once every five to ten years a film comes along that shakes your soul, rattles the cage of your conscience, and awakes you from a media-immersed cryogenic dream state. The technical perfection and power of the message rearrange the synopsis in your circuitry and leaves you feeling like a wave of clarity and inspiration has washed over you. This sermon on the mount, the audiovisual awakening that has knocked me from safe and comfortable passage into a world I had temporarily forgotten was there, is the magnificent breathtaking political documentary Dreamland.
Dreamland asks us how much is a mountain worth? Two billion? Twenty billion? Then challenges the capitalism calculi that conjures these figures, re-orienting the audience toward another framework, one of eco-logic, and argues for 89 minutes that the value of the natural world is of course not measured in dollars, or barrels, or extractions. The value of the natural world we inhabit is immeasurable: it is beauty, harmony, health, co-existence and much, much more.
Each year the CRTC sets aside over $100 million for local, independent and activist television. Canadians have until February 1, 2010 to tell the CRTC how well this money is being spent, and how to spend it better in the future.
If you didn’t know about this amazing amount of money, you’re not alone. Community channels have in been in slow decline as cable companies have increased their stranglehold on access and programming over the past 15 years. What was once a vibrant network of tens of thousands of volunteers, activists and artists has dwindled through lost opportunities and in many cases outright hostility by the cable companies to community participation.
It’s time for Canadians to take back their community media resources from the cable companies.
A key issue is what to do with community television in a digital future. One of the big ideas being put forward is to use the $100+ million annual funds to build a network of community media centers, like local libraries, but with the emphasis on access to digital media training, production, and distribution through online and low-power broadcast opportunities. It is an idea being put forward by CACTUS, a national community tv advocacy group.
Since their creation in the early 1970s, community channels have attracted well over $1 billion in mandated funding. This money has been spent on training, programming and the creation of a network of television production facilities across the country required to “provide and encourage citizen access” and give communities the “widest opportunity for self-expression”. Community channel resources are like a public trust, and it is time Canadians got the benefit of this trust rather than it’s being squandered on cable company self promotion.
If Canadians do not speak out now, these opportunities could be lost forever.
The NFB recently released a DVD set from their award-winning Filmmaker-in-Residence project, which highlights digital storytelling as a tool for social action in a Toronto inner-city hospital.
The video above will give you an idea of what you’ll see in the collection, which includes two DVDs and a CD-ROM packed with content.
This short film charts the Filmmaker-in-Residence project’s five-year history, investigating the creative process from within as media makers join health care workers to reflect on ethics, interventionist filmmaking and shifting cinematic genres. Intricate, difficult and delicate situations come alive in this 80-minute documentary, featuring seven distinct yet interconnected experiments in collaborative media.
Win Filmmaker-in-Residence: The Complete Collection — We have a copy of this set to give away to one of our readers. For your chance to win, leave a comment with your ideas on how digital storytelling can play a role in social change. We’ll pick a winner on Friday.
In January, the makers of the P2P project formerly known as Pirate Bay launched ipredator, a pay-service that allows complete anonymity while sharing files through P2P networks. 
Each year the 
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