In a move that has privacy advocates either piping mad or peeing in their boots, as US Federal court has ordered Google to hand over YouTube user records, including the videos each user has watched, their usernames and IP addresses.

Viacom is suing Google for not doing enough to keep its copyrighted videos from television shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report off the popular website YouTube. [...]

The company argued it needed access to the information on user viewing habits to prove that copyright-infringing material is more popular than user-generated videos on YouTube, which would strengthen its case against Google.

In a ruling issued on Tuesday, Louis Stanton, a judge with the U.S. District Court for the southern district of New York, agreed with Viacom and ordered Google to turn over the information.

Google argued user data should not be handed over because of privacy concerns, but Stanton dismissed those concerns as "speculative."

In protest I'm going to download torrents of the Daily Show yet refuse to watch them. Either that or visit the crowd lining up outside the Colbert Report studios and shower them with Google juice.

Investigative journalist Greg Palast and cartoonist Ted Rall have created an illustrative series called "Vote Theft for Idiots" that details how Bush and the Republicans will easily steal the upcoming US election in November, 2008. You can download various sizes of the first page here and at freeforall.tv you can watch the new film by Palast, "Free for All."

The Alianait! arts festival in Nunavut is being streamed live on the internet on Isuma.TV every night this week beginning at 7 pm. From the festival website:

The Alianait Arts Festival is an annual event in its fourth year. No less than ten days (and nights) of art, music, film, storytelling, circus arts, dance and theatre. Alianait is an Inuit expression of joy and celebration and to celebrate our fourth annual festival, the theme for Alianait 2008 is String Games - an ancient Inuit tradition.

The festival started on June 21 and runs until July 1. Here's the webcast schedule for Isuma.TV:

June 21: 7 to 10 pm EST –
ALIANAIT GRAND OPENING - LIVE at www.isuma.tv from the Big Top

June 22 : 7 to 9 pm EST –
FIBONACCI CIRCUS PERFORMANCE - LIVE from the Big Top

June 23: 7 to 9 pm EST –
NUNAVUT ARTS FESTIVAL WITH LIVE MUSIC - LIVE from the Old Residence

June 24: 7 to 9 pm EST –
ARTICIRQ/OATIARIO - LIVE from the Big Top

June 25: 7 to 10 pm –
STORYTELLING PERFORMANCE - LIVE from Parish Hall

June 26: 7 to 10 pm EST-
SAQIYUQ THEATRE PERFORMANCE – LIVE from the Parish Hall

June 27: 7 to 9 pm EST –
ART EXHIBIT – LIVE from the Nunatta Museum

June 28: 7 to 9 pm EST –
YOUTH MUSIC CONCERT – LIVE from the Big Top

June 29: 2 to 5 pm EST –
FREE MUSIC CONCERT – LIVE from the Big Top

June 30: 7 to 10 pm EST –
STRING GAMES FINALE CONCERT – LIVE from the Big Top

July 1: 2 to 5 pm EST –
FREE MUSIC CONCERT - LIVE from the Big Top

Wired has published an interview with Trevor Paglen, photographer and "experimental geographer", whose most recent work features a collection of 189 photos of officially non-existent spy satellites.

In taking these photos, Paglen is trying to draw a metaphorical connection between modern government secrecy and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in Galileo's time.

"What would it mean to find these secret moons in orbit around the earth in the same way that Galileo found these moons that shouldn't exist in orbit around Jupiter?" Paglen says.

Image: Trevor Paglen, Lacrosse/Onyx IV Near Alfirk (USA 152, 48 x 60 inches, C-Print, 2008

Previously on Art Threat:
Follow spies in the skies with Terminal Air

Make sure you catch Paige Gratland's "Celebrity Lezbian Fist Launch" this Saturday June 21st from 1-3pm at Art Metropole, 788 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Mél Hogan for AT with Paige Gratland

[AT] Can you talk a bit about the story of Cynthia Plaster Caster, the inspiration for your project?

[PG] I saw a documentary made about her practice of casting rock and roller cock. When she started she was a art school student and rock and roll groupie who united those two interests in a project which gave her access to the people she admired. I identified with this aspect as my own projects and collaborations, free dance lessons, tit pin, burdensum, came out of an interest in connecting with a direct public. I was turned on by the strategy.

The winners of Amnesty International's 17th annual Media Awards have been announced. The awards were created to recognize excellence in human rights reporting and to acknowledge journalism's contribution to raising awareness and understanding about human rights issues. It's not exactly art in the traditional sense, but there is the 'art of fact', so to speak, in how the historical “now” is (re)created from the miasma of infinite facts of material reality. And, these are important stories being told by courageous culture-makers and we would like to share in acknowledging their bravery and the importance of their contributions.

This year also marked the first NEW MEDIA award given to Iraqi journalist Sahar al-Haideri, who was tragically killed shortly after her article “Honour killing sparks fears of new Iraqi conflict” was published on the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's website.

The other journalists being honored are:

GABY RADO MEMORIAL AWARD (for a journalist covering human rights for less than five years): Xan Rice, The Guardian

INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION AND RADIO - Eunice Lau, Stephanie Scawen, Tricia Tan, Tony Birtley for The lost tribe - Secret army of the CIA, Al Jazeera English

NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS - Deborah Haynesfor the Iraqi interpreters series, The Times

NATIONS AND REGIONS - Fiona Walker, Dorothy Parker, Fiona Walker, Matt Pinder, Susan McCusker Thompson for Congo to Motherwell, BBC Scotland (television)

PERIODICALS (a winner announced in each subcategory): Newspaper supplements - Jonathan Green for Selling soccer into slavery, Live (Mail on Sunday magazine); Consumer magazines - Fatima Tlisova, Sergei Bachiwin, Alexei Simonov for Russian media freedom, published by Index on Censorship

PHOTOJOURNALISM - Cédric Gerbehaye for Congo unrest, Newsweek

RADIO - Pascale Harter, Ceri Thomas, Mike Thompson for Where there's muck: Mike Thomson in the Congo, Radio 4, Today Programme

TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY AND DOCUDRAMA - Gretchen Wallace, Jane Wells, Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern, Nick Fraser, Brian Steidle for Storyville: The devil came on horseback, BBC FOUR / Break Thru Films

TELEVISION NEWS - Chris Rogers, Deborah Turness, Tony Hemmings for Too young to die - Children of the frontline, ITV News / ITN

While visiting family in the fabled hamlet of Courtenay, British Columbia, I stumbled in to the Comox Valley Art Gallery and happened upon an incredibly arresting and uncompromising piece of political art. The framed work was entitled "North American Indian Prison" by George Littlechild. I was instantly taken by the vivid colours of the piece. Mesmerized by the ghostly archival photos enmeshed in a mixed media landscape of expert brush strokes of reds and yellows, and by its political stance, I immediately rushed to the front desk to inquire of this incredible artist whose work was nestled between the big box stores and car lots that now dominate the landscape of my once quieter, walkable town.

As it turns out, George Littlechild lays his head in the Comox Valley on the First Nations Reserve between Courtenay and K'ómoks. And so, eager as I was, I contacted him with a local prefix. The result is a short audio interview about his life, his work and his politics. Born in Alberta and of Plains Cree descent, Littlechild has established himself as one of Canada's prestigious contemporary artists combining traditional aboriginal with contemporary mixed media practices. His art interrogates history, memory and identity and forces those of us above the 49th parallel in North America to consider not only the collective pain of First Nations peoples that was hollowly addressed yesterday by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but to consider the lines that intersect between indigenous culture and that of the colonizer. In Littlechild's case, it is the familial and familiar–from both perspectives of his First Nations and European roots that are explored in his most recent work.

A visual artist, children's book creator, educator, activist and cultural hero for his bold but vulnerable resurrections of political and social histories, Littlechild is an artist whose work speaks loudly and truthfully. You can discover his work and read more about him at his personal site, GeorgeLittlechild.com.

Listen to the audio interview here.

It’s not often that you visit a major civic gallery and come away amazed, disturbed and politically provoked. Rebecca Belmore’s current exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery does exactly that and more. It is a remarkable retrospective for an artist deeply engaged in some of the most defining and difficult politics of our time.

Belmore’s practice encompasses sculpture/installation, performance, video and photography. The exhibition includes video documentation of five of Bellmore’s performances, and the much talked about video installation Fountain (2005), which is projected on a wall of falling water in a darkened room. The exhibition also includes some of her sculpture work and components from her performances. There is so much to see in this collection and all of it so very good.

Belmore’s art is an embodied practice, and as an aboriginal woman, her body is a complicated site where colonial, cultural and resistant tensions are inscribed on a daily basis. Wild (2001-2008) is a four-post bed with a red satin bedcover woven from beaver pelts and (black) human hair. The bed was created for an exhibition in The Grange, a colonial building that served as the original location of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Belmore sleeps in the bed unannounced. Nearby, hangs the disturbing Fringe (2008), a near life-size backlit photograph of a woman, naked but for a white sheet over her hips, lying on her side facing away from the viewer. On her back is a huge transversal wound starting at her right shoulder and ending below her left hip. The wound is sewn together, and hanging from the stitches are the beginnings of beadwork, small red beads decorating threads hanging from the grotesquely damaged skin.

(more on the exhibition...)

Despite statements made to the contrary at the time, the $2.5 million that the Conservative government cut from the National Film Board of Canada's budget in March is resulting in more jobs being lost, including in programming.

The NFB, Canada's sole publicly-funded film agency, has announced it will be eliminating 22 positions, including two of its three remaining staff directors.

Paul Cowan and Beverly Shaffer, two of Canada's most renowned documentary film directors, with a combined 46 NFB films to their names, will now be joining the ranks of Canada's private filmmakers (including other NFB alumni who have seen their jobs disappear during previous rounds of Liberal and Tory backed cuts).

The sole director remaining on staff will be Alanis Obomsawin.

Bredan Kelly has more in a good article from today's Montreal Gazette.

Opposition keeps growing to the Conservative government's Bill C-10. The controversial bill would allow the Minister of Heritage to rescind tax-credits from television programs and films after production should they deem it 'contrary to public policy.'

Today the mayors of Montreal and Toronto made the nickel and dime argument against C-10 to the Senate banking committee:

“This industry is of incredible importance,” said [Toronto Mayor David] Miller after telling the senators that it employs 35,000 people in his city — more than the manufacturing sector. Its artistic and financial success depends on its “continued ability to work in a field where the boundaries are well defined and political interference or censorship will not be tolerated.”

Mayor Gerald Tremblay of Montreal told the committee that the film industry has been active in his city for 60 years and that the industry is worth $1.3-billion to his province.

“Having read the bill, we feel obliged to state that the measures relating to tax incentives introduce an element of uncertainty which would have a negative financial impact on the production of Canadian and Quebec film because the minister might be able to call for the repaying of tax credits after the film has been completed,” said [Montreal] Mayor [Gerald] Tremblay.

The mayors also presented letters of support from Sam Sullivan, mayor of Vancouver (which takes in the most money from TV & film production in North America after New York and Los Angeles), and Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly, who argued that hits like Trailer Park Boys may never have received the financial backing necessary if Bill C-10 had been in place.

The saga continues as it is now up to the Senate to vote on the bill. Part of an income tax bill, the government has said the vote on the bill is considered a confidence motion. While many senators have voiced opposition, it isn't clear whether they are willing to force an election over the issue.