On September 4, the Green Party of Canada announced they were dropping John Shavluk as a candidate because of allegedly anti-semetic remarks he made in a comment on a blog.

To me, the main lesson there is that the Internet Remembers. At the risk of making light of a serious situation, it is worth noting that if Mr. Shavluk had done a better job of quoting rather than just "parroted what others were saying", this story might have had a different ending.

The Copyright Board of Canada, in their wisdom, recently acceded to a request from SOCAN to allow a retroactive tax on all music downloads.

According to the learned members of the Copyright Board

   [100] Fourth, SOCAN members are not double dipping. The
   communication and reproduction rights are separate rights,
   often owned by separate persons, administered through separate 
   channels and subject to separate regimes. 

So to summarize. If I buy a homemade CD for $10 from a band, I give ten dollars to the band. If I download the exact same bits from a web site (which is certainly possible with e.g. FLAC encodings), burn it to a CD-R (which by the way I also payed a %$&^%$ levy on) myself and get something completely indistinguishable, I now owe SOCAN whatever percent they and the copyright board dream up?

Charles Dickens, in Chapter LI of Oliver Twist, wrote

   'If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, squeezing 
    his hat emphatically in both hands, 'the law is a ass--a idiot.'

Update

Maybe it is not just me. Howard Knopf's blog reports there will be a judicial review of this CCB decision.