the big party for St-Jean, aka Fete nationale, in Parc Maisonneuve, and today is a (very lovely) holiday here in Montreal. Traditionally there have been big problems associated with this event, but reports are that last night was calm. I was sitting in a window on St-Laurent with some friends and I was amazed by the numbers of riot cops, who, as one should expect by now, seemed to have started the fracas mentioned in the last part of the above-linked story. Funny sight of the night: riot cops in full gear driving up the Main in rented vans. It looked like a family vacation from hell.
Very important
and very good news today from the US Supreme Court: Free-Lance Beat Media Cos. in Court. This is just as important as any music-related decision, and the problem has been evident for much longer, as media companies of all sizes have either republished work (for profit) without additional payment to the freelancers or bullied them into signing (still valid, alas) contracts that severely limited their rights. But the Court held that publishers may not so brazenly disrespect authors rights – if they want to republish an article, they can pay for the right:
The Authors and Publishers may enter into an agreement allowing continued electronic reproduction of the Authorsf works; they […] may draw on numerous models for distributing copyrighted works and remunerating authors for their distribution.
Via Powazek
Via Powazek: NoEnd Press looks like a very interesting community-based publishing site. I love seeing all of the different ways old-school webfolk parse this medium’s possibilities.
Weirdness
: I met someone a couple of weeks ago who is the spitting image of Caterina. This strange clone has actually been around the neighbourhood for some time, and in fact was formerly the roommate of a friend of mine. But it only struck me when I walked into Nantha’s two Fridays ago that the resemblance is quite spooky.
I’ve neglected to comment
on a whole bunch of stories lately that I think are important and/or interesting – chief among these being the Smart Tags feature that’s being deployed in new versions of key MS software. Some disagree, but I am of the opinion that this feature hugely oversteps the boundaries of what’s appropriate or acceptible for a software company to do, particularly in the browser where the software is responsible for presenting other people’s writing.
As one would expect, the gang at ALA have published an excellent analysis of the feature by Chris Kaminsky. To link or not to link, and to what, is an editorial decision, period. And the decision to do so rests with the people involved in the editorial process, and nowhere else. I don’t get what’s so hard about that concept for some.
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