Trade In Or Upgrade Your DVDs
Best Buy Canada and Future Shop are again accepting your old DVDs in exchange for $5 discounts on select Blu-Ray titles.
Future Shop is also accepting old DVDs and Blu-Rays in exchange for $10 off select 3D Blu-Ray titles.
This offer starts today and ends on November 1st, 2012.
More Free Content Promised
iTunes has announced that they will be adding more free content to their catalog, including full length albums and television episodes, which can be streamed to computers and devices using their software and apps.
Full length album previews and television episodes had been available from legal sources for years but I am hoping this will fill in some of the gaps.
For example, we still don’t have services like Hulu here in Canada and some television episodes are inaccessible to us because of distribution rights issues.
The availability of full length album previews may also reduce previewing on peer to peer networks and questionable foreign web sites. And Walmart’s Vudu service will soon be introduced into Canada so consumers should soon be able to access more content.
Update to “Scammers On The Prowl”
In June 2011 I had posted a somewhat off-topic warning about a security issue I had been encountering for months.
I had been receiving unsolicited calls from individuals with thick Indian accents claiming to be “Software Maintenance Department of Online PC Care” asking me to give them access to my computer because of some alleged virus infection.
This was of course a common con by that time, which also involved individuals claiming to represent Microsoft calling random numbers in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Basically they gained access, altered settings without the user’s knowledge and then proceeded to extort $49 to $450 from the user to “repair” the damage they had caused.
The Federal Trade Commission in the United States have taken legal actions against these fraudsters yesterday, freezing their assets and demanding a halt to this activity.
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission have also penalized the companies involved in this tech support scam in respect to Canada’s no call list legislation.
If you have received a call of this nature, please file a complaint with the CRTC via this form.
Neil Young’s New Music Service
Neil Young discussed the new Pono music service and device on David Letterman last night.
This service, which is scheduled to launch next year, will offer higher quality recordings and high resolution conversions from analogue recordings.
The Pono device will also play the current music formats and though Warner Music Group is the only label to have signed onto the project at this time, many other labels have shown some interest.
Neil Young’s memoirs, entitled “Waging Heavy Peace”, is available from Amazon.ca
. And Neil Young & Crazy Horse are currently on tour in Canada.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
The Copyright Modernization Act passed through the legislative process and obtained royal assent in June of this year. And though I am critical of the technological protection measure provisions, the bill is still a step forward. But it appears that the lobbyists in the United States are attempting to reverse many of the provisions in this legislation through the Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance want to circumvent our democratic processes in order to force our government to enact RIAA style prosecutions in Canada.
They are demanding new penalties for intellectual property violations, new processes in which internet providers are forced to police the internet on their behalf and the removal of the $5000 liability cap on non-commercial infringement.
But their demands don’t end there.
They want an extension of the copyright term up to the American standard and want our customs officers to search people for copyright violations upon entry, without a search warrant.
At the moment copyright is limited to life plus 50 years, meaning an author will own his works up to his death and his estate would retain copyright on these works for 50 years after the author’s death.
The Americans extended their copyright term to life plus 70 years and added additional provisions to their Copyright Act extending copyright on published works to 95 years from publication, which could be renewed resulting in a term of 120 years in some instances.
So, not only do they want to practically eliminate our public domain
but they also want us to be burdened with longer lines at our airports and border crossings so searches can be performed on laptop hard drives and media players.
These amendments were ineffective in the United States, having failed to prevent 96.68 million BitTorrent downloads in the first half of 2012 according to the Musicmetric Digital Music Index, so why would they work in Canada ?
He Said It, He Did It
Sam Sniderman, the founder of Sam The Record Man, has died at the age of 92.
The Sam The Record Man chain was founded in 1937 and had become Canada’s largest chain of record stores by 1982, which enabled the chain to be a major promoter of Canadian music.
In 1961, their flagship store at 347 Yonge Street in Toronto opened and had become a landmark due to its pair of rotating neon signs, which were prominently featured in film and television including Marvel’s “The Incredible Hulk” and one of my favorite music videos, Alphaville’s “Big In Japan”.
Unfortunately, the chain and flagship store closed by mid 2007 due to competition and advancements in music distribution technology. But Sam The Record Man will be remembered for his contributions to the Canadian music industry, including the independent scene, which flourished in the 80’s and 90’s because of his support.
Sam The Record Man RIP 1920-2012