Is it legal to look at the Web in Canada?

September 5, 2006 D. H. McKee

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Michael Geist examines two warring proposals for ensuring that Canadian schools’ use of the Internet is lawful and concludes that both of them cause more harm than they prevent. On the one hand, Access Canada proposes to collect fees from schools for just looking at the web, a license shakedown that would treat all educational use as a copyright infringement unless you’d paid them for permission to turn on your web-browser.
A seemingly better proposal comes from CMEC, which represents Canada’s education ministries: they say that Canadian copyright should be rewritten to carve out a new exception for schools’ educational use of the Web.
But Geist shows that this latter proposal comes with lots of potential for harm. If schools need an exception to copyright to look at the Web, what does that say about uses of the Web in businesses, homes, libraries, home tutoring outfits, and elsewhere? Surely reading and studying published documents should be lawful for everyone, not just schools.
Boing Boing: Is it legal to look at the Web in Canada?

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As a guy who occasionally curates art shows and wrangles artists together, I often have to edit and post artist bios, profile pictures, and artwork images. This can be a problem, since many artists and writers aren’t used to selling themselves. Artists rarely know how to present their art for display in a brochure, and writers aren’t used to writing about themselves.

Writers often treat the bio like it’s an interview or something. Maybe like they’re having a conversation with you, the reader. While it may work sometimes, the most common way to write a bio is to write in the 3rd person.

I’m like those writers, and I’m talking to you directly, unlike the common way to do a bio. You should see my About page. It makes sense to me, since this is a bit which describes my blog’s website. When I get famous enough that I don’t have time to talk to you, I’ll have an intern write everything in 3rd person. Until then, you get to talk to me.

Like blogs of old, this one is a personal document of the comings and goings of me. Articles I’ve written, links I’ve posted, videos I liked, etc. Here, a first-person perspective is the way to go, at least for now. So, this is my site. I’m D. H. McKee, a sometimes artist, sometimes writer. Mostly just a guy on the internet.