This Magazine articles from September 2003

This Magazine archives from September 2003

Copyrights and wrongs.(Under The Hood)
September 1, 2003... "YOU DON'T MESS AROUND WITH THE MOUSE," NOTES Charles Brownstein, Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, an organization that provides free legal aid for cartoonists who run afoul of copyright law. Over the last 70 years,...

Irony chefs?(Salvo)(satire)
September 1, 2003... TODAY, THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF SATIRISTS filed a class action suit against the U.S. government and its people, claiming that their countrymen are behaving absurdly in an attempt to undermine genuine satire. As you may have gathered from...

Power play.(Red-Handed)(Accenture)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... IN THE NAME OF SAVING MONEY, B.C. HYDRO has given a 10-year contract to Bermuda-based Accenture--formerly known as Andersen Consulting. That's right, a remnant of the company embroiled in the Enron scandal now runs "Accenture Business Services...

Bush league of nations.(Chart ... The United States adopts a unilateralist foreign policy)
September 1, 2003... AMERICA DOESN'T WANT TO PLAY WITH THE INTERNATIONAL community anymore. The Bush administration has shifted from promoting Cold War alliances to giving partners the cold shoulder. Although the conflict in Iraq laid bare America's unwillingness...

Ethics code blues.(In The House)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... BEFORE THE MPS WENT HOME FOR BARBECUE season, they managed to pass Bill C-24, which bans donations to parties from corporations, unions and other organizations. Another bill that rounds out the Prime Minister's "ethics package," however,...

Regime change.(Up Next)(Paul Martin's advisors)
September 1, 2003... WITHIN MONTHS, CANADA WILL HAVE A NEW administration. The Liberals will still be in power, some of the members of Jean Chretien's cabinet will still have porfolios, but the locus of real power in the federal government will be replaced. ...

Loan rangers.(Sign Of The Times)(student loans)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... WHEN AIR CANADA DECLARED BANKRUPTCY, its creditors had to suck it up. Yet when Canadians who take the calculated risk of getting an education aren't able to pay their debts, well, they're out of luck. In 1997, Ottawa changed the Bankruptcy...

Hot commodity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... Sasha's article in the new issue gives me hope ("Grrls! Grrls! Grrls!" July/Aug). Maybe, with sufficient experience, even sex-positivists can see the fight. It has long amazed me that good, analytically sophisticated leftists, who know full...

Money matters.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... We will soon be voting federally again--probably sooner rather than later. In preparation, perhaps This Magazine can edify its readers on two important issues: 1. How much of the nation's debt load should be carried by the Bank of Canada?...

Fuelling disaster: a controversial oil pipeline now rips across Ecuador's upper Amazon forests, damaging what remains of ecologically sensitive areas and indigenous cultures. The lead investor in this project? Canadian oil giant EnCana.(Foreign Affairs)
September 1, 2003... THE CITY OF LAGO AGRIO BRISTLED WITH tension. Protesters had been blocking the streets for two weeks. Ecuador's president declared a state of emergency and sent in military reinforcements to quell the demonstrations. As tempers flared in the...

Take my poem, please.
September 1, 2003... WHILE VANITY SURFING A FEW YEARS BACK, I came across one of my poems. Alliance Quebec, a group of wealthy Montreal anglophones who believe it is worth getting one's proverbial sousvetements in a twist over grapefruit that's labelled...

Stealing beauty? Last spring, Natalka Husar got a nasty letter from the world's largest publisher of romance fiction. The suits at Harlequin suggested that a series of her paintings violated copyright. But as Gerald Hannon finds out, this is one artist who won't back down.
September 1, 2003... SHE IS AS EAGER AS ANY MOTHER TO show me pictures of her children--though artist Natalka Husar is not doting over your standard wallet photos or framed 8-by-10s or vacation snapshots, here in her spring-drowsy backyard off Toronto's Queen...

Is copyright unconstitutional? Does Canadian copyright legislation violate the Charter of Rights? Andrew Potter examines our intellectual property laws, and an issue that threatens to become the civil rights battle of the next decade.
September 1, 2003... MARSHALL MCLUHAN, AUTHOR OF UNDERSTANDING MEDIA and patron saint of Wired magazine, did more than just about anyone to shape our understanding of the information age. How ironic then that McLuhan's heirs are making use of a Gutenberg-era legal...

Unchain your melodies: why indie artists should stop worrying about "stolen" music.
September 1, 2003... I WAS A SNOWY APRIL DAY IN OTTAWA, AND A COLLECTION of us culture-types were sticking our heads out of the permafrost to discuss one of the most important issues facing the arts in Canada. Twenty creators--musicians, writers, visual artists,...

Writers of the world, unclench: digital technology is making it impossible to control the spread of intellectual property. So, how are artists supposed to make a living from their work? Give it away.
September 1, 2003... Preramble Every line we succeed in publishing today--no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it--is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness.--WALTER BENJAMIN For about five years now, I've been obsessed with the...

Fire Quotas.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... Fire Quotas solder-dust caked on windows he stares into fire crates in empty halls drill presses & metal bits in darkness, cover without glass bulbs or dim-light streams that cascade onto a worker's...

Whatever happened to her.(Fiction)(Short Story)
September 1, 2003... MY BROTHER JOHN BURDENS A RAGE THAT IS mostly dormant; it hibernates, sticks its slimy, rabid nose out of the hole only sometimes. It's cultivated by the comings and goings of men. Years after we leave my father, we have a stepfather. A...

The Element of Carrying On.(Poetry)(Fictional Work)
September 1, 2003... The Element of Carrying On "Therefore does the wind keep blowing that holds this great Earth in the Air. For this the birds sing sometimes without purpose." --Adulterated, Jack Gilbert The wind doesn't know what it wants...

Surprised we are not.(Fiction)(Short Story)
September 1, 2003... WE PUT OUR EXCITED FACES ON, MY SISTER and I, but we are not excited. Here comes my grandmother, Florrie Lumb, all the way from England to manage us for the summer while my mother has a rest. We are worried. And a little embarrassed, because...

Then.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... Then This feeling of being gutted, fish belly slit open, the accident of intestines, heart, swim bladder thudded in a pail, a mess of lily crushed against white plastic. Hot coffee butchers a nerve in my...

The apprentice.(Fiction)(Short Story)
September 1, 2003... TWENTY-FOUR MASTER DIAMOND CUTTERS. AMONG THE best in the world. They were handed plastic ID cards to pin to their jackets at the airport in Yerevan, so the group would not be separated. Given blue baseball caps with the company logo that...

Proteus.(Movie Review)
September 1, 2003... With his new film PROTEUS, Toronto filmmaker/ provocateur John Greyson returns to familiar thematic ground. Like Greyson's award winning Lilies (1996), which depicts forbidden love in pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec, Proteus is a period piece,...

Re-Play.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... Just because you don't pray an instrument, doesn't mean you can't use music to be playful. Essentially, that's the concept of RE-PLAY. Curators Catherine Crowston and Barbara Fischer brought together work by 18 established and emerging artists...

When Your Voice Tastes Like Home: Immigrant Women Write.(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... In the face of culture shock and uncertainty, it takes courage and tenacity to make a life in a new country. In WHEN YOUR VOICE TASTES LIKE HOME: IMMIGRANT WOMEN WRITE (Second Story Press), editors Prabhjot Parmar and Nila Somaia-Carten set out...

The Opening Party at a small Queen West gallery is in full sip-and-discourse swing when Emelie Chhangur dashes in, smiling--she smiles when she's nervous--and heads straight for the makeshift bar.(Interview)
September 1, 2003... THE OPENING PARTY AT A SMALL Queen West gallery is in full sip-and-discourse swing when EMELIE CHHANGUR dashes in, smiling--she smiles when she's nervous--and heads straight for the makeshift bar. The fact that she has a video on display...

Do-it-yourself television: Marc Davis's Garage Cinema project brings movie-making to the masses.(Free Thinker)(Interview)
September 1, 2003... WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO GET ON TELEVISION? TO MARC DAVIS, that's a question of technology: while PCs have made do-it-yourself music and publishing easy, most films and TV shows are still large-scale, large-budget productions. Dr. Davis's Garage...