According to Google's archive of gnu.misc.discuss, 1992 was the year I became active in the Free Software movement. While the earliest posting I can find appears to be a naive copyright question about the public domain, other messages from the first few months of 1992 suggest I was already engaged in some of the discussions. With the new year approaching, I wanted to offer some thoughts on one of the conversations that has been constant the last 20 years. I then invite you to offer your own thoughts in CLUE's discuss@ mailing list.

I received a reply from Heritage Minister James Moore dated December 2, 2011. I'm not certain which letter it was in reply to, but it could have been my Who is the Candice Hoeppner for information technology owners? letter I sent to all Conservative MP's back in May/June.

While I am posting the full text of his reply, I wanted to offer a quick response explaining why I think he is wrong on the impacts of the "technological protection measures" aspects of Bill C-11. (See: earlier article for a description of real-world technologies being discussed)

For New Years eve I thought I would be useful to visit our Copyright-related Policy summary in the context of events in 2010. After a summary I will offer some suggestions of what people should do in the coming year to protect our rights and interests.

The Conservative government tabled a copyright Bill C-32 on June 2 which was debated and then passed at second reading on November 5'th. It was sent to a special legislative committee that held 8 meetings before parliament was adjourned until Monday, January 31, 2011. Being passed at second reading doesn't make it law, and there are many more stages for this bill to follow.

My longtime colleague Brian Osborn, publisher of Linux Magazine (which is what it's callled everywhere in the world except for the US and Canada where it's "Linux Pro Magazine") has been calling special attention to a recent article they've published, regarding the use of open source software to circumvent China's Internet censorship mechanisms. The article describes the mechaisms, as well as the software used to get around it all. Interesting reading, especially timely considering the Olympics.

By now most Canadians know that Barenaked Ladies lead singer Steven Page has been arrested in New York in relation to alleged cocaine possession.

An interesting observation on news reports about Page's arrest suggest not only a massive smear campaign going on in the media (for instance, he never admitted to using the coke as some reports have asserted), but potentially a nasty motive behind the smear.

Popular news site TorrentFreak has singled out Canadian MP Charlie Angus (NDP --Timmins-James Bay) as one of the world's more vocal politician critics of DMCA-like laws such as Canada's pending C-61.

Does anyone here know Charlie? Does personal experience here bear out his now-international reputation on the issue? And to what extent is his position backed by his party?

I've started blogging on my website, Xunil.com, and this was my first entry. The subject line says it all; I think the real loser today was not SCO (what's one more slap?) but Sun, a newcomer to this soap opera.

The Hamilton Linux User Group is having a conference on Saturday June 7th from 9am to 5pm at St. Andrews United Church, 479 Upper Paradise Road, Hamilton, ON.

Topics will include the OpenOffice office suite, Asterisk phone server, Zimbra email and collaboration/groupware suite and the Linux operating system. The focus being on F/OSS applications for business and end-users.

The Seatlle Times reports that Microsoft has been making available a tool for law enforcement that, amongst other things, decrypts protected files on Windows systems.