1 TWO MORE CENTS AND I’M GOING BERSERK ON AMAZON: The Canadian dollar has jumped above 98 cents today on the backs of a climbing stock and oil prices. (Oil is up? But wait, I thought the oil companies were hurting so bad we had to keep royalty rates down.) Good news if you want to shop online. Bad if you’re tired of listening to industry bellyache about how nobody wants to buy their now-more-expensive stuff anymore. (Globe and Mail)
2 PUNK ROCK NDP PLOT TO MAKE COPYRIGHT LAW LESS WRONG: Charlie Angus, NDP MP for Timmins James Bay and former punk rocker, is introducing two private members bills to make Canada’s copyright legislation a little fairer for the users of media. The first would extend the rules that allow us to make copies of cds we own to include personal music devices like the iPod. The second would turn the list of current fair dealing categories into an illustrative rather than exhaustive list so that courts could make judgments about future technologies based on the rules rather than assuming anything new or unfamiliar is prohibited. (Boing Boing)
3 REGINA BUDGET COMING FRIDAY: Oh, budget season is starting down at city hall as Mayor Fiacco will be presenting the 2010 budget this week. Any guesses about what we’ll see in it? Will city hall opt to not raise property taxes once again? Will the fact that it’s not an election year have any impact, I wonder? (Leader Post)
4 AMERICAN SPIES TRIED TO PLUG WIKILEAKS: According to an Army Counterintelligence Center report on the Wikileaks site, American spies tried to throttle the flow info to Wikileaks by intimidating sources to the site. (Boing Boing)
5 AUSSIE NEWS IS MOSTLY SPIN: Austrailian alternative news source, Crikey, reports that more than half of all stories in that country’s media are planted by PR sources. Just because it’s happening downunder doesn’t mean its happening here, though. Right? (Crikey, via Boing Boing)
6 KIRBY ESTATE BATTLES MARVEL: The estate of late comics legend, Jack Kirby, is filing suit to revoke Marvel’s copyright control over many of comicdoms best known (and most lucrative) superheroes. This could put in jeopardy many of Marvel’s upcoming movie plans, such the Hulk’s appearance in an Avengers flick or more chapters in the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises. At the same time, Kirby was one of those artists who was really grotesquely exploited during the golden age of comics. It’d be nice to see his family reap some of the benefits of his genius if not the man himself. (Cinematical)