If you've been following the "tech press" lately you'll find all kinds of attacks in progress against your rights as an "electronic citizen".

These attacks include:

• So-called "Digital Rights Management" copy protection schemes which in reality are "Digital Restrictions Management" schemes.    The Canadian federal government's "Bill C-61" will make it illegal for you to break any form of "digital lock" even if you are just trying to exercise your traditional rights to "fair dealing"
  
• Ridiculous software patents that stifle innovation
  
• Government and corporate spying on internet users
  
• Violating the principle of "net neutrality" where big or small, rich or poor all internet traffic is treated the same.   Telecom companies are trying to create a "two-tier" internet by "throttling" traffic that they've decided they don't like.
  
• Rendering large parts of the radio frequency spectrum useless through "broadband over powerlines" (BPL) schemes. which generate massive radio frequency interference.

Here are some sites where folks are trying to help defend your electronic rights:

Digital Copyright Canada
Canadian Music Creator's Coalition - Coalition of Canadian musicians (including the Bare Naked Ladies, Sara McLauchlan, Avril Lavigne and many others!) who are opposed to the recording industry's efforts to impose DRM measures.
Online Rights Canada
Faircopyright.ca
Copyrightwatch.ca
CIPPIC (Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic)
Privacyinfo.ca
Michael Geist's Blog - (Michael Geist is Research Chair of Internet & E-commerce law at the University of Ottawa and one of Canada's foremost writers on issues of electronic freedom)
Intellectual Privacy.ca - Canadian coalition working on anti-DRM, Privacy and Copyright issues
Class Action Law Suit Againsts Sony for "Extended Copy Protection".
Another Class Action Law Suit Against Sony!
Cory Doctorow's Blog "Craphound.com"

U.S.A.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Anti-DRM.org  - Campaigns Against Digital Restrictions Management
Groklaw   - Excellent site authored by Pamela Jones on legal issues in the tech world
Save the Internet.com
SaveNetRadio - Campaign to save internet radio in the U.S.

NET NEUTRALITY - Fighting the "two-tier internet".

Links to videos

THE REST OF THE WORLD!

Defective by Design.org  - The Free Software Foundation's campaign against DRM
Free Software Foundation - Campaigns for Software Freedom
Wikipedia article on Digital Rights Management
"Bad Vista" -  The Free Software Foundation's "anti-Windows Vista" site.
Did You Say Intellectual Property?  It's a Seductive Mirage by Richard Stallman (Stallman debunks the use of the term "intellectual property")

NO OOXML!

What's OOXML?   It's the "Office Open XML" file format that Microsoft is trying to establish as a "standard" for the exchange of electronic documents. Right now Microsoft is involved in heavy-handed lobbying of national standards organizations in an effort to get them to support OOXML at the International Standards Organization (ISO).

Guess what?   There already is a standard for the exchange of electronic documents that's been adopted by the ISO...namely the already open and vendor neutral "Open Document Format" (ODF).   It ensures that businesses, governments, organizations and home computer users will be able to read their electronic documents forever and they won't have to pay for Microsoft software to do it.   You'll be able to use anyone's software...even free software.   

Microsoft will no longer be able to hold your data hostage.   For you, that's a good thing.   For Microsoft, that's a bad thing!  It ends their decade plus monopoly on office software.

For further information go to:

No OOXML.org


FIGHTING "BROADBAND OVER POWERLINES" (BPL)

Here's an interesting story from 1998 from the CBC News website:  "Quebec ham radio operator gets message from afar".   Basically it's the story of a Canadian couple who were sailing in the Caribbean Sea.  The couple was attacked by pirates off Colombia and had all of their worldly possessions stolen.  Their call for help was heard by a Quebec ham radio operator who was able to render assistance.

Now imagine if that Quebec ham radio operator happened to live in an area where there was "broadband over powerlines" (BPL).   The radio "cry for help" would not have been heard due to the interference caused by most BPL systems.   There are plenty of ways to deliver internet service without polluting the most sensitive part of the radio frequency spectrum.

American Radio Relay League's BPL Info Page
Video & Audio Recordings of BPL Interference
Canadian BPL Info