The whirlwind of controversy around the now defunct “Girls Around Me” app by i-Free Innovations evokes no new strangeness for all of us to fear, ponder, or be perplexed by. At its core, the attention paid to the creepy smartphone app involves the intersection of privacy and technology. This is a conversation about surveillance, sousveillance, […]
Now that Bill C-11, Canada’s Act to Amend the Copyright Act, has undergone its second reading in the House of Commons, it will be subject to two more votes before it likely heads to the Senate and finally to royal assent. Given our current majority Conservative government, this long-impending introduction of a “Canadian DMCA” will […]
It seems that the pot is starting (or have already started) to boil over. The role of academic publishing houses in the dissemination of knowledge has attracted the attention of people outside academia. And, certainly, it has attracted the attention of our blog. Mary Gray, Chris Boulton, and Zachary McDowell have chimed in with some important ideas about the philosophical […]
In the wake of the demonstration against Elsevier, Chris Boulton and I recently authored a brief piece discussing some of the surrounding issues that are getting more widely known due to the academic outcry. In the days since this became major news, the controversy has spread beyond the walls of academia, and others are starting […]
Several weeks ago, the popular message board Reddit announced that it was making a policy change to ban all “suggestive or sexual content featuring minors.” Owned by Advanced Publications, Reddit has made a name for itself in part by its hands-off, pro-free-speech, let-the-users-decide, and self-police approach. In fact, before the policy change, the only rules of […]