Last week I received a take down notice from YouTube regarding a video I posted three years ago from an appearance on RoBTV which has since been rebranded as BNN.

Turns out I was not the only one. Jason Crocker from the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights also had some RoBTV/BNN videos pulled from YouTube.

Jason also did some digging to find that there were dozens of videos from BNN on YouTube and it was just the ones around the copyright issue that had been forcibly removed.

The easy conclusion to reach based on this limited data is that BNN is getting pressure to remove these particular videos. Perhaps in response to attempts to book guests who disagree with the arguments made in the videos? Those guests perhaps decline to appear on the channel out of a perception of bias against them due to the examples uploaded to YouTube?

The story has been picked up by ZeroPaid.com in the states, and its possible there were other people who's clips have been removed and we just haven't heard from them (yet).

Unfortunately this type of censorship does tend to be effective in part because it employs the very copyright laws we seek to reform. In this instance my appearance on a cable news channel was not something I was allowed to share because they claim ownership. While fun, I don't presently have the time to fight it, so instead I'll just cease doing business with BNN, and encourage others to do the same.

The video had been modestly popular, featuring a panel with myself and a CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) representative. Now that discussion is gone, and you can bet the people at CRIA would never have the courage to debate me in public again.

Update: Rose Noonan from BNN promptly got in touch with me to clarify that in fact they are removing *all* BNN videos from YouTube. So this is not an example of censorship in Canada's copyright debate, and that they are not discriminating against a particular topic, but rather are removing the items regardless of the topic.

While I still disagree with their actions I acknowledge that they are not targeting copyright in particular nor do they wish to curtail the debate on this subject.

Last night the Hypercube audition process came to a close, and 50 Canadians received a free Cube from Nissan Canada. I wasn't able to make it to the Toronto event, but watched via Twitter as winners were announced across the country.

Congratulations to the 50 people who won, and I hope those who did not are still feeling good about their participation. If not, I'm curious to hear about it.

Certainly we are hearing from those who's auditions were successful, and they could not be happier.

My friend Kevin Grandia won, in spite of the fact he lives in the suburbs, and wore a suit to the party last night (going straight from his corporate job). Yet Kevin was successful because he demonstrated a number of key qualities, such as creative videos, a sharp website, and effective mobilization of his supporters.

Talking to Kevin this morning it was great to hear his plans for the car. This is where the next phase becomes interesting. Following along with the 50 to see what they're going to do with their new Cubes.

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in the Brave News World Summit hosted and organized by The Centre for Creative Communications at Centennial College in Toronto's east end.

It was a great day spent with interesting people who work in the local and regional media industry. The keynote was Jeff Jarvis, who was unable to attend, so he presented his "What Would Google Do" rap via skype.

I participated in an afternoon workshop around the concept of a journalist toolbox, or what any aspiring hack needs to know to make it in this cut throat business. The picture above is from that session, which was organized by Ellin Bessner who wrote her own blog post about the event.

There was also a blog compiled by Centennial students during the day, as well as a blog post from Melissa Feeney.

The Royal Ontario Museum has setup a new web cam that allows you to watch flesh eating bugs ravage a dead carcass! Granted it's in a controlled environment, so you shouldn't feel weirded out or anything, but some people do freak out at the sight of bugs gnawing on flesh.

This web cam is an interesting way to give people a behind-the-scenes look at how they clean up the skeletons that end up on display. Here's a couple of paragraphs from their press release:

For those who might wonder just how the skeletal remains of birds, squirrels and other vertebrate skeletons on display at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) acquire their gleam, a live webcam will for the first time allow a special glimpse into the Museum’s bug room. Not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach, and only open to curatorial staff, the bug room is the area in which animal specimens are placed and where a colony of beetles eat their way through animal flesh, revealing clean bones and performing a vital task in the preparation of artifacts for display or storage. ROM website visitors are invited to watch nature in action via live webcam footage of the bug room at www.rom.on.ca/insects.php from Thursday, May 14, 2009.

The bug room is a sealed, metal-lined, climate controlled room where a series of bug species make light work of cleaning skeleton bones. This month the live webcam will show Skin Beetles (Family Dermestidae) making their way through the flesh of a Golden Eagle discovered in Ontario’s Nipissing District and donated to the ROM by the Ministry of Natural Resources. As the room must remain in total darkness to mimic the natural habitat and behavioural patterns of the bugs, the webcam that is being used to capture the bugs in action has infrared capability, resulting in a black and white image.

Yesterday I was sent a link to an incredible and epic thread, which a meta-mob of auto enthusiasts formed to mete out rapid Internet justice on a car parts thief who had been preying upon them.

It all started in the parking lot of Toronto's Yorkdale Mall. While the victim was at work, someone stole a specialized front lip from his car, an Acura TSX, in the middle of the day, using his own car to block what he was doing. The victim went to mall security, got video of the crime, but because the thief took the plates off his car, and there are no witnesses, the police said there was nothing they could do.

Frustrated by this lack of action, the victim turned to the TSXClub.com site, a forum for Acura TSX owners. He started the thread in the early hours of May 21st 2009.

As a bit of background, forums online are one of the largest and most vibrant elements of social media, and automotive forums tend to have a character and class all of their own. What is particularly interesting in this case is the not only way the forum responded, but also automotive forums of all kinds right across the web.

Immediately a suspect emerged, as one of the members recognized the car in the security video as being almost identical to photos of a car posted by another user of the site. At first people were hesitant to point fingers, but when the user tried to defend himself with a poorly written reaction, intense scrutiny started to fall on the suspect.

News is something I've always been interested in. Often this interest is more in the news business than it is in the news they are delivering. The internet has now matured to the point where I can get news from anywhere in the world, and I often seek multiple sources for coverage of a particular event.

However I do still tune into televised news, and most Canadians still get the majority of their news from their TV. This is why I think Al Jazeera should be available on Canadian cable television.

A number of CBC colleagues are now working for Al Jazeera's english language service, and via them I've been able to learn a lot about the programming produced for this network. For the most part it's excellent, and provides a crisp contrast to the rest of cable TV news.

You can view Al Jazeera online via Live Station, and once you do, I encourage you to contact the CRTC and participate in their current consulation regarding the network.

This past Monday I was fortunate enough to attend the first ever Free Summit held in San Mateo, California. Organized Hosted by TechDirt.com founder Mike Masnick with help from the folks at and organized by Sagescape, who also organized the Tech Policy Summit, the event sought to analyze and understand the business of free. The keynote speaker for the event was Wired editor Chris Anderson, whom I had seen deliver the same presentation a year earlier here in Toronto.

While I wrote a detailed report on the event for my clients, as well as a few CBC radio spots on the subject, I wanted to share some personal thoughts on my blog.

At one point during the day, Chris Anderson wondered aloud why it took 15 years to start talking about free in the context of business, and I feel the answer is that we've been focusing on the wrong things. The obsession with making money online has distracted us from the fact that people are where the real value lies.

Social media is finally teaching us to look at social dynamics and understand social relationships. It is rapidly becoming clear to all who care to notice that the moral taught to us by the web is "free."

This is a beta test of a new Internet show I've been developing. I've learned a lot since shooting and editing this first bit. The lighting and sound was poor, and the second interview I shot improved on this dramatically. However I wanted to release this as a beta test and get it out there in hopes of getting feedback.

I also wanted to get it out in time to help promote the STV campaign in BC. If you're in BC, or have friends/family there, please get them to help reform our electoral system.

Also a big special thanks to Brownman Ali for allowing me to use the spectacular song "Yesteryear" which was composed and performed by the Brownman Electryc Trio.

Augmented reality is kind of a hybrid between material reality and virtual reality in that it combines the power of hyperlinks and interconnected media with the geography and architecture of the physical world.

For a long time everyone assumed that virtual reality would be the basis of "cyberspace" and that it's arrival was imminent, however while it has been around from a technical perspective for well over a decade, very few regular folk have adopted it, outside of the gaming world of course.

So augmented reality is appearing as a kind of compromise that brings the benefits and promise of virtual reality to the real world that we all find so comfortable.

As well the rate of technological change is so rapid these days that while this may be the first time you've heard of augmented reality, I anticipate that you'll hear a lot more real soon, and by the end of the year it could be a regular part of the popular culture.

This week one of my columns on CBC Radio sheds light on a story circulating in network security circles that depicts a new and rather alarming attack on the banking system's transaction process. I'm getting a lot of emails from CBC listeners asking for more info, so here's an article on Wired's Threat Level Blog that elaborates further. Here are some key highlights from the article:

The revelation is an indictment of one of the backbone security measures of U.S. consumer banking: PIN codes. In years past, attackers were forced to obtain PINs piecemeal through phishing attacks, or the use of skimmers and cameras installed on ATM and gas station card readers. Barring these techniques, it was believed that once a PIN was typed on a keypad and encrypted, it would traverse bank processing networks with complete safety, until it was decrypted and authenticated by a financial institution on the other side.

But the new PIN-hacking techniques belie this theory, and threaten to destabilize the banking-system transaction process.

Information about the theft of encrypted PINs first surfaced in an indictment last year against 11 alleged hackers accused of stealing some 40 million debit and credit card details from TJ Maxx and other U.S. retail networks. The affidavit, which accused Albert "Cumbajohnny" Gonzalez of leading the carding ring, indicated that the thieves had stolen "PIN blocks associated with millions of debit cards" and obtained "technical assistance from criminal associates in decrypting encrypted PIN numbers."

But until now, no one had confirmed that thieves were actively cracking PIN encryption.