Devin Johnston

New Definition: "Bearded-Faced Lie"

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:59:08 +0000

bearded-faced lie noun. A statement that sounds like a lie, but is actually true. Ex.: Obama's claim that a public option will save money is a bearded-faced lie.

Antonyms: bare-faced lie, bald-faced lie, bold-faced lie.

Feel free to leave your own examples of bearded-faced lies in the comments.

Buy High, Sell Low

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:35:39 +0000

Continuing in his pattern of fiscally dubious moves, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has announced that the federal government will be looking to sell Crown assets as a means of deficit control. Setting aside the question of whether selling these assets is in the long-term social and financial interests of Canadians (and we can't answer that question until we know the details), it is worth noting that selling in a down market all but guarantees that taxpayers will realize the least possible value on their investment. If this government seriously cares about the long-term fiscal health of the country, it should be looking at this recession as an opportunity to expand public assets and Crown corporations at discounted prices. When the market regains strength, it might make sense to scale back those public assets (realizing a positive return for the public by selling the assets in a better climate). Instead, this government is trying to avoid the appearance of fiscal mismanagement by desperately liquidating whatever it can in an attempt to cover the spread of its structural deficit. In the short-term, this will reduce the deficit (but probably not very significantly). In the long-term, it will be disastrous for taxpayers.

The Rise of Anti-Muslim Bigotry in Mainstream Western Political Discourse

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:53:31 +0000

This video, from The Real News Network, discusses the emergence of Western anti-Muslim bigotry within mainstream political discourse.

Liberals Over-React to Guergis Airport Incident, Giambrone Affair

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:04:11 +0000

Politics is a blood sport. Every political party hires staffers to research their opponents to try to dig up dirt from the past. And whenever a politician slips up, either by a poor choice of words or through questionable conduct, her political opponents are ready to pounce. I get this, and I understand that it is related to the hyper-competitive nature of single-member constituency electoral politics. But I take issue with the Liberal Party of Canada calling for the resignation of Conservative Minister Helena Guergis.

Guergis attracted media attention last week for an unfortunate incident at the Charlottetown airport. Guergis, who was rushing to catch a Montréal-bound flight, arrived 15 minutes before departure time. According to reports, Guergis became rude with airport employees and security staff. In addition to using profanity and being short with the employees, Ms. Guergis was apparently threw her boots after being told to remove them. Guergis apologized for the incident several days later, conceding that her behaviour was "not appropriate".

After the apology, Liberal MP Anita Neville, speaking on behalf of her party, called on Guergis to resign. In a press statement posted on the Liberal Party website, she claimed "'An apology is not enough. She must resign now.'"

Now, I am no fan of the Conservative government in general nor of Minister Guergis in particular. I think that there are plenty of trenchant criticisms that might legitimately be raised against Guergis' performance as Minister Responsible for the Status of Women. But arguing for Guergis' resignation over this particular incident is both farcical and dangerous.

If we are going to have any sort of a productive and respectful political discourse, at least among the political class, we need to move away from "gotcha" politics. There is a time and a place to make a stand; I don't think this is it.

In the first place, this incident has nothing to do with the merits of Guergis' policy positions on the execution of her portfolio. And while I don't think that attacking a politician for his or her personality is off limits per se, I do think that criticism of politicians should be reasonably germane to that politician's ability to effectively represent constituents. The Liberals' knee-jerk response betrays an underlying philosophy that getting one over on a political opponent, rather than effectively representing the public's interest, should be the paramount consideration of the party and its caucus.

In the second place, Guergis has acknowledged that her bahaviour was unprofessional and has apologized for it. While her apology might not be enough for those directly affected by the incident, I don't think that anyone else should expect anything more.

The Liberals aren't the only party guilty of seizing upon an opponent's personal flaws to score political points. Indeed, it would keep us occupied for days to cite examples of all parties hitting below the belt for the sake of transitory political gains. However, the Liberals have gone a little bit overboard of late. Apparently forgetting their recent history as complainants against the Conservatives for unfair personal attacks, Ignatieff & Co. have been hurling personal attacks in all directions.

Consider, for example, George Smitherman's classless move in calling for Adam Giambrone to resign as Chair of the TTC. Giambrone, who had been running against Smitherman for the mayoralty of Toronto, pulled out of the race when details emerged that Giambrone had an affair with a younger woman. Not content that his rival had withdrawn from the contest, Smitherman decided to kick Giambrone while he was down, stating that "It is clear that Mr. Giambrone is … not in a position to commit that degree of focus nor provide the leadership that is necessary to get the job done for riders, workers or taxpayers. With those interests in mind, he should step down as Chair of the TTC."

Once again, the incident in question had nothing to do with Giambrone's ability to serve effectively (either as Mayor or as TTC Chair. Once again, the person in question apologized publicly and took responsibility for his decisions and actions. And once again, a high-profile Liberal seized on the incident to cut the legs out from under a political rival. Smitherman's comments were even less understandable than Nevilles, given that Giambrone withdrew from the race and was no longer competing with Smitherman for the mayoralty.

Where I come from, we call that a "dick move".

Coming back to the Helena Guergis incident, it's worth contrasting Neville's reaction to that of NDP MP Peter Stoffer. Rather than throwing the incident in her face, he tried to show a little bit of human understanding. As the Globe reported:

Other parliamentarians were unimpressed with Ms. Guergis's behaviour, but were satisfied with her retraction.

“If you're going to lose your temper, you do it behind closed doors, not in public,” NDP Peter Stoffer told The Globe on Thursday. “We're all human, we all screw up and make mistakes, but hopefully she learns from this.”

While the NDP is far from perfect in terms of limiting themselves to the issues that actually affect one's ability to represent constituents, I am consistently impressed by the tenor and substance of the party's media releases. I subscribe to all of the federal parties' press releases via RSS and I have found that the NDP and Greens are consistently more focused on substantive issues than either the Liberals or Conservatives.

Perhaps if all political actors made a little bit more effort to stick to issues of greater importance, we might end up with public policies that actually reflect the needs and interests of the people.

Stephen Harper Prorogued My Blog

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:35:14 +0000

So... the Olympics are happening. That's... something to write about. Maybe?

In all seriousness, sorry for the lack of posts recently. I'm working on a series of posts about first principles of governmental legitimacy and also a few other longer-form entries. Hopefully I will post some of that material soon.

Jack Layton on "The Hour" with Strombo

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:05:19 +0000

Hat tip to Ian Capstick for posting a video of Jack Layton's extraordinary appearance on "The Hour". In his first interview since revealing that he has prostate cancer, Layton was confident about both the NDP's prospects of forming a federal government and his prospects of beating cancer.

Layton is a true statesman and has handled this personal issue with grace and class. Canada deserves a Prime Minister like Jack Layton.

Irene Mathyssen, Beyond Politics Interview

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:44:14 +0000

In this two-part CPAC interview, Irene Mathyssen (NDP MP, London-Fanshawe) discusses the life of an MP beyond politics.

On Brands and Hypocrisy

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:21:34 +0000

In this video, Hank Green of the vlogbrothers discusses the overt hypocrisy of brands. He discusses how large corporations establish multiple brands in order to market products to different ideological groups, often diametrically opposed in interest to one another, yet the brands do not actually reflect the values of the corporation. Indeed, corporations in a capitalist society have only one value: make more money. In achieving this objective, marketers create the illusion of ideologies surrounding a brand identity. This constructed identity is, in fact, simply a way for the marketer to overcome our mistrust (which is well deserved) of faceless, exploitative corporations.

CBC and Copyright

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:16:31 +0000

Scott Tribe pointed out on his blog today that the CBC has implemented new copyright policies on its online news properties. As boingboing explains, the CBC has signed up with iCopyright, an American service which sells licences to digital content creators to allow them to re-post or re-publish CBC content for a monthly fee. Cory Doctorow points out that this is the same service that purports to sell readers of Associated Press content the ability to quote 5 or more words from AP stories.

As a business strategy, I think this is clearly going to be a spectacular failure. Any company large enough to pay $250/month to re-post a single article can also create its own original content at a lower cost. Consequently, I don't imagine that the CBC will sell very many licenses.

Of course, selling licenses isn't really the point of the new policy. The point is scare small, independent digital content creators from sourcing the CBC. As Doctrow observes:

The cherry on the cake? iCopyright offers a reward of up to $1,000,000 for snitching on bloggers who don't pay Danegeld to Canada's public broadcaster to quote the works they funded.

On top of that, the licensee must "agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author."

This, too, seems like an unsound business strategy to me. When bloggers link to or reference CBC's online content, it is almost universally the practice of good bloggers to provide a link to the original content. This drives traffic to the CBC's online properties both directly (through people clicking on the link) and indirectly (through the Google PageRank benefit which accrues from inbound links, causing CBC's stories to achieve more favourable rankings in search results). The CBC seemed to acknowledge the important role that bloggers play in the online news ecosystem when it introduced features such as their "most blogged" content. Recently, these innovative social media features were removed; now they are being replaced with restrictive copyright policies that discourage bloggers from linking to CBC at all.

The CBC, like any other content provider, has a right to protect its intellectual property within the limits of copyright law. To the extent that other parties wish to re-publish the CBC's content in full and without comment (by the way, good bloggers never do this anyway), the CBC has the right to dictate the terms and conditions.

However, as the Supreme Court made perspicuous in CCH Canada Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, there are limits on the scope of copyright protection. The Court is extremely clear on the point that fair dealing is not simply a defence to a claim by a copyright holder; it is a distinct right held by users of copyright material. In other words, "Any act falling within the fair dealing exception will not be an infringement of copyright [emphasis added]."

In determining whether the use of copyright material falls within the fair dealing exception, the court will look at six factors (I have provided short extracts from the case to explain each factor):

The purpose of dealing.. "In Canada, the purpose of the dealing will be fair if it is for one of the allowable purposes under the Copyright Act, namely research, private study, criticism, review or news reporting"
The Character of the Dealing. "If multiple copies of works are being widely distributed, this will tend to be unfair. If, however, a single copy of a work is used for a specific legitimate purpose, then it may be easier to conclude that it was a fair dealing."
The Amount of the Dealing. "If the amount taken from a work is trivial, the fair dealing analysis need not be undertaken at all because the court will have concluded that there was no copyright infringement."
Alternatives to the Dealing. "If there is a non-copyrighted equivalent of the work that could have been used instead of the copyrighted work, this should be considered by the court."
The Nature of the Work. "Although certainly not determinative, if a work has not been published, the dealing may be more fair in that its reproduction with acknowledgement could lead to a wider public dissemination of the work — one of the goals of copyright law. If, however, the work in question was confidential, this may tip the scales towards finding that the dealing was unfair."
Effect of the Dealing on the Work. "If the reproduced work is likely to compete with the market of the original work, this may suggest that the dealing is not fair. Although the effect of the dealing on the market of the copyright owner is an important factor, it is neither the only factor nor the most important factor that a court must consider in deciding if the dealing is fair."

On his site, Scott proposes three ways of circumventing the CBC's iCopyright program. First, he proposes to paraphrase any material he uses from the CBC. Second, he says that he will seek out alternative sources that use more permissive copyright policies. Finally, he references a commenter on boingboing who suggests that one user can purchase a license and then every other user can link that original licensed use. I question the legality of the third option, as this would likely still constitute an infringement of the original work.

Not being a lawyer, I am prohibited from offering legal services or advice to anyone. Personally, though, I will continue to quote from and source CBC's copyright material on my blog, without purchasing a license (as I did in this post). When I quote from CBC, I will link to the original source. I will also continue to ensure that any use I make of copyright material falls within the fair dealing exception by quoting minimally and supplementing quotations with my own original analysis, commentary, criticism, review, and research. It's not at all clear to me why I would pay $250/month to exercise my existing legal rights, while also contracting out of my right to criticize the original source.

There is one thing that I will change as a result of CBC's new iCopyright policy. From now on, whenever I link to CBC, I will use the the rel="nofollow" construct. This attribute instructs search engines like Google not to index the link as part of its PageRank algorithm. Essentially, the links don't help their destination sites to achieve higher rankings in search engines. I already use this construct when linking to sources such as the Conservative and Liberal parties (being a New Demcorat, I want to ensure that I'm not giving any advantage, however trivial, to my political opponents). From now on, CBC will not get the trivial benefit they enjoy in terms of search engine ranking when I link to them. This practice will continue until CBC adopts a more balanced and realistic approach to copyright.

As an incidental note to end this post, I just want to remind both of my readers that all content I write on my blog is released under a Creative Commons license, which allow readers to quote my work for free in whole or in part as long as the use of my copyright material is not done for profit and credits me as the original creator of the work.

Anxious to See Details of the Liberals' "Watchdog Independence" Plan

devin@devinjohnston.ca (Devin Johnston) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:58:34 +0000

I'm glad to see that Ignatieff and the Liberals have plans to tackle the assault on civil servant independence which has taken place under the Harper regime. This is an issue that will require a great deal of thought, as there is a need to balance concerns of administrative independence with democratic responsiveness. I look forward to seeing further details from the Liberals.