Well, this isn't typical tinfoil.music fare, but it involves a guy who's a drummer in a political punk band, so that counts right? Sure it does.

A document from the Conservative government here in Canada was leaked last week, which isn't terribly unusual. It contained parts of a speach to be given by the Minister of the Environment, a fellow by the name of John Baird. The document was an advanced copy of Baird's upcoming plans on dealing with climate change, which many Canadians were actively looking forward to hearing. See, the environment has become quite a hot topic in Canada and the current governments lack of action with regards to it has been a sticking point for much of the country.

Indeed, the person who previously held Baird's post was essentially laughed/booed out of her office. Her plan was just that bad.

You see, Canada is a member of the Kyoto Accord and was instrumental in writing it up. So, it looks pretty bad when we ignore it, as we are doing now.

Right about now you're saying "Ya, and? This and a buck thirty-five will get you a large double-double." A fellow by the name of Jefferey Monaghan is being accused of leaking the documents. This kid of 27 held an entry-level temp job with Environment Canada in a capacity that *may* have given him access to the document as he was working in a publicity capacity. However, the person that hired this bloke certainly didn't perform any due-dillagence. Jefferey is pretty much 100% against Harper and the Conservatives and is a known environmentalist who may or may not have links with Earth First. He's also helped setup an "anarchist" book store in Ottawa, though your definition of anarchist is likely different from mine, Jeffereys and the media, natch. Oh ya, and he's the drummer for a band that's about as anti-Harper and anti-right as you can get.

How did this guy get hired on for a government position that is dealing with the media?

What is getting my goat, however, is that this fellow was lead out of his office, in a pair of cuffs, by some of the country's finest RCMP officers? That seems a little excessive to me. Give him his two weeks notice and invite him to "not let the door hit your ass on the way out" would be the reasonable thing to do.

Right, this is Harper's government. Baby-Bush, as he's been nicknamed, hates the media, hates publicity and thinks he can control what the populace knows and doesn't know about the day-to-day activities of his office. It seems his motto is something to the effect of "Hey, we're doing our job so leave us the hell alone." Well, unfortunatly that doesn't work in a public position. The people who pay the salaries and posh pensions have a pesky habbit of wanting to know if they are getting a good product for their money. Right, like they've ever gotten that, but Harper's government is taking the public disinformation campaign to levels never seen in Canadian politics.  We're not used to this up here. Our government is almot kind of reasonably transparent up here, not like other North American countries which will go unnamed.

Thankfully the opposition parties have taken up the side of Jefferey. While some are calling what he did as not his brightest move, they can all agree that Harper is overreacting in a big way.

You can find more about Jefferey's band on his MySpace page . The music ain't my thing, but atleast their page isn't the typical MySpace puking of HTML.

HARTFORD, Conn. - Connecticut lawmakers unveiled legislation Wednesday that would require MySpace.com and other social-networking sites to verify users' ages and obtain parental consent before minors can post profiles.

The bill comes a day after a man was sentenced to 14 years in prison for using MySpace.com to set up a sexual encounter with an 11-year-old Connecticut girl. It was one of the first federal sex cases involving the popular site.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who met with other attorneys general on Tuesday, said 10 to 20 other states are considering similar legislation.

"The technology is available. The solution is financially feasible, practically doable," he said. "If we can put a man on the moon, we can check ages of people on these Web sites."

Read More 

tinfoilmusic.net

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch brings us a tale in which he was present at a Microsoft sponsored event to try and win over some bloggers to the dark Zune side, at which he received his third Zune freebie. Lucky SOB, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on one myself.

At said event, the bloggers got the opportunity to grill The Gates on various subjects including DRM. Bill's response wasn't expected.

Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which "causes too much pain for legitmate buyers" while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are "huge problems" with DRM, he says, and "we need more flexible models, such as the ability to "buy an artist out for life" (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.

His short term advice: "People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then."

Emphasis mine, and I, for once, agree with The Gates. DRM stinks and it is crippling the selling feature of the Zune.

ArsTechnica: China signed a memorandum of understanding today with several trade associations in the UK and US, agreeing to crack down on copyright infringement and piracy in the country. The memorandum, Establishment of a Coordination Mechanism For Online Copyright Protection, was signed in Beijing by the National Copyright Administration (NCA) of China.

The four associations involved in the agreement were the Motion Picture Association of America and the Association of American Publishers in the US, and the Business Software Alliance and The Publishers Association in the UK. These groups have agreed to provide the NCA with a list of items that they wish to see protected, such as movies, video and audio, software, and published works.

Source: tinfoilmusic.net.

Hot on last weeks news of the RIAA members seeking to reduce artist royalties, record labels are starting to squeeze artists in other ways, or so the NYTimes reports.

In the article, NYT cites a recent release from R&B star Akon that sold 283,000 discs in its No. 2 debut. In years past, a release such as this would have sold half a million copies easily, but this recent performance is a sign of the new direction the industry is taking.

Along with the 283,000 discs sold, iTunes sold 244,000 songs in the first week and ringtones generated another 269,000 sales.

Because the record companies make the lions share of cash on CD sales, they are feeling the crunch and are passing the crunch downstream by hitting the artist up for less royalties and cuts of merch sales. Merch sales are a sweet peach and many bands make their living on them, along with the revenue from the tour (which has been cut into already as well) so it's going to hurt.

The Economist is speculating on the future of the phone and they come up with some interesting predictions, from patches that are applied to the skin behind your ear to transmit sound rather than archaic devices that plug into or sit on top of your ears to devices with giant storage capacities clipped to ones keychain.

Already it is difficult to consider a modern cellphone nothing more than a phone. They email, take pictures, play music and annoy the living fark out of all those surrounding you. Considering gains in storage capacity alone, it wouldn't be difficult to assume that in 10 years time your average phone will have more space than your desktop computer today, can anyone really imagine what capabilities will be available to the manufacturers and consumers? Screw this keyboard projected by tiny lasers embedded in the device, will we all have tiny visual interfaces embedded into our sunglasses that will also incorporate a small video camera & mic? Will we interface with the phone via quiet gutteral noises picked up by a sensing device stuck to our neck? Will we see a time when these interface devices are embedded just beneath the skin? It all sounds very Neal Stephensonesque.

I shudder to think of compatability problems were that the case.

The Idolator is having a slow news day today, or they've been into the Colt 45 again because they have decided to predict Van Halen's inevitable reunion tour, and the events leading up to it. It goes a li'l somethin' like this:

1/12/07: Roth and the Van Halen brothers meet at a Hamburger Hamlet outside of LAX (it's Dave's treat) to discuss the possibility of a reunion tour. Because all of them are in need of extra money--particularly Alex Van Halen, whose aviator-sunglasses addiction is described as "crippling"--they agree to a three-month jaunt.

3/18/07: The contracts are finalized, though Roth's last-minute insistence that every legal document be appended with a "Skebadee-skebadee-woo-ah!" scat causes concern within management.

There is more here , but I can't be bothered to read it all.

(Los Angeles, CA —December 12, 2006) Live Nation and Guns N' Roses have announced that the Guns N' Roses show at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, CA has been cancelled. Sincere apologies go out to all the fans in Fresno who bought a ticket. We hope you can make it to the band's show in Oakland, CA at the ORACLE Arena (formerly Oakland Arena) on Friday night the 15th of December, which will proceed as scheduled. Refunds for the Fresno show are available at point of purchase.

Quick, can anyone tell me the last G'n'R show on this tour that hasn't either started late or been cancelled altogether? Ya, I can't think of any either.

Apple said the report is "simply incorrect", but will not divulge iTunes financial figures.

Apple is a pretty secretive company so it really is no surprise that they aren't divulging the figures. It's probably because they are too busy rolling around in cash, Scrooge McDuck style.

In fairness to Apple, the report by Forrester isn't exactly exhaustive. It surveyed some 2,700 members of its consumer panel and among them it was found that iTunes purchases were, well, you can read that here. They seem to also be forgetting that the holidays are a-comin' so people may very well be holding off on purchases of music on iTunes for themselves.

Of course, one has to take the news from both sides with a grain of salt.

With a strong showing during the opening round of sales, Microsoft's Zune digital media player rocketed to No. 2 on the sales charts, close enough to Apple that they were in fact spooning. In the weeks since Zune's introduction, and fairly wide negative reaction, the Zune has dropped to 5th place overall and leaving Apple's normal partner, SanDisk, curling up beside the iPod.

More information here.