Today’s festival occurred amidst alternating periods of harsh sun and explosive thunderstorm. Several times, the artists had to clear the stage due to the danger of bolts being drawn their way. The audience scattered and artists, staff, VIPs, and volunteers huddled in whichever tents were not collapsing. Thankfully, everything was clear and beautiful for Andrea’s [...]

For me, WestFest has been divided into two rather different elements: the volunteering portion and the event portion.
Volunteering
For the first time in rather a while, this let me feel like I was making an immediate and concrete difference in an outcome of some importance - that someone else could have done a lot worse at [...]

Canada’s proposed new copyright act is unacceptably poor, most importantly because of its treatment of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Under the new law, circumventing any such system - no matter why - is against the law. This means that if the company that sold you a song decides to stop letting you access it, you [...]

Residents of Ottawa should strongly consider attending WestFest this year. It is a free five day festival happening in Westboro Village between June 11th and 15th. An entire street will be closed off to make room for stages, vendors, and the like. It only takes five minutes to walk there from the Westboro Transitway station.
Performers [...]

According to Boing Boing, Canadian border guards may soon be in charge of checking iPods and other devices for copyright infringement. If true, the plan is absurd for several reasons. For one, it would be impossible for them to determine whether a DRM-free song on your iPod was legitimately ripped from a CD you own [...]

Following in the footsteps of Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails is giving listeners the option of downloading their latest album for free. Their approach differs from that of Radiohead in two ways: whereas Radiohead asked people to pay whatever they felt was fair, NIN is just sending the files for free. Also, while Radiohead offered their [...]