The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web (these are the same jokers who sell you a "license" to quote 5 words from the AP).
iCopyright offers "licenses" to use taxpayer-funded CBC articles on terms that read like a bizarre joke. You have to pay by the month to include the article on your website (apparently no partial quotation is offered, only the whole thing, which makes traditional Internet commentary very difficult!). And you have to agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author. Thanks for fostering a dialogue, CBC!
It's bizarre, for sure, especially when one considers that CBC is a taxpayer-funded corporation.
But a commenter on Doctorow's Boing Boing blog has the right idea.
So folks just stop quoting CBC articles, stop linking to them, and they disappear from net culture. Other sites get the attention.
This smells like something that will be withdrawn in short order, if not voluntarily, then perhaps in court. There's a Facebook group opposing the move, and a letter to CBC is probably a good idea.
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