“Roberts Rules”
The Cord Weekly
31 May 2006
Joe Turcotte
A&E Editor

Reluctant rock star Sam Roberts caps the year off at the Turret

Sam Roberts’ strained voice speaks for itself, cementing the fact that staging the “Mother of All Tours” is no easy task. In between setting-up in order to rock WLUSU’s Year-End Party, Roberts sat down and spoke with the Cord about the rigors of touring and the rock ‘n roll lifestyle.

“I’m in preservation mode right now, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” a tired and raspy-voiced Roberts said. “It’s just about trying to keep going, man. There’s no recovery time, we get one or two days off. Touring is deadly, man; touring is hard as hell. Touring is the hardest thing.”

But while the schedule may be grueling, the Canadian singer-song writer has no regrets, as he realizes that touring is essential.
“Anytime you put out a new record there’s only a few ways to promote it. There are interviews There are interviews and the press, but you’re not really in control of that. Then you have the marketing strategies that your labels devise, and then you have shows, which to me [are] the best way to get your point across and the only way where you’re ever fully in control.”

While he remains in control over performing, Roberts acknowledges that he loosened-up on the reins when recording his newest album, Chemical City. Instead of personally performing all the instruments and later assembling the tracks in the studio,
as he did for 2003’s We Were Born in a Flame, Roberts and his band assembled in Australia and recorded together.

“It was good not to be alone in the studio, that’s a pretty lonely existence. [This way] you have five people propping up the energy
of the record, instead of one person trying to carry it all on his shoulders. I don’t know if great rock and roll has ever come from
that,” the increasingly excited Roberts said.

When speaking about his music, Roberts speaks like a father talking about his children. That being said, Roberts doesn’t want to take anything away from his major label debut by comparing it to Chemical City.

“I’m really happy with the first record. It meant that I was starting off down the road. I don’t ever want to take away from it by comparing it to what I’m doing now. But your musical instinct is to pursue different musical avenues. Different approaches to
your song writing and the lyrical content, anything. You should never try to consciously direct what you’re doing.”

And while he was writing for the new album, Roberts admits that sometimes his musical inspiration seemed to come from unconscious sources.

“Sometimes you feel like a medium, that you’re channeling something from beyond. And then sometimes it’s very much something that you have to work at. You have to sculpt a raw idea. You take that and hope that you can make something, but that
takes a lot of work,” the ever-humble Roberts revealed with a smile.

For someone that has had so much success and has had so many lofty comparisons made about his music, Roberts’ humility
is refreshing.

While Chemical City is bound to be a smash success, Roberts is reluctant to acknowledge the comparisons to legends like Bob Dylan and John Lennon that the media often makes.

“I don’t think it necessarily reflects reality. They’re two of my idols for sure, people that I look up to as songwriters. Their music
inspires me, but it inspires a whole lot of other people too. I think every musician would love to be compared to Dylan and Lennon, but that doesn’t mean they measure up at all. It doesn’t make it a fact.”

But like Dylan and Lennon, Roberts’ music is more than just catchy hooks and inviting melodies. Chemical City has been described as a response to the urban decay that the band has witnessed first hand while touring.

“We don’t just play the 10 to 12 major cities in Canada, we go everywhere. When you put it all together [the album] has this feeling to it in a way. The songs we write are a reflection of the life we live and the places that we see. For me I’m very much rooted in an urban landscape every day. But I’m not obsessed with it or anything. ‘Mind Flood’ is very much set in Algonquin Park or some place like that. That’s where I see that song.”

While Roberts admits that some of his songs may look as though they have a social agenda, he is quick to dismiss the idea the
he explicitly tries to be political or push an agenda.

“I never want to tailor what I do to a certain crowd,” Roberts admits, “if I’m political or socially conscious it’s because that’s how
I feel. I don’t want it to be like I’m getting on my soap-box or anything.”

As a Canadian who has had the fortune to travel from coast to coast, Roberts’ music is an expression of the diversity of the
Canadian landscape. Nuanced and complex, Roberts’ music does not take well to being defined in simple terms. With Canada seemingly conquered, Roberts sees the next logical step as taking his music to the United States.

“I want to push my music as far and wide as possible,” an excited Roberts beamed.

He does seek some sort of validation from the scene in the States, “I do feel that, for sure. Not because it’s a matter of pride or anything like that. But at some point you have to expand your boundaries and push your horizons. That just leads to a longer
and healthier career. It’s not a personal thing like ‘I have to conquer the States.’ It’s just the next place to go, it’s right there and there are 300 million people who just love rock and roll music.”

Although Roberts is looking to take the next step to the United States, he still feels proud to be part of the burgeoning Canadian
music scene.

“I think there’s a lot of great bands who are all gifted in their own right working right now,” Roberts acknowledged while deflecting away any talk of being responsible for the success of the Canadian music industry. “No, no, I don’t think we were in any way at all responsible for it. I think they’re all tremendous bands who are doing their own thing.”

While Roberts may be reluctant to be seen as more than just another artist doing what he loves to do, he is viewed by many as a
premier member of the Canadian rock music community. And if the Canadian success of Chemical City is reciprocated in the United States, maybe this rock and roller from Montreal will become an international sensation.

It’s going to be an accommodating space where people with different opinions can discuss topics that matter to them. If you’re interested in taking part, feel free to contact me. We’re looking for non-partisan perspectives on the campaign and issues that affect our country. That isn’t to say that if you’re affiliated with a party that we don’t want your input, we just don’t want people regurgitating Party talking points or submitted incendiary rants against people, etc.

With the glut of election-related sites out there we realize that the odds are stacked against us but we’re committed to trying to engage with Canadians– and Canada’s youth, in particuar– and try to make a difference.

Comments/criticisms are always appreciated.

Will the Government of Canada step-in and overturn the CRTC’s usage based billing decision?

In a response to a question from the CBC’s Rosemary Barton, Minister Clement has said that Canada’s telecommunications and broadcasting regulator must rethink it’s decision about allowing large ISPs to charge smaller providers on a usage-based basis.

This decision, if it comes to fruition, is good news for everyone that has been concerned about this issue and for the team at OpenMedia who worked to organize a campaign against the move.

However, as Maclean’s Andrew Coyne seems to be pointing out–again via Twitter– this (seemingly forthcoming) move, coupled with the recent Globalive/Wind Mobile reversal now calls into question the CRTC’s relevancy as a regulatory body.

If the CRTC makes a decision– based on its readings of a case– that the Government of Canada doesn’t agree with and subsequently overturns, why have the regulatory body at all?

The CRTC has cautiously– and yet clumsily– waded into the new world of Canadian telecommunications regulations. The UBB and Globalive cases demonstrate that the Commission might not have the tools necessary for the current times. We must give the CRTC credit and believe that it is doing its best to regulate an increasingly complex telecommunications and broadcasting sector. A sector that is becoming increasingly important to Canada’s future of innovation, culture and economic stability.

The Commission’s rulings in these two cases are inline with the regulator’s historic role and mandate in Canadian society. It is acting according to its interpretations of precedent as they relate to emerging cases. Overturning the CRTC, as the Government has done (and seems poised to do), calls the legitimacy of the Commission into question. If the CRTC doesn’t have the tools and authority to make the decisions it deems to be the interest of Canada, perhaps it’s time that it is given them.

Rather than reacting on cases on an ad hoc basis, it is necessary for the Government of Canada to create a legitimate and legislative structure that outlines how these industries will operate in Canada in the ever-changing digital world. This is necessary for the continued relevance of the CRTC as well as the needs of the Canadian people and economy. Without such a digital strategy– which, admittedly the Government is working on– these cases will continue to arise.

UBB and foreign ownership requirements in telecommunications highlight the urgent need for the updating of Canada’s regulatory apparatuses.

Let’s hope that the momentum created by this recent uproar is carried forward so that a balanced and responsible digital economy strategy can put our country at the forefront of the ‘digital revolution’.

Since his commanding election win on Monday night much ink—be-it digital, print or otherwise—has been spilled chronicling the varying elements behind and emanating from the Etobicoke councilor’s win. While many of these stories have either applauded Ford’s win, his campaign strategy or (perhaps most vociferously) bemoaned his election, neither of these story lines interest me much.

Rob Ford has won. He ran a disciplined, well-organized campaign and garnered the trust of the majority of voters in Toronto. Congratulations to him and his team and it is time for his detractors to deal with it.

What has interested me, however, is something that doesn’t appear to have gained much attention from the mainstream press and/or popular pundits: how will Rob Ford adapt to his new role as the mayor of the largest city in Canada?

Throughout the campaign Ford stuck to his simple and digestible message about fiscal restraint, ‘stopping the gravy train’ and reasserting ‘respect for the taxpayer’. Now that the campaign is over, I’m fascinated how Mayor-elect (and soon to be Mayor) Ford will grow into his new position at City Hall.

There are many issues of concern at play here. Not only will Ford have to try and form some sort of working consensus at City Hall in order to advance his agenda, he’ll also have to deal with the attention and media onslaught that comes with being the mayor of Toronto. At the same time, he’ll have to work to address the seemingly huge divide between downtown Toronto—where George Smitherman carried the vote—and the surrounding suburbs—where Ford dominated. As urban theorist Richard Florida stated prior to the election, it appears that there are now ‘two Torontos’.

At a time like this, when the global economy is still recovering from an historic downturn and unemployment and citizen dissatisfaction remain high, will Mayor-elect Ford be able to make the transition from ‘outsider’ or ‘rogue’ councilor to the man in charge of our country’s biggest city?

My early impressions are that the growing pains might be a little harsh.

In the interviews that I have seen or heard Ford do since his election, the Mayor-elect has looked overmatched and unaccustomed to his new high profile position.

In an interview with  CBC News Network’s Power and Politics with Evan Solomon, Solomon—no stranger to interviewing the country’s most high-profiled politicians—seemed to overmatch Ford and make the Mayor Elect uncomfortable.

Ford’s interview on the show seemed more of a campaign stop than a discussion with the incoming mayor of Toronto. Sticking to his campaign script, Ford repeated his mantra of fiscal restraint and respect for the taxpayer. I came away without knowing anything new about Ford and the man who will be running this city.

The same day, Ford took time to speak with CBC Radio One’s As it Happens and respected journalist Carol Off. In a short 3 minute clip that has now spread across the Internet, Ford seems less concerned with talking to the country’s national public broadcaster than attending to his role of football coach. Of course, Ford has been a dedicated coach and his players and team deserve his attention. However, by not taking a brief amount of time to step aside and deal with his taxpayer funded responsibilities as city politician, Ford has left himself open to criticism and embarrassment.

I find it hard to believe that the mayor elect of London would have the same response to doing an interview with BBC radio.

At the current time, when the city is divided and so many areas need attention I hope that Rob Ford will get over his growing pains quickly and assume a position that all Torontonians can be proud of. It is far too important for this city to not address the growing disparities between downtown and the suburbs and the number of infrastructure, economic and social concerns that plague us all.

Man of the Hour
The Cord Weekly
28 September 2005
Joseph Turcotte
A&E Writer

George Stroumboulopoulostalks to The Cord about ditching MuchMusic, being a Habs fan and Britney Spears’ chewing gum

For five years he was the face ofMuchMusic to music fans across Canada. As the host of The New Music and The Punk Show he entertained and informed. But as a wise man once said,“You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone,” and George Stroumboulopoulos isn’t the type to sink anytime soon.

After his tenure at Much was over, Stromboulopoulos was lured down the street to the CBC where he’s been tackling issues other than what our favourite pop-tarts are up to. His show, The Hour, is a fast paced news/talk program that covers the issues of the day, done in his typically manic style.While  Stroumboulopoulos isn’t the type of host you’d expect from the CBC, he says it’s working great.“You’d be surprised.  I know a lot of people think that me working here I’d be out of place, but there are so many people that are very much like each other, you just never hear about it, but we’re definitely here.”

While he says he enjoyed his years at Much, the chance to take a broader and, at times, more serious scope was too good for Stroumboulopoulos pass up. “I really enjoyed my time at MuchMusic and got to make some really really neat entertainment music television. But as time went on, entertainment TV as a whole, not just MuchMusic… changed. While I still did music on The New Music and The Punk Show I spent a lot of time not doing music, but more doing celebrity entertainment stuff, which is fine but it wasn’t for me at a certain point.  I kind of got bored talking about Britney Spears’ gum for sale on eBay… I don’t care.”

On why he moved to the CBC, Stroumboulopoulos says the open format of The Hour appealed to him. “I’ll go wherever the right show is” he explained. At The Hour, Stroumboulopoulos and his producers can discuss pretty much whatever they want. “I just wanted to make a show with people that I like, talking about what’s going on in the world, and do it in a way that people from all over the place can watch it. Sometimes we can be serious and heavy and sometimeswe can be light and ridiculous.”

In this respect they’ve done the job, as earlier this year The Hour was named by TV Guide readers as the best Canadian TV program.“I just love going on the air and working with really good people and get to talk about really neat topics,” he explains.

As for the person George would most like to have sit across from him, he has no hesitation in making his choice.“Bob Dylan. I want Dylan on and I want Nelson Mandela.You talk about two guys that have delivered, they have delivered.”

Since George started his career as a sports-radio talk show host it was inevitable that our conversation would hit upon the return of the NHL. “It’s gonna be a good game and a lot more teams are going to be competitive.” But as a good Habsfan, he won’t take the bait on picking a winner in the battle of Ontario.

“Fuck that shit dude, are you crazy? That would kill me, both those teams make me sick,” he says with a laugh. “I’d choose the Oilers if I can’t pick the Canadiens. But as a true Habs fan I would choose death before I would choose one of them.”

Speaking of lockouts, during the ongoing CBC “labour disruption” Stroumboulopoulos has kept himself busy. He can now be found hosting his own weekly radio talk show on CFRB 1010, Sunday nights from 9to 11pm, but he has every intention of returning to The Hour as soon as the lockout ends.

In other words, the space agency was required to enrich America’s businesses by allowing them to profit from the technologies it invented. – Peter Nowak, p. 154

In Sex, Bombs and Burgers Canadian journalist Peter Nowak provides an accessible and entertaining look into the influences behind some of the most important technological innovations in recent history. In doing so, Nowak looks at a number of unconventional and unexpected facilitators of everyday innovations. Focusing on the adult entertainment (porn), military and food industry connections allows Nowak to explore how vastly divergent interests have helped pave the way for changes in everything from home electronics, household cleaning and cooking supplies and the food that we eat. And as Nowak writes, even “the all-time bestselling toy, the Barbie doll, was the product of space-age military thinking”.

The author’s treatment of the much-maligned US military-industrial complex (USMIC) provides a nice counterpoint to critics who view it as nothing other than a purveyor of imperialism and destruction. This is not to diminish the negatives associated with the USMIC (there are many); rather, it is interesting to see how everything from Google Earth, microwaves, saran wraps, plastics, cold medicines and processed foods are implicated with the US’ drive to be first militarily and technologically.

Perhaps the most influential and transformative technology to have come out of the USMIC has been the Internet. While the Internet’s connections with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are well documented, Nowak goes a step further to shed some light on other interesting connections between the World Wide Web and the US military.

In one way or another technology firms such as Intel and Apple have links to military-funded research institutes. Meanwhile, the connection between video games and the atomic bomb is an interesting revelation.

Also interesting is Nowak’s connection between porn and technological innovation. Using the infamous Paris Hilton sextape as a jumping-point, he connects advances in home electronics—video cameras, the VCR, and even cable and telephone infrastructure—to the adult entertainment industry. Perhaps unsurprising, visual internet file standards such as JPEG, GIF and MPEG owe their existence to the push from suppliers such as Playboy. While maligned in the same way that the USMIC is, albeit for different reasons and often by different groups, Sex, Bombs and Burgers helps to establish a link between the industry that helped spur the sexual revolution to the technological revolution that is currently in train.

Throughout the book, Nowak argues that it is our most basic needs—as well as money—that have helped push technology forward. From fighting to sex to food, he makes this point clear. Genetically modified foods have become a growth industry as have new ways of food production and processing. The need for faster, cheaper and more food has helped create changes in the ways we eat. Much of this can be attributed to McDonald’s whose press for efficiency and standardization makes it the Wal-Mart of the food industry. In large part this has dramatically affected the types and quality of food being offered. The large-scale demand that McDonald’s commands means that it helps create standards that the rest of the industry follows—for good or bad.

By extolling the innovations that fighting, sex and food have contributed to our everyday lives, Sex, Bombs and Burgers demonstrates the good that can come from these various industries. He does not, however, diminish the negatives as he clearly demonstrates the juxtaposition to positive innovations and negative developments. At the same time though, this book leads one to believe in the inevitability of a better world in which technology (and robots) remove many of the mundane aspects of our daily lives and help to create a better and more (globally) prosperous future.

The commitment from DARPA to allow for an almost open-sourced nature to its innovations—through collaboration and licensing with corporations—demonstrates how technological innovation is spurred by an open eco-system. Closing off access to the valuable knowledge that DARPA and its affiliates created (and continue to create) would likely have led to a drastically different world. Fair and balanced intellectual property rights can help ensure that the advances created through DARPA, et al can reach a broader segment of industry—and inevitably us.

As Nowak writes: “traditional industries are having to come to grips with the fact that in the new digital world, the old ways of doing business may no longer work”. Opening information up and freeing innovation from some measures of proprietary control could go a long way towards creating an innovative global economy.

Sex, Bombs and Burgers demonstrates that “the technological development has come full circle—while many toys and games began as offshoots of military technology [and other industries’ concerns], they are now influencing and changing that same technology”. Capitalizing upon this success and adapting it for other industries (and the global economy) will prove important for securing the type of promising future that Nowak’s book envisions.

Please circulate widely. I can’t imagine how the team will look (and more importantly, play) without him.

Full credit to the video’s creators; well done.

Student Privacy at Laurier
17 October 2007
Joe Turcotte
Special Projects Editor

Luckily for the majority of Laurier students, issues relating to privacy and personal information are of little concern. Having never lived in a repressive police state or been victim to identity theft, most students walk around campus unaware that their personal information is being collected and stored.

While this information is not being used for malicious reasons, it may come as a surprise that the lives of students may not be as private as they believe they are. Although many students are not overly concerned with their privacy, many members of the Laurier community are. Currently, Dr. Martin Dowding, an assistant professor in the communication studies department,
is looking into privacy issues relating to students.

“[At Laurier] people don’t seem all that excited about [privacy] or interested in it,” Dowding says, talking about students in particular. “There’s a kind of carelessness that we’ve had on campus. There’s been a kind of trust. We’ve been isolated for so long but as the university becomes bigger here at Laurier we need to be more careful.”

But while Dowding is concerned with how information is tracked, he points out that there’s a delicate balance
between privacy and security that must be maintained. “There’s a real tension,” says Dowding. “We want to feel free and yet at the same time we want to be secure.”

With the majority of the Waterloo campus contained within one city block, many students feel secure in the knowledge that their campus is safe. Adding to this sense of security is the fact that campus security has over 130 digital security cameras at its disposal. This coverage amounts to “about 80% of the exterior of campus” says director of Campus Safety & Security
(CS&S) Rod Curran, and various interior places around campus including the Concourse, library, the Peters Building, the Bookstore and in and around the Dr. Alvin Woods Building.

But Curran is quick to point out that CS&S respects the privacy of the school’s students. “We’re not intruding on anybody’s rights here, we’re just doing the outside of campus,” says Curran. “We’re not in the residences.”
For Curran, the cameras are merely a means for ensuring that the campus
remains safe. “It’s part of our security plan; we only have 12 special constables on campus,” says Curran of the need for the camera coverage, “so the security cameras assist us in monitoring emergency situations and also if we see suspicious characters
coming on campus.”

With the irregular hours that many students keep, CS&S works to ensure that the campus remains under the watchful eye of the cameras long after most people have gone to sleep. “The [cameras] are monitored here 24/7 by our student dispatch,” says Curran. “The cameras assist us greatly,” he continues, providing an example of how the cameras are utilized. “Earlier
in the spring, it was really busy one Saturday night. Some people were stealing furniture out of a residence;
they were followed on camera over to Albert Street. Two days later, the police were called and we got our furniture back.”
However, while CS&S preach the virtues of cameras on-campus, Dr. Dowding is wary of the use of these sorts of surveillance techniques. “We could very well be in trouble if we watch each other too much, ” he says.

“In the event that we have this entire surveillance infrastructure set up and we have a reasonable government,
that’s all well and fine,” he continues and explains his hesitations regarding surveillance, “but what happens if things slip a little bit and we have a very different kind of government? That’s what worries me.”

The use of video cameras as a surveillance technique is not the only way that the personal information and privacy of students is monitored on campus. Information relating to the use of things as innocuous as our OneCards, Emails and computer use, and school records are maintained in extensive databases.

“Your complete financial history is kept,” explains OneCard Manager Nick Tomljenovic. “For a lot of locations, your complete access history is kept, just for example, for sensitive doors in the science building.”

“As soon as you swipe your card we have a record of where you’ve been,” Tomljenovic continues.
This information is then stored in a mass database for an indefinite period of time and can be accessed by the individual student at any time. “It’s like banking information,” explains Tomljenovic. “It’s kept indefinitely just in case you should ever need to pull it up, or if you should come back years later and decide you want to look at it.”

While this information is readily available to the individual student, by accessing it online or at the OneCard
office, it is not available to any other student or to faculty or staff. And the information that is stored within the database is not used for targeted marketing purposes by campus businesses or the Student’s Union.

“We use it for things like Food Services to see how they’re doing in terms of sales. The Students’ Union uses the OneCard system to see their sales breakdowns by units, but that’s all sort of internal breakdowns done by themselves,” he explains. “We don’t really bother to see who’s eating
where.”

Despite the fact that such targeted marketing or the tracing of particular students has not occurred,
Tomljenovic admits that the use of the digital database makes such actions possible. “The only people that could actually call on it would be security,” he says. “If there’s an incident at a particular location and they wanted to know the last person to swipe in, then we could tell them who that is.”

With the amount of information that is relayed by the OneCard and contained in the digital database, it becomes imperative that this information is protected from hackers or other breaches to the system. While the firewalls that protect the OneCard servers are “state of the art” and “very secure”, Tomljenovic admits that they are not perfect. “There’s no such thing as a 10, but I would say we’re as close to it as we could possibly be,” he says.

Such imperfections are the sorts of things that worry Dr. Dowding and like-minded individuals. “Every time a new technology is developed, somebody’s going to figure out how to do an end-run,” says Dowding, which “all has to do with who can break a firewall.”

As the amount of spam that regularly fills the email inboxes of Laurier students’ school accounts demonstrates,
there is no shortage of people willing to try and circumvent the system and maliciously use personal information.
While this spam is a nuisance that is potentially dangerous, Carl Langford ,manager of network
operations for Information Technology Services, assures us that ITS is doing its best to keep Laurier Email account information
secure.

Since the Ontario government implemented the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) last year, the ways in which students’ Email account information has been distributed had to be changed.

Until that time Laurier had an online database where the Email addresses for students, faculty and staff could be accessed. “We were notified by the Privacy Officer that that was no longer acceptable, so within a few minutes that was turned off,” explains John Kearney, director of Information Technology Services. This move was done to ensure that students’ account information could not easily be discovered on the school’s website. Another aspect of the Email system that ITS seeks to keep private are the actual Email accounts themselves.

As Langford explains, “We cannot see the actual message, and in fact we cannot see who it is from. Basically
the message is a black box; we can tell it’s there but we don’t know who sent it, when they sent it, we just know that something’s there.”

The Email systems are not the only account information that falls underneath of the ITS umbrella. Each time a student logs into a computer on campus, that information is stored in a protected database for a short period of time.

“We keep limited logs so that we can tell the last couple of times that you may have logged in,” says Langford, “It does not tell us where you have logged in, it tells us when.”

This information that is collected through the use of the OneCard and ITS is protected by an elaborate system of firewalls. At the same time these firewalls also serve to protect the information that is held at the Registrar’s Office. “Most of the information we gather from students starts at the admissions stage,” explains Ray Darling, Laurier’s Registrar. “Right away you’ve got all of your wallet information, you’ve got all of the institutions that you’ve attended, you’ve got your grades, the programs that you’ve applied to here, your date of birth.”

This information is then sorted into individual files and stored in an extensive database for an indefinite period of time. “It’s stored in Banner. You would know it as LORIS, that’s kind of the front end of it. But the database underneath it is called Banner,” explains Darling. The information contained in Banner is used for administrative purposes and to determine whether or not students have met the progression requirements. “We have to have a good reason to ask for private information,”
Darling says. Determining what is and is not a “good reason” comes down to what is laid out in the recently enacted Privacy
Act. The job of dealing with the changes brought on by the act and how the school goes about maintaining
the privacy of its students falls on Dr. John Metcalfe, director of the universityinformation and privacy office, and ombudsperson.

“Each piece of information has a different access class around it,” explains Metcalfe. “For example, the names of people in courses would likely be highly accessible across the campus to employees of the university who need that for their work. But something like your grades would be much less accessible.”

In terms of total access to university information, Metcalfe explains that only the school’s president, Dr. Max Blouw, has the ability to see everything, as “he has the exclusive right, as the guy who runs the show.” By limiting who has the ability to view certain kinds of student information, Metcalfe hopes that he is protecting the privacy of the school’s students and upholding a moral responsibility to each student as an individual.

“Our moral and our legal responsibility is to restrict our asking for information to just that information that is necessary to run the university,” says Metcalfe. “Because your freedom as a citizen in this country, and anywhere in the world, is based on your privacy. It’s your ability to control what other people know about you that really gives you some sort of control over your liberty.”
Although students themselves may take their privacy for granted, Metcalfe believes that “in ten years some students will kick themselves for what they did. Lots of it’s very innocuous and benign, but there are three corner stones of identity theft: name, date of birth and social insurance number.”

With two of these three things being placed in electronic files by various institutions at the school, and oftentimes being willingly placed online on sites such as Facebook it makes it possible for, “you to compile lots of little bits of information on people and create a dossier,” says Metcalfe.

With identity theft becoming increasingly prevalent in our society, and the possibility for credit fraud and other malicious actions being particularly damaging to a student’s future, the need to better protect one’s personal information should begin to be taken more seriously.

Metcalfe’s advice on how and where you use your personal information is that “you just have to be cautious. Don’t be crazy about it.”

The Future of Music
12 March 2008
Joe Turcotte
Special Projects Editor

As record sales continue to plummet, this year’s Canadian Music Week became a venue for industry insiders and visionaries to share their thoughts on the future. The Cord was there to listen and speak to the people involved and to try and map out where the industry is headed

It has been a little over a decade since the North American music industry was in its prime. In the mid-to-late 1990s, album sales were buoyed by pop megastars like Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, ’NSync and the Spice Girls, and the numbers indicated it: in 2000, sales reached their peak, as approximately 940 million copies were sold across the continent, according the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Canadian Recording Industry (CRIA).

However, that was before Napster and the Internet changed the way that fans could access music.

In 1999, Shawn Fanning, a student at Northeastern University, wrote the program for a file-sharing service that allowed users to access the digital music catalogues of people across the world over the Internet. With Napster, the means of obtaining music were forever changed, as the recording industry no longer held a monopoly over the distribution
of music.

Almost ten years since the rise of Napster, the music industry is still struggling to come to terms with the way that the Internet facilitates access to music. With albums sales falling to about 620 million in 2006, the industry is now beginning to seriously probe how to best utilize the Internet and other new media to ensure its own sustainability.
“It’s fundamentally changing the way people access, consume and distribute media – period,” said Alan Cross, program director at the Edge 102.1 (CFNY-FM) in Toronto, of the Internet during an interview following his appearance at a panel discussion at last week’s Canadian Music Week (CMW). “All you have to do is look at the Internet: that’s revolutionizing the way that people are accessing and discovering new music, through Myspace, through Facebook, through PitchforkMedia.com, or whatever,” said Cross. “There’s just so much more out there, and so many more ways to find it and so many more ways to tell other people about it,” he continued.

Much of the focus of this year’s CMW, an annual event that mixes industry conference discussions and a four-day, city-wide music festival, was set upon how to deal with new media and the Internet and to try to envision how to proceed. While many media outlets predict doomsday scenarios for the music industry, many of the speakers at this year’s CMW were optimistic about the future.

“It’s a really exciting time in the music business,” said Jack Ross, a vice-president and agent at The Agency Group in Toronto, during a panel discussion entitled “Artist Development: Building Tomorrow’s Classic Rock Today”.

“The fan is in charge,” said Ross, commenting on the ability for music fans to dictate how they listen to music and when.

Similarly, Steve Kane, president of Warner Music Canada and another member of the panel, pointed to the rise of digital media as a way of allowing artists that have been previously overlooked to reach the spotlight. “With the fragmentation of media and the localization of media,” said Kane, “I think one of the things we’re seeing is the rise in regional music and local musicians.”
An example of this trend can be found in Laurier’s own Will Currie & The Country French, who made their debut during this year’s festival.

Having honed their musical skills by playing shows at the WLU campus as well as in and around Southern Ontario
for the past year and a half, the six-member band, made up primarily of students in the school’s Faculty of Music, served as an opening act for Sloan at the murderecords label re-launch party.

The group has recently been signed to murderecords, a label that was first founded by the members of Sloan in the early ’90s. In an interview outside of the Supermarket following the band’s performance, they expressed their excitement about having opened for one of Canada’s best known rock acts.

With their hard work and commitment to playing shows and honing their performance, the band exemplifies
the work ethic necessary to get noticed and signed. While this may be the traditional means of establishing any music career, the band has also employed the use of new media to help gain attention. “At first, we just gave tons away. We just a put a pile of CDs at the front of the stage and said ‘come get them’ and people just stormed the stage to grab free music,” explained vocalist Amanda Currie, of the band’s use of inexpensive and easily burnable demo discs.

Having used free as way of establishing a fan base, the members of Will Currie & The Country French also looked to the Internet as a means of reaching an audience outside of people who were able to attend their shows. “It’s the cheapest promotion that you can do for your band. Anyone can sign up for a Myspace page, you can put your recordings up for free, they can get all the way around the world and you don’t have to pay for those costs,” said percussionist Steve Wood.

And while many in the music industry bemoan the Internet for making songs available to download for free, the members of the band feel that this ability has a positive impact on their career and the careers of other musicians from small or independent groups. “Because we’re not Jay-Z or something, we really don’t care how many records we sell,” said Will Currie, the founder and vocalist for the band. “But the Internet is really useful for indie bands because you’ve got Myspace and you’ve got these podcasts and things – that’s what gets your name out there, that’s what plays your songs,” he continued.

Like the members of Will Currie & The Country French, Toronto-based pop-musician Lights has turned to untraditional ways to get her music heard. Having recently signed a deal with Old Navy to have her songs featured in an advertising campaign, Lights has become a fast-rising star in Toronto’s music scene. After her buzz-worthy performance at the Rivoli on Friday night, Lights explained that because of the changing landscape of the music industry, bands are forced to market themselves in innovative ways. In her case, rather than release a traditional full-length album on CD, Lights has looked to iTunes as a way to distribute her first EP.

“One of the big things is that I think the need for a full-length album, and the hard copy in your hand, is becoming a little bit obsolete,” explained the 20-year-old pop singer. “It’s just more accessible to everyone all across the globe. You can, with a click of a mouse, get the song that you want and you don’t have to buy all of them. I think that’s just a more practical means of finding new music you like,” she continued.

While Myspace and iTunes are becoming industry standards for both new and established acts, Lights is also looking to explore further distribution methods in other ways. “I’m really open to experimenting with a lot of cool ideas in the coming years. Maybe an EP after an after an EP, or even USB bracelets with songs on them – just cool ideas. I think the market’s changing so much and no one knows where it’s going to go; it’s time to experiment,” said Lights. As more and more bands begin to drift away from the traditional means of producing and distributing music, the industry itself has also begun to find ways other than the CD or hard-copy format as a way of selling music.

At the “Digital Music & Media Futures: New Business Models” demonstration, music futurist, author and CEO of Sonific LLC, Gerd Leonhard discussed the problems facing the music industry and the ways in which they can be turned into opportunities instead. Stating that the major record labels have forever lost the “control” that they once held over the means of distribution,

Leonhard argued that it is time for the industry to embrace the changes that are occurring. “What we see right now is basically wasted enormous potential,” Leonhard said during his keynote address.

Rather than turning to distribution models like iTunes, which essentially attempt to transfer the old model of selling tracks or albums to a digital world, Leonhard advocates an entirely different business model. Under Leonhard’s model, publishing and distribution agreements will be re-written in order to allow music fans and consumers to access music without having to pay for each song or album.

Under this approach, music will be used as a form of content, which is licensed to various websites, who will in turn use advertising money to pay for the licensing fees. “Consumers will pay with attention,” said Leonhard, as he argued that advertising will offset the costs associated with producing and distributing music.

However, in order for a networked approach to selling music to work this will take “collaboration and agreements
to get the music out there,” said Leonhard. While these approaches have yet to reach the mainstream, they are already
being developed and are set to launch.

Online portals – such as Kanoid, which allows users to send friends song recommendations directly to their cell phones; Slacker, an online radio station with pre-programmed stations as well as stations that are automatically tailored to the preferences of the individual user; and Project Opus, which is an online music community that allows users to share their musical preferences
with friends – offer a glimpse of where the music industry may be headed.

The president of Arts & Crafts Records, Jeffrey Remedios, said that while digital media offers some drawbacks, it also presents opportunities to further expand the industry. “Music, digital technology becomes the great curse but it’s also the great liberator, so we’ve tried to take the great liberator approach to it and embrace it widely, except that it’s not up to us to decide how people consume their music,” explained Remedios, who is the president of the label that helped use Apple’s iPod to give Feist a new level of commercial success.

In essence, he said, the onus is on those involved with creating and distributing the music to accept the digital
revolution and ensure the sustainability of the music industry.

As Remedios explained in an interview following his participation in a panel discussion, “It’s up to us to make sure that our music is available to them where they want to have it consumed, how they want to have it consumed.”

Blair Gable/Reuters

So the Budget of the Government of Canada came down today and, I must say, it’s a rather underwhelming document. With all of the cheery words and the optimistic tone that came out of yesterday’s Speech from the Throne, today’s budget is just disappointing. It does little to address the crisis of the moment and fails to lay out a coherent vision for the future. Now and in the future, these are the most pressing issues that Canadians are and will be facing.

To be frank: the world is changing. Emerging countries are reshaping the global world order and Canada, a traditional middle power that has grafted to the US empire, is a challenging position.

Because of the Global Financial Crisis, Canada does not have the resources necessary to invest in the programs and initiatives that will shape our future. Needless to say, this is a pivotal time in our country’s history.

That’s why Michael Ignatieff’s response to the Budget is so promising. While some may label it as a “weak-kneed response”, Iggy has done what’s best for the country—and coincidentally, best for his party and his political prospects. By not voting against the budget and bringing down the government, Ignatieff and the Liberal Party have shown that they are serious about shaping a coherent and legitimate policy vision for our country.

At such a crucial time in Canada’s history, bold and innovative ideas are what we need. But these ideas must be fully fleshed out, they cannot be the thing of knee-jerk reactions. These ideas will be the foundation of our country moving forward; they, therefore, need time to be crafted fully.

While Ignatieff’s message may be valid, the way that he is presenting it leaves something to be desired. Perhaps this is because he is uncomfortable making complex points in sound-byte style. Instead of trying to do so, Iggy should speak in a frank and straightforward manner—and if he needs more words to do so, so be it. These are big ideas and big times, brevity is not the answer.

So with all due respect, here’s my humble suggestion about how Iggy could have responded to Evan Solomon on CBC News Network’s Power and Politics today:

“Evan, these are challenging times that need complex and well thought out responses. Bringing down the government would do little to address the structural problems that our country now faces because of the Harper government’s ineptitude. That’s why, we Liberals, will take the strong and principled position to stand against the budget, which is deficient document, but not bring the government down. The citizens of Canada have told everyone that they’re not in the mood for an election, unless one will bring a credible alternative that will provide the future prosperity our country needs. That’s why we will participate in the Canada 150 Conference in Montreal and refine Liberal ideas about how to address the problems of today in a way that a stronger Canada can be nurtured. This government is failing to do this. So as the Official Opposition we will play our parliamentary role and oppose the governments failing policies and work to refine the viable alternative that our country craves.”