My wife and I have been doing things more or less this way for a few years now, without any real problems. Hell, we even use our glass-top Ikea coffee table as a faux-lightbox, just to make sure that our multi-screen prints line up, and we've never encountered any problems. Sure, higher-tech tools would be fun, but they're hardly necessary; saying anything else is mere snobbery when it comes to hobby screenprinting.

Wow. Baudrillard and Bakhtin would love this.

Einstürzende Neubauten did something sort of like this for their Supporter Project #3, which led up to the release of their latest album Alles Wieder Offen. Alexander Hacke, the bassist, wrapped loops of string around the strings of a piano and played it all by pulling the loops of string across the piano strings. Interesting stuff.

Adventure Books, I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what it is that you're objecting to. You say that you have no problem with derivative works, but are against writers who use other writers' characters to create new stories. Does this mean that you are against Ovid's Metamorphoses, as Ovid simply churned out a bunch of stories based on a bunch of gods someone else invented? Or would you be more likely to object to the work Neil Gaiman, whose writings like The Sandman, American Gods, and Eternals are basically nothing much more than characters plundered from other authors? And then there's that Shakespeare fellow, who really wasn't all that inventive, all things considered: Romeo and Juliet, for example, was just a reworking of a play that had been around for ages by the time he'd started in theatre. And god forbid we even look at hack writers like Jorge Borges and Italo Calvino!

So what, exactly, is your objection? I see no reason (as you may have noticed from my above examples) why derivative works would ever need to be sub-par or otherwise unnecessary. Even a writer who 'merely,' as you say, starts writing new scripts for Star Trek can create fascinating works that use established characters (which come with the bonus of having well-established identities and characteristics--a fact exploited by all derivative writers) to explore new issues and scenarios not covered by the original series. Let's not forget that Gaiman himself has written unauthorised scripts for shows (at least one of which wound up becoming a part of the series).

I think that what's going on here is that you've come down with a case of Romanticitus. The Romantics are the only literary era to so disproportionately value originality in writing, and this has haunted us since. Most of our current notions of the writer are based in this absurd time of Byron and Coleridge and present us with nothing more than unrealistic ideals. If we were to go back to earlier eras, we would see no such ideals, and would, in fact, find that any proscription against using another authors characters or plots would be seen as absolutely absurd.

@7

Thanks for bringing it up. Anne of Green Gables is basically worse for Canadian copyright than Disney is for American. I say once we have this whole mess cleaned up we head after that red-headed copyright goblin!

So are they waiting until they can catch us off guard or what?

I think the biggest question I'd like to see him answer is; why do we need this? Isn't it already against the law to violate copyright? It seems to me that the only thing an anti-circumvention law can prevent you from doing that is not already illegal is those actions classified as fair use. I wonder if we could get Mr Prentice to say what, exactly, this law would cover that is not covered by existing copyright legislation?

I find it disgusting how ballsy the Tories are acting despite the fact that they're a minority government. The last time we had a political party that so flagrantly violated the will of Canadians was back in the days of Mulroney's leadership, and he had many, many more seats than Mr Harper. C'mon, Canada, lets put this uppity party in its place.

Dave, fair enough. I guess as an English grad student, I don't even come close to representing the average Canadian. That said, I can't help but get defensive the moment someone suggests that Canada has a weak (or, most often, non-existent) culture.

Interesting lists, btw. I can't help but notice that Canadian Favourites like Corner Gas and Little Mosque on the Prairie are nowhere to be seen on the TV list. And I don't even want to talk about the list of movies. As for music, however, I'm both surprised that Canadian music is represented by artists like Hedley (whom I didn't know even existed anymore) while international favourites like Feist are absent. (in fact, Feist's absence makes me question the legitimacy of those statistics. Maybe they don't count indie releases?)

With regards to this law, I'm always mildly amused that by the fact that Canada's musicians are overwhelmingly against such legislations seems not to register with the politicians supporting these bills. Sure, they've all sold out to corporate interests, but you think that they'd at least try to hide that fact.

Oh, I didn't know your server is in Toronto. Neat! That said, I still think that you guys cover enough American media for me to mention you in my assessment--anything less would invite comments that I was being dishonest.

@4 I don't know what you mean, Dave? Aside from BB and 30 Rock, I rarely encounter American media in my daily routine. I'm normally surfing to sites like Bookninja and Dinosaur Comics, and I actually can't think of an American band on my iPod at the moment (although I know that there have to be some somewhere on there--but probably under 10% of the total music). I hate to say it, but Canada has a pretty awesome culture, and we would lose very little by ignoring the US "Culture" industry.

@3 Knowing Harper's government, they'll tack it onto another GST cut and make it a confidence vote, then start screaming loudly about how Canadians don't want another election yet.

How else are they going to get us to internalise the panoptic gaze?