Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2006

Reporters Without Borders is an international organisation that cares about press freedom. According to Reporters Without Borders, "More than a third of the world’s people live in countries where there is no press freedom. Reporters Without Borders works constantly to restore their right to be informed. Fourty-two media professionals lost their lives in 2003 for doing what they were paid to do — keeping us informed. Today, more than 130 journalists around the world are in prison simply for doing their job."
Right now, RWB released their annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index. This index shows which countries care about press freedom and which don't. The United States of America, for example, are on the 53rd rank. Not a very good result, as this means the US are behind countries like Slovenia, Bolivia, Japan or Mozambique. RWB states that "Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism."
And what about Australia? Australia is on rank 35, together with France, Bulgaria and Mali. Not too bad, but hey... there's still enough room for improvements.

File Sharing and the CMCC

The usage of the term “File Sharing” is very biased today. Most people think about software like Napster and eDonkey, or about the violation of copyrights and the fight of record labels against those infringements. However, File Sharing was one of the original functions of the internet, allowing its users to make personal or business documents available for other people over the internet. The bad image that File Sharing has throughout society today arose from the growing violation of copyrights because users are mainly sharing music, films and software that are under license. Due to these infringements, there were severe financial losses within the music, film and software industries.

However, there are groups that do not support the campaign against File Sharing, even though they are part of those loss-making industries. One of those groups is the Canadian Music Creators Coalition (CMCC, http://www.musiccreators.ca). CMCC is a union of Canadian musicians, including Avril Lavigne, Sum41 and the Barenaked Ladies among many others. They claim that record labels do not speak for their artists but for their shareholders and therefore do not pursue the same objectives.
Their main principles are:

• Suing of Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
• Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
• Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists

The CMCC values the independence of artists and does not want the labels to speak and act in their names. They appreciate File Sharing as a new opportunity for the music market in general as well as for new and unknown artists which can reach a much broader audience online. However, their objective is not to allow File Sharing in general but to develop a fair system for trading music online.