The word came down a few hours ago from a Federal Court judge: making files available in shared directories isn’t a violation of copyright.

Not a good week for the recording industry’s crackdown on its customers. A recent study contradicts the recording industry’s claim that music downloading is hurting sales. An Australian broadcaster dug deep into the stats in a news release from that country’s industry association, and discovered they were concealing their best year yet — as has the British industry. (Props to Ars Technica’s always eagle-eyed correspondents.)

So I’m talking to a guy I know who just picked up a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone. I happen to have a Bluetooth-enabled Palm. “Let me show you something,” he says.

Two minutes later, I’m surfing the Web from my Palm, in glorious colour. I’m in a boardroom, but I could be doing this anywhere my phone provider covers.

Two reactions: Wow. And Hmmm…

As the Bush administration tears into one-time antiterrorism czar Richard Clarke, a question comes to mind:

If he’s such an anti-Republican partisan, if he has such a “legacy of failure,” if his recommendations were “either ineffective or impossible to implement”…

…then why did the Bush team keep him on in such a critical role for two years?

Paul Wells’ latest column has a gem about voters’ ongoing fascination with non-politicians who run for office:

[Belinda Stronach] has the outsider cachet that inexplicably draws supporters to the candidate who knows least about politics.

When my pipes burst during the last cold snap of winter, I didn’t say to myself: “Here’s the proof that traditional plumbing has failed. It’s time to think outside the plumbing box. It’s time to bring in a non-plumber who can do plumbing differently.” No, I called a pro. I’ll never understand why people think politics requires less expertise.

Previously in this space, I suggested that B.C. Government Whip Kevin Krueger might have reason to regret slagging former Liberal MLA Elayne Brenzinger.

On Tuesday, a reporter asked the obvious question: what else aren’t you telling us?

To paraphrase Krueger’s response, “Oh, tons of stuff.”

The Times Colonist reports that Krueger now says the Liberals have suspended several MLAs from caucus since 2001, without deigning to tell the people who elected them.

Who? He won’t say. Why? He won’t say. How many? For how long? Any of them suspended at the moment? No answer.

The CBC has a similar story, this one quoting Gordon Campbell (who must be just delighted to be talking about this stuff publicly).

Krueger has a wonderful record of magnificently dumb off-the-cuff remarks, from calling hospital workers glorified toilet cleaners to this gem about enlightened management techniques:

“The way good managers deal with conduct problems is called progressive discipline. You whack them once. If they do it again, you whack them again. Eventually you turf them right out.” (Hansard, July 9, 1996)

You have to wonder just what kind of whacking Krueger is receiving right now from his leader. And whether we’ll ever find out about it.

This just hit my inbox, and instead of forwarding it hither and yon, I thought I’d just post it here.

Save CounterSpin!!!

For years now, the television show CounterSpin on CBC Newsworld has been an important source of debate on national and international issues that matter. It is one of the only mainstream programs to regularly feature progressive views and voices of dissent.

CBC has recently announced the cancellation of CounterSpin. Please protest�this decision or CounterSpin will be off the air forever after the current season ends.

Please write letters to:

Robert Rabinovitch, CBC President
B.O. Box 3220 Station C
Ottawa, ON
K1Y 1E4

E-mail: letournf@ottawa.cbc.ca

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**All letters should be copied to:��feedback@counterspin.tv

More info here.

Flinging dirt at an opponent is a time-honored political tradition. And when that opponent is a former friend whose allegiance has recently changed, well, that can really boost the power of your throwing arm.

But flinging mud without getting your hands dirty takes a light touch, and B.C. Liberal Whip Kevin Krueger is anything but deft.

So when Krueger slagged newly-independent MLA Elayne Brenzinger, saying she was suspended from caucus last December after physically attacking a staff member, he didn’t do himself or his colleagues any favours.

See, Krueger is painting Brenzinger as unstable, even dangerous. So if this incident was serious enough to merit these accusations now, why did the Liberals hush it up for three months? Were they ever going to tell the voters in Brenzinger’s Surrey-Whalley constituency?

And if it wasn’t serious enough to go public with it back then, why raise it now?

Krueger has painted himself into a corner, and as government whip he wears this personally. He and the rest of the Liberal caucus either engaged in a three-month-long coverup starting in December, or launched a nasty little smear campaign now. Either way, it’s dirty.

Mud. The damn stuff oughta come with a warning label.

Set aside the debate over whether music downloading is wrong, wrong, wrong, horribly wrong, the sort of wrong that inspires movies written and directed by Mel Gibson. (Put it over there in the corner, standing it up carefully so it won’t fall over.)

It may be a total non-issue. Because music downloading is dying anyway, with no help from the recording industry and its team of attack dogs.

The problem? Other music downloaders.

Crack open a file-sharing program and search for songs by, say, Tears for Fears. Some predictable results come up — Head Over Heels, Shout, Sowing the Seeds of Love, Pale Shelter — but some others come up as well.

Like Don’t You Forget About Me, from the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club. And I Know This Much Is True. And Hold Me Now.

If your reaction was “Hold on — weren’t those by Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet and the Thompson Twins?” then, well, a) you’re old and b) you’re right, and you know more than some of the people swapping MP3s out there.

Mislabelled music abounds online. And since the whole beauty of going digital rests on the ease of finding files, mislabelling is a big problem. Worse, a lot of the music you can download is unusable, distorted beyond belief or cutting out after a few minutes. (Insert your favourite recording industry conspiracy theory here.)

Bad information drives out good. What’s the point of meticulously labelling your carefully ripped music files, if the stuff you’re getting in return winds up being nothing but boy bands singing two thirds of an R&B song?

So rest easy, major record labels. Relax, media conglomerates. Downloading may yet succumb — not to threats, but to incompetence.