News roundup: Flushed Away with Saw fainters, copyright rethink, and Borat's next move
A
s the first UN sponsored World Internet Governance Forum gets under way, Amnesty International is calling for greater awareness of countries with censorship and freedom of speech violations. The forum aims to provide global discussion between the multitude of potentially conflicting interests on the web.
Topping the box office charts in the UK and US, Saw 3 has provided distributor Lionsgate with dream PR after three people passed
out during screenings in one night in Stevenage. A further woman
collapsed at a cinema in Cambridge, tho it has not been confirmed what
film she was watching.
UK think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research has argued that the UK's copyright laws should be updated
to reflect the way people consume media, including a private right to
copy (ie purchased CDs and DVDs onto a computer or portable player for
viewing). Meanwhile a crack down on copyrighted content has begun at
both YouTube and MySpace
with the former removing (amongst other things) all episodes of the
Daily Show. One system which allows for consumers to do pretty much
whatever they want with the media they posess is Creative Commons, the 'copyleft' licensese used in over 160 million
creative works since first being released, and which has just unveiled drafts for
their version 3.0 licenses.
As Borat advance buzz escalates in direct proportion to anger from the nation of Kazakstan, creator Sacha Baron Cohen has reportedly signed a £22m deal with Universal. In New York, meanwhile, Aardman Animation's third feature, Flushed Away, staring Kate Winslett and Hugh Jackman, has received its premiere.