Today I posted a video on Youtube of my son Liam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNV4AdZx4Qw

(If you want the AVI file, I can make that available. I’m told that there is a way to get a raw stream out of youtube)

Liam is 19 months old, and he has four major passions:

1 Chasing the cats and squealing loudly 2 sitting on my desk, talking on both my phones at the same time (a cisco voip phone, and a polycom PSTN two line phone). I think it would be funny to teach him to pick up random telephones, scream “Sell! Sell! Sell!” into them, and run away.

3 playing with his Thomas the Tank Engine toys (and trucks, and anything that can be pushed around the place)

4 watching [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Tank_Engine][Thomas]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_in_the_Big_Blue_House][Bear]] in the Big Blue House videos

The video I took is illegal in some places.

But, not for the reasons you might think. While, yes, we do have some videos of him swimming in the tub that I won’t post, it does seem reasonable that I can take a video of him… watching a video.

You’ll notice in this video that Liam is watching TV. On TV, you can even hear Tutter the Mouse talking. There is a splash of sun over the screen.

But, in many places (not Canada, where we have a “Fair Use” regime) this would be considered illegal copying. If Hollywood has it’s way, to plug this “analog hole” (me pointing my video camera at my TV set), they would force the makers of all video cameras to look for a watermark in the signal.

If my camera saw the watermark, it would BLANK the input.

So, if I pointed my camera at Hollywood content, even if my son was also in the picture, my camera would blank. Even 50 years (or was it 75? or was it 100?) after the video was produced, and it is supposed to go into public domain, I still would be unable to take a video (or maybe even a picture) of my son watching his favorite show.

(nice firehat too, eh?)