GUITAR LEGEND TURNS 70.....00csceseecesseseesesenseseeseeee4l Jimi Hendrix died 42 years ago, but his memory and his music still live on. A Vancouver shrine dedicated to the legend commemerates his influence and searches for Hendrix’s long lost son. AIL Pirated movies tracked Efforts by Ottawa to limit online piracy draws mixed reviews from students who call it ‘stupid’ and ‘good’ By BRANDON KOSTINUK to crackdown on online piracy is receiving mixed reactions from Langara students. A recent court decision forced Inter- net service providers to fork over sub- scriber information of those download- ing copyrighted material. “Tt’s stupid. For students, some can’t afford to go to movies or don’t have the time to,” said Mike Lam, a second-year business student. Plus, he added, it’s an invasion of pri- vacy to view what someone’s been downloading. Third-year human kinetics student Alex Chiu agreed, but says such a crackdown will be hard to achieve be- cause of the volume of downloaders. “The Internet isn’t how it used to be, it’s a big part of everyone’s life,” said Chiu. “And this includes downloading content.” “If the government takes it away, it’s like taking their lifestyle away,” he said. While Chiu admitted he understood the government’s reasons, like lost rev- enue for artists, he said he was not sup- portive of the crackdown. Admitted downloader Zahra Basij, a first-year general sciences student at Langara, said she is in support of the crackdown. “For things that can be accessed in Canada, it’s good,” she said. However, for foreign items like nov- els and music not readily available, it’s bad because it will limit what can be accessed and viewed, she said. Justin Yau, associate director of the IT department at Langara, said that the college works to reduce online pi- racy by limiting the ports students have access to. “We do receive reports from lawyers representing Hollywood companies, for example,” said Yau. “We then identify the student and disable their user account.” This isn’t a daily thing, added Yau; it happens every couple of months or so. But this type of legislation must be looked at carefully to ensure an abuse of power isn’t an issue, said Yau. “You can never quite prevent it be- cause people always find new ways [to download content].” ) Te Canadian government’s move UBC could get a subway City and campus could soon be connected by a | rapid transit system By BRANDON KOSTINUK subway line from Central Broad- way to UBC may be in the works for the City of Vancouver. City council was presented with a recommendation for a rapid tran- sit route along the Broadway corridor that would scrap the old policy in favour of a single underground line that might be constructed over two separate phas- es. The first stage of the project will ex- tend from Commercial to Arbutus, with the second stage beginning west of Ar- butus and extending to UBC. The current council policy dating back to 2000 supported a subway line just to Arbutus with rapid bus transpor- tation west of that to UBC, explained city transportation director Jerry Do- brovolny. “But we have major concerns of the impact of a surface system west of Arbu- tus,” said Dobrovolny at yesterday’s council meeting. “Our feeling is that a subway all the way to UBC is the best approach.” Dobrovolny said that a light-rapid transit surface system, like streetcars, would disrupt the flow of transportation along the corridor. Sidewalks would be narrowed, traffic congestion would increase, 90 per cent of intersections would see turn restric- tions and businesses would see an in- creased difficulty with regard to acces- sibility and deliveries, reported Dobrovolny. The project — design and completion — could take up to five years or more to complete he added, but said they are working with TransLink to accommo- date the current demand with addition- SASCHA PORTEOUS photo A rapid transit line would dramatically reduce the amount of traffic congestion that clogs the Broadway corridor says city staff. al buses and/or double-decker buses as possible temporary solutions. Currently, Broadway has a higher transit ridership than the Millenium Line and is almost identical to Canada Line numbers, according to TransLink data from June 2011. Consequently, there are roughly 2,000 pass-ups that occur at the Broadway- Commercial bus stop alone during the morning peak hours, reported Dubro- volny. Mayor Gregor Robertson did raise questions regarding an initial, first- phase cost of a bored tunnel and subway line from Commercial to Arbutus. Dobrovolny estimated that it would cost about $1.5 billion to design and con- struct. Robertson mentioned in closing that he hopes there is unanimity around the council chamber in supportof the line. rans There are 80,000 transit trips per day on central Broadway 2 The Broadway corridor is the bus- siest route in North America 3 Around 2,000 passengers get left behind every day because the buses are too full Tourism in city is down but still fine for B.C. Martin Littlejohn Norman Krannitz, vice-presi- Overnight By JUDY CHERN trip S to espite the temporary surge for Vancou- D::: businesses during the 2010 Winter Olympics, there ver have has been a drop in tourism since dr opped by 2001, according to BC Stats. StatsCan also released a report almost fi our today detailing that overnight visits per cent by tourists to Canada are down 3.9 ; per cent this year. while the “The B.C. tourism industry al- rest of the ways tries to put on a brave face, TOUL however the reality is we seem to Pp ovince . have done little to attract more visi- remains in tors to B.C. during the Liberal reign, and good shape we certainly didn’t take advantage of the opportunity when all eyes were on us in 2010,” said Martin Littlejohn, exec- utive director of the Western Canadian Mountain Bike Tourism Association. He believes that it is crucial to em- says Vancouver should of taken ad- vantage of the tour- ism boom in 2010. phasize the opportunity for visitors to enjoy the outdoors in cost-effective ways. “With our strong dollar we have to remember that tourism is an export product and we don’t want the price tag to scare our customers away,” said Lit- tlejohn. dent treasurer of Coast Capital Sav- ings agreed that the problem well pre-dated the Olympics, as the Ca- nadian dollar has been on par with the U.S. since 2007. According to Krannitz, Ameri- can tourists came in 2010 although their dollar was weak and there were major economic problems. “The Olympics was a blip in time. . [The tourists] came because it was the Olympics,” said Krannitz, but we cannot wait for the games to come back. It appears that the North has had fewer problems than the rest of the province. According to Anthony Everett, CEO of Northern British Columbia Tourism Association, there has been a steady flow of visitors since 2007.