FreeCulture.org will be presenting a paper at this year’s DEFCON conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The presentation, The Revolution Will Not Be Copyrighted: Why You Should Care about Free Culture, will aim to make the case that “culture hacking” is essential to a vibrant and creative environment:

The purpose of this paper is to explain and introduce the free culture movement and organization to the hacker community. We make the case that hackers should not only care about the ideas of free culture in the literal sense in that we seek to protect technological and digital rights, but also in a broader cultural sense. The idea of using and reusing bits of culture (the goal in a free culture) parallels the central tenets of the hacker ethos where manipulation, reuse, and recontextualization are essential. To that end, we’ll show some compelling examples of art and music that we consider to be culture hacking. From reengineered Nintendo cartridges to electronic albums consisting almost totally of samples to an early 20th century modernist Mona Lisa hack, we’ll demonstrate that some of the most innovative and radical cultural works are also the most derivative. We also intend to emphasize the significance of political and social action in order to maintain an environment of innovation and progress. There are highly significant cultural and technological issues that need to be addressed in society and we cannot stand by passively while leaving the control in the hands of the government, corporations, and other entities. In essence, free culture is deeply ingrained in the hacker ideal.

Rumor has it that we’ll also have some cool new FC.o merchandise and will be present at the Thursday night EFF Fundraiser. For futher info and if you’d like to join the FC.o gang, contact defcon at freeculture.org.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 at 3:08 pm and is filed under FC.o at Events, U.S.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.