Lately there’s been talk around certain parts of the web about an “innovative” use of Digital Restrictions Management – disappearing textbooks. This, of course, isn’t really anything new; proprietary software makers have offered “limited trial editions” of their software for years. At the end of the trial, the software would cease to work. Now, ebook publishers are applying this concept to textbooks. After about 5 months, you can no longer read or do anything else with the DRMed textbooks… well, other than delete them.

The idea behind this doomed business plan is that by offering these inferior books at a cheaper price than normal textbooks to students, who are by nature poverty stricken, the students will flock to the time-and-use-restricted texts instead of picking up someone else’s used textbooks. That’s not going to happen, and here’s why:

First off, what fair use rights do the students have when they use a DRMed textbook? Can they copy from it? That’s up to the publisher. If so, how much can they copy from it? That’s up to the publisher. Can they print out pages of the book to read away from their computer? That’s up to the publisher. If so, how much can they print? That’s up to the publisher. Can you even use the search feature? That, too, is up to the publisher, and as we’ll see in a second, publishers haven’t exactly been liberal with the rights allowed to their users.

Let’s take a look at a DRMed eBook, shall we? How about Aristotle’s Politics? This is a book that is in the public domain, and has always been in the public domain. What rights have users been allowed in this case? Well, as you can see, you cannot copy from the book and you cannot print from the book, but you can use the “Read Aloud” feature. Why anyone would want this locked down rubish when there is a truly free version over at Project Gutenberg is beyond me, but you can make at least a little money selling anything I suppose. The point, of course, is that given the amount of restrictions on a book that should have no restrictions at all, you can imagine the types of restrictions that would be put on a work that is NOT in the public domain. It’s conceivable that you might even be restricted to reading only a certain number of pages a day. It’s all up to the publisher.

Secondly, what happens if something happens to your computer? What if it’s stolen? What if your harddrive fails? What if your system files are corrupted (say, by a virus, perhaps?) and you are forced to reinstall everything? Tough luck, buddy. You want another copy? You’ll have to pay for it, just like the last one. You want to use it on a different computer? Tough, buy another copy. You want to make a backup in case something happens to it? Hah. Do it and we’ll sue you into the ground.

And at the end of the class, can you resell the book? Can you give it away? Of course not, it just disappears. This is actually being touted as a benefit by DRM proponents. They claim that offering you the book on the cheap entitles this kind of treatment. That might be understandable, until you take into consideration the amount of money THEY save by selling only digital copies, and not physical objects. No printing costs and no chance of a second-hand market for the books (as they’ve finally eliminated that pesky first-sale doctrine) equals a much higher profit margin, even if they are charging you less overall.

The internet was designed to facilitate the spread of human knowledge by increasing the ease with which information can be communicated. Instead of embracing this and enabling virtually all the world to leap forward, DRM proponents are pushing the restrictions of the physical world (and more) onto the digital world and threaten to drive us into a digital darkage. It is at moments like these that the need for Free and Open textbooks becomes clearly apparent. The projects have been started, but they are still in their infancy and need our help. Wikibooks, a sister project of the wildly popular Wikipedia, has started work on a series of Free textbooks, and many other kinds of books, while Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders continue to make the literary works of the public domain accessible to all of mankind. Instead of paying for restricted information in proprietary formats and making a few already wealthy publishers wealthier, we should all be contributing, whether with our time or our money, to the projects that serve to enrich all our lives.

13 high school students in Kurtztown, Pennsylvania have been charged with felony computer crimes for figuring out the administrative password for their school-issued laptops. What did the students do with their newfound powers that warranted this action? Did they wreak havoc on the school’s network? No. Did they change their grades? No. Did they steal credit card numbers, become spam kings and crack into websites? No. They removed the monitoring software that district administrators used to watch their every action. Oh, and they used iChat, too…

Students originally gained the password not by using “password cracking” software or any type of software at all. They used a skill they had learned at school years ago: reading. On the back of each of the computers was the phrase “50trexler”; it was a part of the school’s website address. One intuitive student decided to try it as the administrative password and quickly told others about the discovery. Eventually, more than a third of the school knew the password. Soon, another bright student learned that you could run just about any blocked program as a protocol helper through their web browser. Then, they did what kids do: they chatted, they downloaded music, and they looked for new ways to bypass the restrictions on the computers. Eventually, some students even figured out how to watch the watchers and were able to see screenshots of the administrators desktop.

Several students were caught doing these activites and were “punished” with in-school suspensions, detentions and the like, though it really wasn’t punishment; the students were allowed to bring their computers and played video games while they did their time…

In laughable, RIAA-style propaganda the schools tried to claim that the students self-liberation, which amounted to being able to run their favorite programs on their computers, was the equivalent of “vandalizing a schoolroom”. The kids shrugged this off and continued to use their ingenuity to increase the usability of their computers. Then, on May 31st, just before finals and at the behest of the school district, police notified the parents of 13 students that they were being charged with “Computer Trespass”, a 3rd degree felony. The parents and students, of course, had no idea that they could be charged for what they were doing, especially with a felony. Now, these kids, the bright and enquisitive ones that figured out the system and got past it, who applied critical thinking skills to real life situations, are about to be branded for life as criminals for their efforts.

This isn’t right; it’s nowhere close. Sure, the kids should be punished for violating school policy, even if we don’t agree with that policy they did consent to obey it. However, pressing criminal charges for chatting with their friends is outrageous. I did a little bit of checking and, as far as I could find, the kids would have actually been charged with a lesser crime if they had deliberately destroyed their laptops. (See “Institutional Vandalism”, the maximum offense being a 3rd degree felony, and only if more than $5000 in damage is done. Otherwise, it is a misdemeanor. The computers could not have conceivably cost more than $5000 each, so deliberately destroying them, whether through the use of an axe, hammer, rock, firecracker, tire of all-terrain vehicle or any other means is a midemeanor as opposed to the 3rd degree felony of installing your favorite P2P client on the machines.)

What exactly did the kids do that was so heinous? They used their brains to get around a system of control and observation. They did this, and then installed software that allowed them to use the internet for its intended purpose: communication. Hardly vandalism. Kids love to tinker, and as students they are encouraged to tinker with all kinds of things in school, to think outside the box and to find new ways of doing things. This is where innovations come from. Why should kids have to completely abandon this mentality when using a computer? If anything, the school district should be giving them computers running Free Software and encouraging them to tinker to their hearts content. Cut them a break!

Sorry to blatantly re-post from Boing Boing, but this is simply too perfect:

Street propaganda by RIAA ilk, meet the real world:

That’s an EFF “Fair use has a posse” bumper sticker. Because there are a few people who aren’t buying that “feed a musician” bit — not from the RIAA. Appropriately dubbed sticker wars by some.

As I previously mentioned, FC.o is going to do a bit of Canadian outreach. We’ll be communicating with figures in Canada’s free culture movement, asking them to help spread the word about us, letting Canadian students and youth know we’re looking for them.

If you’d like to start a Free Culture group at your university or in your area, please get in touch with our Canadian contact, Andy Kaplan-Myrth, at andy@itls.ca.

Hey folks… I’ve been having a good time interning at Public Knowledge, in the heart of our nation’s capitol: Washington, DC. I thought I should share with you a few of the things I’ve been doing while they’re still fresh on my mind.

Probably one of the more impressive events I attended here was the Campus Progress national student conference, for young progressives. While I identify as a libertarian more than a progressive, I’m sympathetic to many progressive causes, and they were nice enough to run an article on us (Swarthmore Free Culture”) at one point, so I signed up for the conference. I figured it would be valuable experience for when FreeCulture.org plans its own student conference in the future, and perhaps a chance to network with young people who are politically active.

Whatever the faults of the conference, one thing it did not lack was impressive speakers. Bill Clinton served as the keynote speaker, and he made one point that I liked a lot: “you don’t have to wait until your party is in power to change the world.” One example that he cited was the internet, which exploded in popularity and effectiveness during his presidency: “when I became president, there were only 50 websites.” He mentioned the way young people in China used the internet to spread the word about the SARS epidemic, forcing the Chinese government to end its policy of denying the SARS epidemic and actually take action.

However, he also made the point that you do need power in the government to change policy, and while he had stopped talking about the internet by that point, his advice still applies to us. Amnesty International warns us that the Chinese government is cracking down on internet activists, and it’s long been clear that the internet alone will not be enough to protect our freedoms and make the world a better place, no more than printing presses alone would be sufficient to preserve our rights. That’s why at FreeCulture.org we’re working on building a concrete, physical movement to wield real-world political power, at the same time as we organize in cyberspace. While many of the freedoms we hold dear become most obviously important in the digital realm, they must be defended in the analog world.

I also had the opportunity to meet some relatively well-known people, including Ted Leo of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. I got to chat briefly with him about Creative Commons, and I gave him a CC pin. Hopefully he remembers to check out the website at some point… I’m told that CC was already in contact with his record label, but if Ted Leo does become a Creative Commons supporter, I would like to think that I had a hand in it ^_^ I think that one of the most important things that we can do as students and music fans is to go to rock concerts, open mike nights, and talk to them about free culture.

I also got to talk to David Rees, the man responsible for Get Your War On, a comic made entirely out of public domain clipart, with the exception of a few copyrighted characters such as Voltron (yes, he got flak about that). He was sympathetic to our cause, but he said the reason that he hasn’t Creative Commons licensed his comic is that anyone can take the same public domain clipart that he’s using and put in their own speech bubbles! I must say, he has a point, and I could only wish that everyone were as enlightened as he is. Still, I think he should put some sort of CC license on his comic, even if only one of the more restrictive ones, as a show of support.

My main beef with the conference was that it didn’t give us much of an opportunity to participate. It consisted mostly of speakers lecturing to us, sometimes in pleasant, interesting, and motivational ways, but it got old after a while. There was some opportunity to ask questions, but because the conference was huge, even in the smaller breakout sessions there was not enough time for many people to ask their questions to the panelists. I would have liked some workshops to train us in activist skills, or really just about anything beyond sitting passively listening for the entire day. What the conference had was good, they did a good job with organizing the speakers and presentations, and I enjoyed myself; I feel like I learned something. Still, I would have enjoyed it more if I got more of a chance to play an active role in the conference.

I’ve been to a few other cool things in DC, but they’ll have to wait for another day… If you’re involved with one of our chapters, or you’re starting a chapter next year, please register on this blog and e-mail us, and we’ll give you permission to post here!

The fine folks over at Participatory Culture have just released a beta of DTV for the Mac. What’s DTV you ask?

DTV is an internet TV player: you can browse the built-in Channel Guide and subscribe to dozens of channels. Watch fullscreen: music videos, documentaries, video blogs and more.

You can submit your channels to our open Channel Guide, or make your own channel with Broadcast Machine. And you don’t need to be a videomaker to have your own channel — use Broadcast Machine to link to videos from all over the place.

Internet TV has been the dream of many over the past few years, but the really important thing to note about a project such as this is its decentralized nature. Using open standards like RSS, BitTorrent and regular old HTTP, DTV and Broadcast Machine aim to be the fertile soil upon which grassroots, independant media can grow and flourish. Even more important than Internet TV, this project is a step toward Peer-to-Peer TV and is certainly a great example of the democratizing nature of the web and free software. Ohh, didn’t I mention? It’s all GPLed.

The goal here is to make sure that internet TV is open and independent. Free, open source software and open standards (like RSS) mean anyone can watch and everyone has a voice.

Help us spread the word as widely as possible about the beta for Mac. Internet TV should be free and open-source, just like blogging and podcasting, and we need your help to make sure the open-source stuff takes the lead.

What blogging did for the written word and what podcasting did for audio, DTV may well do for video. Technology like this, along with hosting resources like the Internet Archive and Our Media, make it possible for everybody to have their own TV show. Cost of distribution is virtually zero, and the potential audience is unlimited, especially if you’re willing to let the audience share your work freely.

UPDATE: For those who are wondering what we’re planning to work on next year on our campuses, one project will be helping and encouraging students to publish their video and audio on the web. Before people can get excited about defending freedom online, they have to understand what the internet and peer-to-peer technology can do for them, and we want students to feel the power that free culture can place in their hands. — Nelson

First off, let me introduce myself. I’m Anthony Patarini, an incoming freshman at the University of Alaska Fairbanks where I’ll be studying Computer Science and Japanese. Though school is still several weeks away, I and the rest of FreeCulture.org have been working hard to bring free culture to the “Last Frontier”, and everywhere else for that matter. But enough about me, on to the issue at hand.

The U.S. Copyright office has proposed a system to preregister copyright claims on unreleased works that are “in a class of works determined by the Register of Copyrights to have had a history of pre-release infringement.” Now, this would normally not be big news, but in this case the Copyright Office has proposed a system that would be compatible only with Microsoft Internet Explorer:

Today’s notice seeks information as to whether persons filing the electronic-only preregistration form prescribed by the Copyright Office will experience difficulties if it is necessary to use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser in order to preregister a work.
…
Therefore, this notice seeks information whether any potential preregistration filers would have difficulties using Internet Explorer (version 5.1 or higher) to file preregistration claims, and if so, why. More generally, in the interest of achieving support for browsers in the Office’s preregistration processing environment, this notice inquires whether (and why) an eligible party who anticipates preregistering a claim on the electronic-only form will not be able to use Internet Explorer to do so, or will choose not to preregister if it is necessary to use Internet Explorer.

Though free culture activists may have little use for a preregistration system, this would set a precedent for using proprietary systems over open standards. The only reason that this situation is occurring is laziness, either by the Copyright Office itself, or by a contractor working for it. There is no legitimate reason that any government submission form cannot adhere to open standards and free formats that would allow for anyone on any platform to have equal access to their government. If this proposal goes through it would only serve to strengthen Microsoft’s push to “de-commoditize” the web.

In a free world, the only way a government can connect with all of it’s citizens is through open means. By adopting open standards, anyone, regardless of wealth, race, creed or any other factor, can accomplish the same task on any system. Windows, Mac OS, GNU/Linux, *BSD, it should make no difference what your choice of software is when open methods of communication exist that allow equal interaction with all of them. By choosing to support only one vendor’s proprietary systems, government gives preference to only a fraction of it’s citizenry. By using a standards compliant browser like Firefox you not only get a superior Internet experience, but you also support open standards and force the government, and even Microsoft, to learn to adhere to them.

OK, so we haven’t quite finished all our tasks for the summer, but it’s already August, and that means people return to school soon. So here’s the deal: We want to hear from everyone who wants to start a Free Culture group this fall.

Tell us about yourself, your school (if you’re a student), your plans for starting the group, and your ideas for what the group will do. Ask us any questions you have, and we’ll try to help answer them. We can share the experience of older groups. We’ll also set you up with some promotional literature or merchandise to help you get started, and some Web tools if you don’t have access to your own (a mailing list, blog, and wiki).

Whether you’ve never contacted us in the past, or whether we’re old friends, we still want to hear from you. E-mail us at newgroup@freeculture.org. Please include your name, school, concentration or degree program, Jabber or AIM screen name, and a telephone number.

We’re hosting a conference call on Sunday to discuss going back to campus and starting new groups. If you’d like to join us tomorrow evening, let us know.

UPDATE: If you want us to ship you goodies, or provide you with web tools, you need to e-mail us and ask, so that we know how many chapters need our assistance. Fred wants to know how many packages he’s sending out. So, no matter if you are an old group or a new group, either way, you need to e-mail us. Also, we have a conference call every Sunday, so if you missed this one, you’re welcome to join us next Sunday.

As we mentioned on Lessig’s blog, we now have some sharp FreeCulture.org T-shirts for sale. They’re $20 shipped within the U.S., $27 internationally. You can order with a credit card or PayPal from our handy site, or mail a check or money order to:

FreeCulture.org, Inc.
P.O. Box 140657
Gainesville, FL 32614-0657
U.S.A.

Questions or comments? donate@freeculture.org