From RIAA vs the People:
“In its first opportunity to demonstrate its position on the constitutionality of the Copyright Act’s statutory damages provisions as applied to mp3 files having a market value of 99 cents or less, the Obama Justice Department — staffed by RIAA lawyers in its 2nd and 3rd highest positions — has filed a motion for intervention and brief in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum which attempts to support the RIAA’s statutory damages theory.”
Surprise, surprise.
It’s time again for Florida Free Culture’s semesterly event: Free your PC. We’ll be at tables from 10 til 2 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (3/24 - 3/26), installing UF licensed copies of McAfee anti-virus (free for students and faculty) and a wide assortment of free (open-source and zero-cost) software.
Tuesday and Thursday (3/24 and 3/26): Bring your laptop to the Colonnades at the Reitz. We’ll have 3 tables and some computer savvy individuals to help you out.
Wednesday (3/25): We’re broadening our horizons and setting up at the Plaza of the Americas, south of Library West. Free your spirit with some Krishna lunch and free your PC with us.
AMAZING resource with many Best Practices in Fair Use for __________.
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/fair_use/
“Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. Fair use enables the creation of new culture, and keeps current copyright holders from being private censors. With the Washington College of Law, the Center for Social Media creates tools for creators, teachers, and researchers to better use their fair use rights.”
POSTED BY REBECCA
In anticipation of Cory Arcangel’s talk tomorrow at CATE, here’s some links to relevant discussion in the new Artforum, which is heavily dedicated to cutandpaste art, fanvids, appropriation and the collage impulse, all that good stuff. I think Eric also mentioned the Michael Bell-Smith essay a couple weeks ago in conjunction with the youtube controversies.
Michael Bell-Smith (plus vids)
POSTED BY CHRIS
El pasado martes 10 de marzo celebramos nuestro ya tradicional Free CD. Sin embargo, esta vez lo hicimos diferente. En vez de estar regalando CD’s al que quisiera, los hicimos pasar por una serie de actividades. El propósito era que aprendieran sobre el movimiento que representamos y sobre Creative Commons. A mi me encanto. Creo que las actividades estuvieron muy divertidas y educativas. Gracias a todos los que fueron por participar y colaborar.
En especial quiero resaltar las gracias a Dorimar, Bianca y Damaris quien nos donaron su creatividad y tiempo para preparar todos los posters que tuvimos allí. Muchas Gracias!
Yo, por mi parte, estuve en la estación de Free Music. Lo que estaba tratando de promover eran los trabajos derivados, con enfoque en la música. Las personas que pasaron por mi estación encontraron una pista de música. La pista inicial la puse yo. Sin embargo, lo creadores fueron los participante. Cada persona tomo lo que la persona anterior había hecho, y la extendió a su gusto y forma. Es decir, yo puse la batería, la próxima persona decidió añadirle bajo. El siguiente no le gusto tanto la batería así que decidió cambiarla, y así sucesivamente. Creo que esta estación logro su objetivo pues usualmente salían feliz después de experimentar con la música. Y mas que eso, entendieron bien el mensaje de colaboración y trabajos derivados.
Siguiendo esto, quiero presentarles un proyecto de un artista que se hace pasar por el nombre Kutiman. http://thru-you.com/ Sinceramente, mis palabras no van a poder describir lo genial que es su trabajo. Mashable.com lo describe así…
“This time, it’s not a hyperbole. Israeli musician Kutiman has taken hundreds of YouTube samples - often non-musical ones - and turned them into an album that’s awesome on so many levels that it leaves you stunned” … ” it’s amazing to see all those unrelated YouTube bits and pieces fit together so perfectly.”
“Finally, the album is interesting from the perspective of distribution. It is freely available at thru-you.com; it is released in the form of 7 songs which are at the same time all singles and videos. The videos can be freely embedded and shared everywhere. No record labels, no distribution costs, almost no production costs. Welcome to the future of music.”
http://mashable.com/2009/03/11/music-you…
Háganse justicia a ustedes mismo y vean su trabajo. Vean por ustedes mismo el poder del trabajo derivado. Kutiman le hizo sentido a muchos videos que tal ves en nuestras vidas nunca hubiésemos visto por la razón que sea. Y no solo eso, el producto es increíble.
Si quieren descargar los videos y las canciones, pueden hacerlo con este torrent. Legal y seguro.
Excellent and unexpected news today! BU will have a Free (non-commercial) archive of all of their scholarly research, old and new.
This BU today article by Art Jahnke and Jessica Ullian broke the story about what happened:
”
Boston University took a giant step towards greater access to academic scholarship and research on February 11, when the University Council voted to support an open access system that would make scholarly work of the faculty and staff available online to anyone, for free, as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship is not used for profit.
“We believe this is the first time that a university as a whole has taken a stand on behalf of the university as opposed to a single school or college,” says Wendy Mariner, the chair of the Faculty Council and a professor at the School of Law, at the School of Public Health, and at the School of Medicine. “We are looking forward to new forms of publication in the 21st century that will transform the ways that knowledge and information are shared.”
“The resolution passed by our University Council is a very important statement on the importance of open access to the results of scholarship and research created within the University,” says BU President Robert A. Brown. “The digital archive called for in the resolution will become a great repository for the creativity of our faculty and students.”
The council vote has approved an initiative to establish an archive of the research and scholarship produced by the faculty of the University. Mariner says that one goal is to make it easier for faculty to be able to share their own research with students. and colleagues.
The increased ownership and control is good news for researchers such as Barbara Millen, a professor and chair of the graduate nutrition program at the School of Medicine. Working on a book about nutrition research at one point in her career, Millen found herself in the paradoxical position of having to seek permission to use her own data after it was published in a journal that retained the copyright to her work. The challenge, says Millen, who cochaired the University Council committee that recommended the open access initiative, will be providing faculty with the tools to make their research available online.
“Open access will really highlight the tremendous productivity of our faculty,” says Millen. “Among the more important things needed to make it work is a collaboration between the libraries and our faculty to get their research onto the Web. It’s not an inconsequential task.”
Traditionally, academic journal publishers have used subscriptions to cover the costs of printing, marketing, and distribution. Many also charge a per-page fee to researchers whose work they publish, which can add up to thousands of dollars. The journals control access to the published papers, because they often hold exclusive copyright. Thanks to the Internet, printing presses and expensive distribution networks are no longer needed, but there are still costs for editing, marketing, and other logistics, even for online journals, and open-access journals typically charge scholars a flat processing fee to cover these costs. For example, BioMed Central, the for-profit publisher of Environmental Health, charges authors $1,700.
Some universities, such as the University of California, are footing the bill for their faculty’s open-access publishing fees, and in other cases, researchers have included these fees as a line item in their grant applications. At least one major source of grants, the National Institutes of Health, recently mandated that any research it funds must be open-access within a year after publication.
Last year, according to an editorial in Environmental Health, only about 10 percent of published scientific articles were accessible without restrictions. But a 2006 survey by the Washington, D.C.–based Association of Research Libraries found that 43 percent of its member universities and research institutions already had open-access archives and 35 percent were planning one. “Open access is an irresistible tide,” says David Ozonoff, a professor of environmental health at SPH and an editor-in-chief of Environmental Health. “The publishers see this. They’ve been trying to prevent it, but it’s impossible.”
News of the University Council vote was welcomed by Robert Hudson, the director of Mugar Memorial Library, and as cochair of the University Council committee on scholarly activities and libraries, a key force behind the move toward open access. Hudson says the effort to maintain an up-to-date collection of scholarly journals costs the University approximately $8 million a year. Annual subscription rates can reach $20,000 and tend to increase 6 to 10 percent each year; as a result, expanding the library’s scholarly archive has been a financial challenge.
“This vote sends a very strong message of support for open and free exchange of scholarly work,” says Hudson. “Open access means that the results of research and scholarship can be made open and freely accessible to anyone. It really has increased the potential to showcase the research and scholarship of the University in ways that have
not been evident to people.””
BUFC wasn’t actively pushing this (rather, we are pushing for OpenCourseWare), but this is still a huge, huge victory on the path to a free culture. I can’t wait to see this implemented!
Rich
Remix artist Girl Talk is coming to Virginia Tech, sponsored by the Virginia Tech Union.
https://learn.vt.edu/ Before
https://learn.vt.edu/ After
As of January 29th, the URL that originally hosted the Blackboard portal now hosts a new portal that allows everyone to log in to the new Scholar platform. Right now Scholar is only being used for student projects and faculty “Short Courses,” but I have talked with a Scholar developer and he says that Blackboard is planned to be phased out within two years. The old Blackboard portal has been relocated from https://learn.vt.edu/ to https://blackboard.lt.vt.edu/.
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s technology policy white paper stated that “Intellectual property is to the digital age what physical goods were to the industrial age. Barack Obama believes we need to update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated.”
Now, as President-Elect, Barack Obama can make concrete decisions to ensure American intellectual property policy encourages innovation. The first major decision that the Obama team will make in the area of patent and copyright policy will be the selection of the “Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator,” popularly known as IP Czar. This position could be used to fight piracy and apply outdated copyright rules to the digital economy. Or, this position has the potential to update American IP policy and spur innovation, expand consumer choice and lead to the development of new services and jobs.
Georgetown University Students for Free Culture is encouraging President-Elect Obama to pursue the latter policy. You can join this effort by joining the Facebook Cause here to let the Obama team know that the public wants an IP czar who will support innovation and consumer choice.”
Join here: http://tinyurl.com/9ujgqs
Recientemente descubrí con uno de los ‘pingbacks’ de nuestro blog que un bloguero había traducido el manifiesto de Students for Free cClture al español. Estoy seguro que esto es de mucho interés a todos los interesados en Free Fulture en los países hispano parlantes.
La misión del movimiento por la cultura libre es construir una estructura participativa, de abajo a arriba, de la sociedad y la cultura ante una visión cerrada, elitista y propietaria. A través del poder democratizador de la tecnología digital e internet, podemos poner en las manos de los ciudadanos comunes las herramientas de creación y distribución, de comunicación y colaboración, de enseñanza y aprendizaje.Con una ciudadanía verdaderamente conectada, activa e informada, la injusticia y la opresión irán siendo lenta pero seguramente eliminadas de la Tierra.
Creemos que la cultura debe ser un asunto bilateral, ahondando en la participación, no sólo ser meros espectadores-consumidores. No estaremos satisfechos con quedarnos sentados al final de la cadena de una sola vía. Gracias a internet y otros avances, se origina un nuevo paradigma de creación, uno donde cualquiera puede ser artista y tener éxito no basado en sus conexiones dentro de la industria, sino en su propio mérito.
Rechazamos aceptar un futuro de feudalismo digital donde no somos actualmente los dueños de los productos que compramos, porquedisfrutamos sólo de usos limitados mientras paguemos el alquiler del mismo. Debemos parar y revertir la reciente expansión radical de los derechos de propiedad intelectual con los cuales amenazan a llegar al punto donde ellos triunfen por encima de cualquiera y de todos los demás derechos del individuo y la sociedad.
La libertad de construir sobre el pasado es necesario para la creatividad y la innovación. Usaremos y promoveremos nuestra herencia cultural en el dominio público. Haremos, compartiremos, adaptaremos y promoveremos contenido abierto. Escucharemos música libre, observaremos arte libre, veremos películas libres y leeremos libros libres. Mientras tanto, contribuiremos, discutiremos, anotaremos, criticaremos, mejoraremos, improvisaremos, mezclaremos, transformaremos y añadiremos aún más ingredientes en la sopa de la cultura libre.
Ayudaremos a cualquiera comprender el valor de nuestra riqueza cultural, promoviendo software libre y un modelo de código abierto. Nos resistiremos a legislaciones que amenazan nuestras libertades civiles y ahogan las innovaciones. Nos oponemos a las fuentes de monitorización a nivel de hardware que impiden a los usuarios tener control sobre sus propias máquinas y sus propios datos.
Nos vamos a permitir a la industria a que se apegue a modos obsoletos de distribución a través de una mala legislación. Seremos activos participantes en una cultura libre de conectividad y producción, hecho nunca posible antes gracias a internet y la tecnología digital, y lucharemos para impedir este nuevo potencial de ir siendo bloqueados por corporaciones y control legislativo. Si nosotros admitimos la estructura horizontal y participativa de internet para ser mezclado en un alabado servicio de TV por cable (si permitimos el paradigma establecido de creación y distribución para reafirmarse por sí mismo) entonces la ventana abierta de la oportunidad gracias a internet habrá sido cerrada y habremos perdido algo hermoso, revolucionario e irrecuperable.
El futuro está en nuestras manos, debemos construir un movimiento tecnológico y cultural para defender el bien digital común.
Sobre la traducción, al tener un contexto de carácter legislativo estadounidense, no he comprendido muy bien la parte de la TV por cable en el que al final del manifiesto original leemos “If we allow the bottom-up, participatory structure of the Internet to be twisted into a glorified cable TV service — if we allow the established paradigm of creation and distribution to reassert itself — then the window of opportunity”. Será una tarea pendiente, buscar las bases de la tv por cable digital en EEUU y si está infringiendo una de las claves de este movimiento, el acceso libre a la cultura y la tecnología.
El blog lo pueden encontrar en http://blog.danielm.eu/2008/12/manifiesto-de-freecultureorg/
También para los que les interese queria dejarle saber que proximamente vamos a traducir la pagina web de Students for Free Culture al español. Si alguien quiere ayudar en esa tarea puede escribirnos a nuestro mailinglist.
Old and New Net Wars over Free Speech, Freedom and Secrecy or….
How to Understand the Hacker and Lulz battle against the C0$
NYU’s very own Gabriella Coleman, Assistant Professor, New York University, will be speaking at Columbia this Thursday at noon. Gabriella is a talented scholar and friend. This is a great opportunity to see her speak. Details below.
VS. 
Thursday November 13: noon - 2:00pm
Columbia University Communications Colloquium
270B IAB (International Affairs Building:
http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/tour/11.html
http://www.iserp.columbia.edu/calendar/
In this talk I present a cultural history and political analysis of one of the oldest Internet wars, often referred to as ?Internet vs Scientology,? which in recent times has witnessed a different incarnation in the form of ?Project Chanology,? which is orchestrated by a group called Anonymous who has led a series of online attacks and real world protests against the Church of Scientology. I argue that to understand the significance of these battles and protests, we must examine the culturally antipodal relationship between Scientology and hacker/geek culture. In so doing I will demonstrate how long-standing liberal ideals take cultural root in unexpected ways in the context of these battles and I will use these two cases to reveal important political transformations in Internet/hacker culture between the mid 1990s and today.
Technorati Tags: anon, hackers, GabriellaColeman, Scientology
FC NYU is proud to be sponsoring this screening with Computers and Society:
Released in December 2007 by the League of Noble Peers (Alan Toner, J.J. King, Jan Gerber, Sebastian Luetgert, Luca Lucarini, and others), Steal This Film 2 tries to go beyond the current discussions around file-sharing to look at what kinds of social change are precipitated by massive changes in our capacity to communicate. The film argues that the changes wrought by networked, peer distribution are historical on the scale of the printing press and tries to explain why.
For many of you these argument will be familiar. These are strange times, in which to many of us the battle already seems to have been won. Yet governments continue to enact harsh laws expanding the scope of copyright protection and increasing sanctions for its infringement, lawsuits are levied against filesharers, fines imposed and arrests made - all intended to destroy or delay what is an inevitable change in how we look at creative work.
At the same time there has developed a burgeoning area of cultural production outside of both the institution of copyright and the historical channels of distribution, be they television, cinema or music stores. Deep beneath the sand the playing field of culture is shifting, in no small part due to the combined actions of millions of peer produsers.
Alan Toner, one of the peers responsible for the film’s production, will be present for a discussion afterwards, during which there will
also be a demonstration of STF’s footage archive.
http://stealthisfilm.com/Part2/
http://footage.stealthisfilm.com/
http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Film
Sunday, November 16, 2008
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Room 109 Warren Weaver Hall
251 Mercer Street
New York, NY
Technorati Tags: copyfight, screening, StealThisFilm
When: Monday, November 10 @ 7:00pm
Where: Reitz Union 288
At Florida Free Culture’s next meeting, we’ll be having a mix-cd swap, discussing good copy/bad copy, and hearing from Grooveshark about their mission to reform the music industry. Bring several copies of a Mix-CD with your favorite music and swap with others at the meeting. The more you bring, the more music you’ll walk home with! We hope to see you there!
Wondering what Open Access is about and why should you care? See the resources below by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC):
Open Access (PDF): Why OA matters and how you can benefit from it.
We Support Open Access (PDF): What OA means for students, teachers, researchers, scientists and librarians.
Other resources:
A Very Brief introduction to Open Access by Peter Sauber
What’s Driving Open Access (various formats)
AUC FreeCulture is in the process of setting up an Open Access awareness session on October 14th. More details will be available very soon.
If you’d like to hear more or get involved, please contact me at kdonovan11 (at) gmail (dot) com
The first Students for Free Culture Conference will be organized at the University of California at Berkely on October 11-12 2008. AUC FreeCulture will be there!
The conference website is here
by Brown Free Culture (noreply@blogger.com) at March 14, 2008 09:57 AM
by Brown Free Culture (noreply@blogger.com) at March 12, 2008 09:21 PM
Listen to KSPC's online stream or Pandora? Like being able to stay in touch with your favorite radio station from home (in my case 89.3 The Current) while at school in Claremont? Concerned about media consolidation and democratic values?Internet radio has to pay a type of copyright fee that terrestrial radio does not.
Why? What justifies this difference? Was there any study of the economic consequences from Internet radio that would justify these differences? Was the motive to protect artists against piracy?
In a rare bit of candor, one RIAA expert admitted what seemed obvious to everyone at the time. As Alex Alben, vice president for Public Policy at Real Networks, told me,
“The RIAA, which was representing the record labels, presented some testimony about what they thought a willing buyer would pay to a willing seller, and it was much higher. It was ten times higher than what radio stations pay to perform the same songs for the same period of time. And so the attorneys representing the webcasters asked the RIAA, ... “How do you come up with a rate that’s so much higher? Why is it worth more than radio? Because here we have hundreds of thousands of webcasters who want to pay, and that should establish the market rate, and if you set the rate so high, you’re going to drive the small webcasters out of business. ...”
And the RIAA experts said, “Well, we don’t really model this as an industry with thousands of webcasters, we think it should be an industry with, you know, five or seven big players who can pay a high rate and it’s a stable, predictable market.” (Emphasis added.)
Translation: The aim is to use the law to eliminate competition, so that this platform of potentially immense competition, which would cause the diversity and range of content available to explode, would not cause pain to the dinosaurs of old. There is no one, on either the right or the left, who should endorse this use of the law. And yet there is practically no one, on either the right or the left, who is doing anything effective to prevent it.
-- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture
American University in Cairo
Boston University
Brown
California State University Northridge
Claremont Colleges
Georgetown University
Harvard
NYU
RPI
SAIC Free Culture
Swarthmore
UFlorida
USC
University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus
Virginia Tech
Last updated:
March 27, 2009 02:09 PM
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