Happy 4th Annual Fair Use Day July 11, 2008
Support Creative Commons October 6, 2007
Creative Commons (CC) is holding their 2007 fundraiser now through Dec 31st and they need your help. Creative Commons licenses enable artists (an artist is you!) to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others as opposed to an “all rights reserved” copyright. For example you can grant your fans the right to download your works for non-commercial uses as long as they give you credit, or not, it’s up to you. Creative Commons was officially launched in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig (wiki). Today there are many millions of works licensed under Creative Commons and that number is growing fast.
There’s a lot more to the Creative Commons web site than just Licenses though. CCmixter “is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.” There are tens of thousands of samples and tracks from artists and recording labels like the freesound project, Magnatune, Fort Minor and more. All available for download legally, for free.
There are many more projects and tools on their Projects page and while you are there, think about supporting Creative Commons with a donation or buy some geek gear.
MediaDefender Busted September 15, 2007
Our friends over at torrentfreak recently discovered a huge cache of internal emails that were made public from MediaDefender. The sole purpose of MediaDefender’s “Miivi” site was to trick people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for it. These emails discuss everything from Miivi to fake torrents.
From the TorrentFreak article:
“When TorrentFreak reported that Media Defender (MD) was behind the video site MiiVi, they cast doubt on us. Now, in what is surely the biggest BitTorrent leak ever, nearly 700mb of MD’s emails have gone public. When MD’s Randy Saaf found out we rumbled MiiVi he said, “This is really f***ed.” This is too, but much more so.”
So give it a read, it’s very enlightening stuff.
US Pirate Party announces registration in Utah August 10, 2007
The state of Utah is one step closer to having another officially recognized political party. The Pirate Party of the United States announced they are accepting statements of support in the state of Utah. This is a first step in the registration process to become officially recognized as a political party. The party has until February 2008 to gather the 2000 signatures of registered voters required making Utah the first state in the US to have a state Pirate Party.
Andrew Norton, spokesperson for the Pirate Party said “Voters in Utah are now one step closer to being able to voice their opinions on the key issues our party stands for” .
Fair Use Day supports The Pirate Party of the US and their efforts in Utah. If you would like to support them get involved, learn about the issues, and join the forum.
Boycott Regal Cinemas August 9, 2007
Fair Use Day is joining the call for a boycott of Regal Cinemas .
Jhannet Sejas was celebrating her 19th birthday with her boyfriend when she took a 20 second video clip of the movie “Transformers” to show to her 13-year-old brother. Minutes later the Marymount University sophomore was hauled off to jail for illegally recording a motion picture.
This is not the kind of world I want to leave to my children. This isn’t the kind of world I grew up in. This isn’t the kind of world they deserve to live in. Things should get better for our youngest generation of people. This is just sad and ridiculous. What will a boycott accomplishment? It will send a clear message. Treat us like criminals and we will stop coming to your theater.
We have the responsibility to make sure this doesn’t happen again. This young lady did not intend to distribute 20 seconds of a video for monetary gains. She just wanted to show her brother. Do ya think he will want to spend money to see it now?
You can find Regal Cinemas in your area here
More on the story…
Free Culture @ NYU Boycott Regal Cinemas
Slashfilm.com Teen Arrested for Recording 20 Second Movie Clip
Washingtonpost.com Out of the Theater, Into the Courtroom
BoingBoing.net Boycott Regal Cinemas for suing over 20-second clip
Consumerist.com Regal Cinemas Facing Boycott After Pressing Charges Again Teen “Pirate”
Free Download 10, “Good Copy, Bad Copy” August 2, 2007
The folks that produced the documentary “Good copy, Bad copy” have released it as a free download (link to Pirate Bay torrent) Thanks /.
This is a great film about our culture in the digital age and the impact copyright law has on artists today. This is a must see film which includes interviews with Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, Lawrence Lessig and more.
….No, but I did get sued by a Holiday Inn last night July 25, 2007
If you use images of a Holiday Inn from this web site for any reason you can get sued. This is another example of idiotic copyright notices that ignore copyright law and seek to restrict any and all use of even the worst quality material. The images have text that read “No use without permission of InterContinental Hotels Group.”
This post is an example of fair use. It’s criticism of stupidity.
(previously on fair use day Copyright is broken)
It’s Fairuseday! July 10, 2007
Well it’s that time of the year again so get out and celebrate your rights. We have had a big fairuse year to date. With EMI dropping DRM from their music catalog and Apple agreeing to sell it, the take down of AACS protection and its continuing battle against ‘the bad guys’, to the still ongoing debate over net neutrality. It has been a turbulent year with many small victories along the way. There is still a long way to go to ensure that our rights remain with us as the recent stories about ATT with their claims that a non-neutral net needs less bandwidth have shown. So keep copying, keep making parodies, and keep expressing your rights.
Some links on todays event:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/10/happy_fair_use_day_j.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070710-did-ya-know-its-fair-use-day-july-11-2007.html
http://torrentfreak.com/3rd-annual-fair-use-day-arrives/
http://www.pirate-party.us/node/366
We couldn’t very well call ourselves fairuseday without a post on this May 1, 2007
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More on the story…
BoingBoing Digg users revolt over AACS key
BBC DVD DRM row sparks user rebellion
Slashdot Censoring a Number
C|Net Unhappy Digg users bury site in protest
YouTube Oh Nine, Eff Nine (nice musical version!)
… and many many many more
Forbes Digg’s DRM Revolt
Wikipedia HD DVD encryption key controversy
Flickr set Censorship … meh
xkcd Code Talkers
EFF 09 f9: A Legal Primer
Ars AACS LA: Internet “revolt” be damned, this fight is not over (hahaha, you’re damn right it’s not!)
TLF Digg, Network Neutrality, and the Long Tail
Freedom To Tinker Why the 09ers Are So Upset
BoingBoing Juggling monkey makes ape out of AACS
Userfriendly.org HD-DVD Sudoku
ThinkGeek Meeting notes from a recent hypothetical meeting in the AACS-LA* office.
John Perry Barlow, call for massive civil disobedience January 6, 2007
Netzpolitik did an interesting interview with John Perry Barlow, EFF founder and song writer for the Grateful Dead and the String Cheese Incident, following Larry Lessig’s most excellent keynote (video) from the 23C3 hacker conference in Berlin. The interview came after a debate with Lessig during the Q&A where Barlow suggested that massive civil disobedience may be the only way the public can crash the broken restrictive copyright system we have now. He does make a good point. Here is part of the transcript from the interview,
“My view is if we just keep pressing the system where it breaks, eventually the system is so broken and so obviously broken that there’s no choice but for people to start evolving another economic model. And that’s actually what’s already happening. Rather rapidly. […] if you wanna share something - share it. If you wanna use something - use it. Try to do so ethically in the sense that, you know, don’t take things without attribution, attribute. Make sure that the people who did create actually have the opportunity to get some enhanced reputation […]pay no attention to these people when it comes to being creative. Go ahead and do the stuff that Larry showed in the beginning of his talk and do lots of it. And every time they put a lock on - break it. And every time they pass a new law - break that. You know. Sooner or later they’re dealing with such a massive level of civil disobedience that they have to address it. And that’s where we’re headed in a, I think, a hell of a hurry.”
I don’t know for sure how to fix the serious problems with a copyright law that was bought and paid for by the entertainment industry but this just might work.
Day Against DRM October 2, 2006
Steal This Film August 29, 2006
In 2006, a group of friends decided to make a film about file sharing that they would recognize, and they did just that! In part 1 of this series Stockholm, Summer 2006 (link to torrent) the film documents the raid on the popular torrent sharing web site Pirate Bay. The MPAA somehow got the US to pressure the Swedish government with trade sanctions if the Swedes didn’t break their own laws in the process of taking the site down (BB post with more).
From the site,
“We wanted to make a film that would explore this huge popular movement in a way that excited us, engaged us, and most importantly, focused on what we know to be the positive and optimistic vision many file sharers and artists (they are often one) have for the future of creativity”
One of my favorite parts of the video is a clip with actor Richard Dreyfuss who says (time index ~23:25)
“I think that the laws going to be re-writen as the technology insists that it is. It’s not a question of right or wrong anymore. People will do what they want to do in order to get what they want….whats the line about.. ‘behind every great fortune lies a great crime’. So, the guy’s who started this business cheated somebody to get there and so now they are being cheated perhaps.“
This really is a fantastic documentary and a slice of our digital culture. Go steal it and see for your self!
The Contrarians, Should copyright be abolished? August 13, 2006
Michael Geist was one of the people interviewed on this cool CBC Radio show, The Contrarians (link to mp3).
from the CBC website
“The Contrarians is a radio show about unpopular ideas that just might be right. Each week, host Jesse Brown invites listeners to step outside of their intellectual comfort zones and try an unorthodox opinion on for size. You may be surprised by what starts making sense.”
Jesse Brown explores problems with current copyright law through examples and insightful interviews. I love the quote below (from time 22:05), but it occurred to me that this wonderful utopian library of the future already exists for millions of people (more…)
