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”
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!
Tell Your Senators to Kick Out the Flags May 6, 2006
DO IT TODAY - THIS CAN’T WAIT!!!!
This is a direct quote from EFF.orgSenator Stevens has introduced a bill that includes not just the broadcast flag, but the audio flag too. Write to your senators now, and tell them to keep the entertainment industry’s tech mandates off the law books!
“On May 1st, Senator Stevens introduced the “Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband
Deployment Act” (S.2686). Buried inside this 125 page bill is language that would create a broadcast flag in over-the-air TV transmissions, and give the FCC power to create a similar technology mandate for digital radio.If this bill were to pass, government - and the entertainment industry - would control what you could do with digital media in your home. The broadcast flag would place TV shows in a DRM ghetto, where your right to copy, back-up, sell, time-shift or convert them into formats convenient to you would be at the whim of the broadcasters. The audio flag would give the FCC matching powers over “digital audio broadcasting,” including satellite radio, digital HD radio, and potentially even Internet radio.There’s no benefit here for artists or customers, and for infringing copiers, evading these copy controls will be as easy as ever. No matter how inconvenienced individual users would be by a flag, pirates would be able to bypass it. The bill would usher in a new world of anti-consumer electronics, and a chance for the MPAA’s and RIAA’s member companies to seize even greater control over all media distribution and use.”
More info:
Video Flag (Digital TV)
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/
Radio Flag
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/?f=digitalradioflag.html
nomasteryoda - wanting to keep my rights and everyone elses!!
Net Neutrality April 28, 2006
The US Congress caved to big media again. “Net Neutrality” was given a death blow by Congress. The issue has been hotly debated by groups such as Save the Internet. People tried to get Congress to pass this legislation, but their efforts have failed.
The Internet has made things much more volitale for media and you should expect things to get much worse during the next 5 years, especially if our Governments do not care about our rights. I received a letter from my US House (more…)
Media Controls
Media Controls
There is a disturbing new technology we should all be concerned about just patented by Philips. Thought you could watch TV and skip the commercials? Well think again. The US Patent office issued a patent to Philips which would allow broadcasters of Digital TV, the new FCC mandated standard, to force consumers to either pay to skip (more…)
Bound By Law, Fair use comic March 15, 2006
The comic book “Bound by Law? (Tales from the Public Domain)” is a fantastically good read on copyright, fair use, and how they impact the making of documentary films. Created by three law professors at the Center for the Study of the Public Domain this is the most entertaining and informative book ever on the complicated subject of copyright. The story is based on Akiko, a filmmaker wanting to capture a day in the life of New York and dealing with all of the obstacles that copyright puts in the way.
“A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true?”
This book is a great educational resource as well as being a lot of fun to read. It’s published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license so you can read on line, download it, or buy it and help support this non-profit effort. I bought two, one to keep and one to pass around.
Movie Industry Insiders Unreceptive to Plugging the A-Hole February 28, 2006
In an article from Peter Pollack of Arstechnica, a recent talk given at a retreat found many hollywood insiders unreceptive to the idea of trying to eliminate the analog hole as he put it. Many seemed in disagreement as the speaker proposed that consumer education be placed into the hands of the retailers. More information here
Free downloads 3, Legal Torrents for all February 24, 2006
Here is a site with loads of content under the Creative Commons license with the full permission of the rights holders to download for free. As LegalTorrents.com puts it,
“LegalTorrents is a collection of Creative Commons-licensed, legally downloadable, freely distributable creator-approved files, from electronic/indie music to movies and books, which we have made available via BitTorrent”
If music is what you are after, some of these archives are the better part of a gigabyte in size and some contain hundreds of mp3’s from a great number of artists. There is more than just music though, go explore this pocket of fair use friendly media. Happy downloading!
