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Larry is speaking at the Free Culture Conference in Berekely right now (streaming video available on that site). He mentioned the essay (an excerpt from his book) and stated that he hated the title, had no control over it, and that it speaks to the problem with a fundamental problem of the free culture movement: people perceive us as thieves.

Software is an important and enabling part of freedom, but the other parts are important too. Lessig's books on Free Culture are good, but I'm really pleased to see a group that is making it all sound like fun. I hope Mr. Hill does well in setting up a local free culture group. Thanks for bringing that to a wider audience, AC.

This really has been a running theme of mine for a long time, but other people have had better ideas for promoting it and it's making me a happier person. I'm sure you can look back at my writings and find several of me whining that big greedy companies and their lawsuits take the fun out of music and other supposedly fun things. It's easy to see that free culture is going to be a run away success. Will Hill is right, free software is boring and only a few of us really care. What can be more fun than culture that's not owned by assholes? The Free Culture movement is going to make the Free Speech movement look small and it will pull free software right along with it. The party is on. Enjoy!

Well, they could simply copy what the University of Florida has done with DHNet's system called ICARUS .

Basically, a student is required to register the MAC Address of his devices with the system and tie it to your student ID. If something is not in their database then it isn't allowed on the network.

Then, port scanners run constantly checking for open ports on people's machines and any outbound traffic that does not appear to be a few specific protocols is noted.

If "unauthorized" traffic is found, it automatically involves a strike, cutting off all internet access outside of the UF website. If this happens three times, students are cut off entirely. This system works. The risks are to great for 99% of students to attempt to break the system so its flaws are extremely hard to find.

Anyway, that's just my experience with how a school network actually can block all P2P traffic effectively.

Apparently, it happened in Florida also. State Representative Ed Homan added the use of open standards to a bill in state senate. A day later, he was visited by three people from Microsoft. The bill about the open standards was rejected. http://uf.freeculture.org/2007/04/01/legislature-2 007-state-of-florida-it/

Florida Free Culture does the same thing every semester at the University of Florida:

http://uf.freeculture.org/2006/09/16/free-your-pc- tuesday-wednesday/

Partially to promote open-source software, and partially as a free service to help people get crapware off their machines. Incidentally, at least one person comes up with a totally non-functional machine and no windows installers, so we send them home with a working linux laptop and pointers to the local linux user group.

While it's on-campus and focused at students, anyone's welcome to bring their machines to be cleaned. The next one is actually coming up in a few weeks, it'll be announced on the same blog as linked to above.

Creative Commons

Defective by Design's List of DRM-Free Music Sites

dmusic

Electronic Frontier Foundation List of "Artists Online"

emusic.com

Fading Ways Records

FreeCulture.org

harveydanger.com

Janis Ian.com

last.fm

Lime Light Radio

live365.com free downloads

MagnaTune

myspace.com

Nettwerk Download Store

R.evolution I.n P.rogress

RIAARadar.com

uncoolcentral.com

Vision Metal Records

I keep a list on my blog and welcome more suggestions.

Here it's the British-inherited tradition of "fair dealing". Which I suppose usually amounts to the same thing, but it's important to know the true name if you're going to look it up (like looking up fair dealing in Canada on Wikipedia, for example).

Since all this talk is about "fair use" and the American situation, it's often hard to quite know where Canada stands. To be honest, the answer is probably "dragging along behind the States", but as far as Canada has any self-determination over its own laws there are at least a few current sources from which one can gleam the current state, debate and trends. First is noting how recently during the last election any non-serious news shows were forbidden from showing clips from the leaders' debate. A good sample case showing the state of these concepts such as "public domain", eh?

There are two more rather interesting sources that spring to mind. One is this website which is a good source for current news as to copyright laws in Canada with an obvious emphasis on the digital side (which is, after all, where most of these battles are being fought right now). The other source is the book "In The Public Interest", which is a collection of different essays and is available at that link for free download under a creative commons license (nice to see them putting their money where their mouth is!).

The sad part is, we may not have our own DMCA yet . . . but at this rate (note that Bill C-60 only really failed to pass because the government fell before it went through the House) it shouldn't be that long until we do.

The goal of gambling is generally to maximize your positive expectation (this means positive outcome. Cf. writers like David Sklansky). While I encountered this statement in a book about poker, I believe it applies pretty well to business and other aspects of life. And the cartels probably understand this more than the genie metaphor.

So if they understand their precipice of a business model, and they are trying to maximize profits (positive outcome), then why are they not trying to really "embrace" alternate distribution? My take on this is that they've done the research and concluded that they can make more money through DRM, scare tactics (lawsuits), and FUD.

DRM is really a temporary solution. It makes copying harder, so it works on the non-technical. Coupled with the DMCA, it creates an end-run around fair use rights as they can sue anyone who releases information about how to bypass the restrictions. It can't last forever, as there are those who want to copy media, and stopping human communication is not possible.

The scare tactics (lawsuits) and FUD could be considered a temporary solution, or you could compare it to any authority asserting power over the peasants. These work (at least in the US, I don't know about other places) because the average person here doesn't research or apply any logic to the corporate nightly news they watch, often owned or affiliated with the same corporations who hold massive copyright interests (ABC, NBC, CBS, WB, FOX, etc). When the lawsuits started, the average person had probably seen or read two things about file-sharing: "peer-to-peer makes copying easy" and then, a bit later "file-sharers go to court". The FUD works in basically the same way.

I believe that public opinion is really key here. Sure, there are those who buy the FUD and learn a distorted view of copyright. And there are those who favor abolishing copyright altogether. But I think that the majority of people are somewhere in the middle. These are the techies who see the ridiculousness of the propositions made by the cartels (in terms of technology), or the soccer moms who want to copy that DVD so Timmy doesn't ruin the original.

This is where we have to step in. The great thing about this point in time is that most people don't understand much about the situation. I found this out when I was home during Christmas/New Years. I consider my dad to be smarter than average, yet he thought DVD burners might be illegal (he has one in his 2-year-old iMac), and I don't think he really understood me when I didn't want to go to the movies unless there was something I really wanted to see (he asked why, I said "unethical business practices").

So what should we do? Well, we have a situation where public opinion is important and the same public does not understand the issues very well. This means those who want to tame the feudal-style trade groups (cf. Guilds) should find some way to raise awareness about these issues.

There are organizations like Free Culture and Downhill Battle who are trying to do this. They are a great resource for the many slashdot (and similar) types who complain about the copyright situation, yet maybe don't

1. US Patent Application 20050244804

2. USPTO explanation of provisional patents

3. FAQ about provisional patents

4. This is also being covered at Peter Zura's Two-Seventy-One Patent Blog (Peter Zura "is a registered patent attorney practicing in the Chicago area. He is a former patent examiner and has considerable experience in patent litigation and patent portfolio development and management.")

In short, the provisional patent application becomes enforceable as of the publication date, if the patent is eventually awarded. This is why "According to the official Patent Office website, provisional rights 'provide a patentee with the opportunity to obtain a reasonable royalty from a third party that infringes a published application claim provided actual notice is given to the third party by [the] applicant, and a patent issues from the application with a substantially identical claim.'"

In other words, you could infringe this provisional patent if you wanted, even after being notified by Mr. Knight, but if he is successful, you will owe him royalties.

I hope this doesn't make sense to you -- because it doesn't. We are laboring under an extremely broken system which, rather than rewarding innovation, rewards monopoly stagnation and locking up ideas from the public.

You really should get involved in the fight against this nonsense. Right to Create and freeculture are good places to start.

I agree that this is insanity, but it is not as innocuous as you think. Mr. Knight can begin sending out the cease-and-desists right now, with the full force of the law behind him.

I hope this makes you mad. I hope it makes you mad enough to take some action. There are a number of things you can do. See some of the other posts at Right to Create and freeculture for things you can do to put an end to some of this non-sense. Letting your representatives and congressmen know how you feel is a good place to start.

• Right to Create [blogspot.com]
• freeculture [freeculture.org]

Both of which routinely suggest actions you can take to try to turn this thing around.

Now, of course that all flies in the face of common sense. But that's our patent system. Until we change it, that's what we are stuck with. If you are interested in doing your part to fix it, you should be reading sites like:

• Right to Create
• freeculture

Both of which routinely suggest actions you can take to try to turn this thing around.

Try reading the very next sentence: Property applies only to rivalrous goods, that is, things that two or more people cannot have and use simultaneously.

Property as a concept was developed thousands of years ago for rivalrous goods, and is an outgrowth of the basic fact of physics that I cannot use a spear at the same time you are using the same spear. (Replace 'spear' with any other physical object you wish.) Information as something only certain people were allowed to disseminate is about 400-500 years old, only as old as the printing press, and was created to give English publishers (NOT authors, publishers) a monopoly against Scottish publishers. (Copy-right, not use-right or copy-write.) The idea of "intellectual property" (itself a lie) is a 20th century invention by modern-day publishers intent on keeping their cartels by trying to convince people (successfully in your case, it seems) that information IS property and should be as sacrosanct as physical property. Just because Jack Valenti keeps saying it, though, doesn't make it true.

Go read "Free Culture" by Larry Lessig, which goes into the history of this question in more depth (although even he makes the "property" mistake). You can even get a legally free copy from his web site: http://www.freeculture.org/ . Although I recommend the paper version, as it is a very good book.

English press release from French Association of Audionautes (L'Association Des Audionautes)

"The Court based its decision on the article L-122-5 of the French Intellectual Property Code stating that 'authors can't forbid copies or reproductions that are only intented for the private use of the copyist.'"

English translation of that law

IANAFL (I am not a French lawyer), but this seems to run counter to previous rulings there. In the U.S., the Supreme Court would likely intercede in a situation like this, but the French Cour de Cassation -- the only higher court than the Cours d'Appel -- can, as Jean-Baptiste explained on FreeCulture.org's Discuss list, "only decide on procedural problems or legal interpretation, not on legal qualification. As we say, 'Cassation is judge of law and not judge of facts' and this case is a matter of facts and not a matter of law..."

English press release from French Association of Audionautes (L'Association Des Audionautes)

"The Court based its decision on the article L-122-5 of the French Intellectual Property Code stating that 'authors can't forbid copies or reproductions that are only intented for the private use of the copyist.'"

English translation of that law

IANAFL (I am not a French lawyer), but this seems to run counter to previous rulings there. In the U.S., the Supreme Court would likely intercede in a situation like this, but the French Cour de Cassation -- the only higher court than the Cours d'Appel -- can, as Jean-Baptiste explained on FreeCulture.org's Discuss list, "only decide on procedural problems or legal interpretation, not on legal qualification. As we say, 'Cassation is judge of law and not judge of facts' and this case is a matter of facts and not a matter of law..."

Sitting around and doing essentially nothing is one option.

Another option is to actually get involved and start fighting for what you believe in:

http://www.freeculture.org/

http://www.eff.org/

http://www.publicknowledge.org/

Last Nov., Linus co-authored an appeal to the EU opposing software parents. Read it at nosoftwarepatents.com. That's about as clear as you can get, I think.

(By the way, don't forget to thank Poland.)

The students at FreeCulture.org have created a Web site to encourage people to comment:

http://freeculture.org/orphans/

I hope you'll submit.

Gavin
Florida Free Culture

The students at FreeCulture.org have created a Web site to encourage people to comment:

http://freeculture.org/orphans/

I hope you'll submit.

Gavin
Florida Free Culture

As one of the Swarthmore students who was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, I'd like to invite you to browse/download the memos from our website. This in fact is the website that Diebold scared Swarthmore into shutting down, which was the basis for our lawsuit. We were able to re-post the memos after we filed our counternotification

Also, if you are a student, or you know students who are interested in copyfighting/freedom of speech, please head on over to FreeCulture.org, an international student movement for free culture :-)

How about Save the iPod?

The Free Culture student movement is already running just that campaign: SaveTheiPod.com

We've also launched a continuation of the campaign here: SaveThe.org

So check out those sites, and then go to FreeCulture.org and join the international student movement for free culture.

(If it isn't already abundantly clear, I'm part of the movement.)

If you're on a college campus and want to work to make copyright law more sane, join FreeCulture.org.

Colleges and universities have a huge amount of power to influence this debate and reasonable copyright law is perfectly inline with the mission of a public education and research institution. So go get linux in the campus computer labs and work up from there!

From FreeCulture.org, the student movement for free software, free speech, and free culture, comes: National Barbie in a Blender Day.

It's a celebration of victory in a similar free speech / fair use case that finished recently. Mattel had sued a photographer for taking photographs of Barbie in a blender and other appliances. The ACLU took on his case and he not only won, but Mattel had to pay his $1.8 million in legal fees.

The Barbie in a Blender gallery is pretty great.

And if you're interested in fighting to restore balance to our copyright laws, please come join the international student movement for Free Culture.

First it was the DMCA and Sonny Bono, and now it's PIRATE and INDUCE. In the past 40 years Congress has extended the duration of copyright eleven times! We need to band together and restore sanity to copyright law.

This is the kind of gross misuse of copyrights that is appalling. A little digging around on the Google and we can see that author of this song is Woody Gurthrie who lived from 1912-1967. Now assuming Woody Gurthrie wrote this song on the year of his death under the original copyright laws this work would have passed into public domain by 1999. But due to lobbying efforts of the music and movie industry this period has been extended to before the Great Depression! This isn't all that important though because it is still copyrighted regardless of former laws. However, what is important is that this song on JibJab isn't the exact song by Woody Gurthrie that was copyrighted, it is cleary a derivative work that is based on a copyrighted work but which adds a creative element that goes far beyond what Woody Gurthrie ever did. This is an issues talked about extensivly throughout the book Freeculture by Lawrence Lessig which is freely downloadable at his site. One example given in the book is how many great works where based on copyrighted works before them that had not yet entered public domain such as Disney movies or Japanese comics. The general idea is that although new works are based on older copyrighted ones it doesn't hurt the original copyright holder and serves to stimulate the growth of culture. For more information check out FreeCulture.org

downhill battle - music activism

Free Culture.org

www.downhillbattle.org

www.freeculture.org

www.free-culture.cc

Now is the good time to encourage movements such as FreeCulture.org; check out their manifesto.

You know where to get the Diebold memos... from the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons! Also, you may be interested in reading about how our court case against Diebold is going (nothing much is happening, we're waiting for the judge to rule, he said it might take a few months) Finally, we're working on launching FreeCulture.org, the future home of the international student movement for Free Culture, we hope to have it running soon!