Thursday, September 22, 2005
5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
32-155 (Stata Center) (see http://whereis.mit.edu for how to find places at MIT)

Speakers:
Nancy Kranish, former President, American Library Assn
Ann Wolpert, Director, MIT Libraries

Respondent: Steven Pinker, Harvard University

Arguments and legal confrontations over the control of music, writing and visual materials have become a permanent feature of contemporary life and will almost certainly enlarge and intensify in future years. As corporate producers and distributors - including some universities and private libraries - move aggressively to claim ownership of digital content of all kinds and as some industries lobby for building surveillance principles into the operating systems of computers, others defend an alternative vision. This alternative embraces ideals of sharing and civic community and warns that recent extensions of copyright threaten creativity and the free exchange of ideas. Is there a future for this idea of a digital commons? Is the American tradition of free public libraries a valuable precedent for the digital age? Is the commercialization of cyberspace already a problem for those seeking reliable information? Are there features or tendencies inherent in digital technology that will always challenge and even undermine efforts to control information or charge a fee for accessing it?

It'll feature Berkman Fellow/copyfighter extraordinaire Derek Slater speaking about his research and vision for the future of music-sharing tools:

Many have boasted of the community-building aspects of P2P and the independent value of the sharing that goes on there. But those aspects shouldn't be exaggerated - I would be surprised if most of what happens on P2P is more than simply dumping music into a shared folder and then searching and downloading what one seeks. Perhaps I am wrong. In any case, if I am right, part of the reason P2P never evolved into a richer experience is because we sterilized it.

My hope is that these burgeoning taste-sharing tools can help restart a conversation about how technology can unleash a richer musical culture. We should be celebrating what technology can do for music. Who could object to consumers enjoying music more, enjoying a greater diversity of music, being more creative, engaging music more deeply, and coming together with each other because of music? That's the positive vision I'd like to explore in relation to these tools.

Kristin Thomson from Future of Music Coalition wrote to let us know about the FMC's upcoming Summit event. There's an impressive list of attendees (Senator Maria Cantwell, Michael Geist, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein) and the sponsors include ASCAP, BMI and the EFF. They've even got a nice discount attendee rate for students.

First it was a weblog (and shortly afterward, a bona fide meme), then a documentary -- and now "Copyfight" is a Barcelona conference, featuring copyfighters Cory Doctorow, Larry Lessig, John Perry Barlow, and the folks from Illegal Art, Wikipedia, and Downhill Battle, among many others. Tagline in the flash advert: "Happy Birthday. $2 million each year in royalties. Who knew?"

Here's a snippet from the description:

Digital technologies for distribution such as p2p networks, projects rewriting copyright and author's rights such as Creative Commons, or movements such as the one behind free software are turning this cultural period into a moment that demands a revision of the system regulating culture for the last three hundred years. COPYFIGHT is a series of activities about the unstoppable crisis of the contemporary model for intellectual property, and the emergence of free culture.

Speaking of anonymity on the Net, there's an upcoming EFF event you may be interested in. On May 10th, the guys from Tor will be at 111 Minna Gallery in downtown San Francisco to answer any and all questions you may have about Tor -- including how you can help protect privacy and freedom on the Internet by setting up your own Tor node.

My EFF colleague and fellow copyfighter Ren Bucholz sends details about this month's CopyNight (hyperlinks, mine):

April's CopyNight is upon us, and we'll be celebrating alongside WIPO's "World Intellectual Property Day" on Tuesday, April 26th. CopyNight is a monthly social gathering for fans of free culture, and conversations range from filesharing to IP reform to whatever else is on your community's radar. This month we've got events scheduled in:

San Francisco, CA
Chicago, IL
Toronto, Ontario
Austin, TX
Raleigh, NC
Washington, DC
New York, NY
Cambridge, MA

Don't see your community on the list? Volunteer to host a future CopyNight by sending a note to info@copynight.org! You can also read more about last month's CopyNight in this article from InfoWorld and the Industry Standard.

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Transcoder has generously transcoded "The Download Debate Strikes Back" for people who cannot abide RealMedia: "Hot off the presses... transcoded using ffmpeg and lame into non-toxic media formats; packaged with matroska. Enjoy the debate."

That's what Siva Vaidhyanathan promised he'd ask RIAA President Cary Sherman at "The Download Debate Strikes Back," a Cornell University debate that due to sheer enthusiasm clocked in at nearly 3 1/2 hours. Did our fearless leader follow through? Find out by watching the freshly posted video here.

Update: I'm now watching; as one audience member says, it's "deeply entertaining" -- in large part because of the sheer magnitude of disingenuousness on display. The audience often giggles and sometimes openly laughs in response to the assertions being made by the industry representatives. Alec French, whose expression throughout is a disturbing, dead-eyed near-sneer, argues with a straight face that DRM benefits consumers because it gives them more choice.

Does Siva indeed address the issue of the potentially infringing music files allegedly transferred onto the First iPod? Yep. Mr. Sherman's answer: "We're only suing uploaders, not downloaders."

Today, I'll be at Harvard's Signal or Noise?, joined, I expect, by a cohort of bloggers. The first installment helped kick off the study of music and the law five years ago. Join us to see what we've learned (and not yet learned) since.

Switch coasts in a few weeks for the Stanford Center for Internet & Society's Cyberlaw in the Supreme Court, to hear how the Supreme Court might change the debate with its ruling in MGM v. Grokster.

And with that belabored allusion to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I give you the story of the conference that begat the Future of Music Coalition. The conference, hosted by the Berkman Center and featuring Kembrew McLeod and Wendy Seltzer among others, will have its second incarnation this Friday (hyperlinks, mine):

It was back in February 2000 when Jenny and Kristin took the overnight train to Boston to attend the first Signal or Noise conference. When they arrived they wrote "I know Ben Morgan" on their nametags, which they hoped would assist them in meeting two people they only knew from their postings on Ben's Musictech email list: Brian Zisk and Walter McDonough.

Brian was easy to find. In attendance with his father, he cheerfully introduced himself and we had a lively discussion about his webcasting company Green Witch. But it wasn't until the end of the first round of panelist presentations that we figured out who Walter was. After what sounded like informed statements from various record industry folks, moderator Charles Nesson looked around the room for questions from the audience. A tall redhead asked for the microphone, who then delivered a blistering critique. Then, instead of dismissing his argument, Professor Nesson invited this provocateur to JOIN the panel, where he then proceeded to shred the other panelists to pieces with his legal knowledge. It was none other than Walter McDonough.

Registration is still open; if you're in the Boston area, check it out. Who knows what will come of it?

Update: More about the conference -- and Glenn -- from Derek Slater.

@ LawMeme. More about the conference, which features John Palfrey, Siva Vaidhynathan, and Michael Froomkin, among others, here.

...CopyNight.

CopyNight isn't only a wholeheartedly endorsed dilution of the "Copyfight" trademark ;-), it's a fun, non-pressureful way to meet other copyfighters in person and talk about how we can work together to defend and protect copyright's original function -- spurring innovation. Via fellow copyfighter/EFF activist Ren Bucholz, who is hosting the San Francisco gathering, the following details:

* CopyNight Reminder: Mashups & Martinis, March 29

This is a reminder that there will be CopyNight parties on Tuesday, March 29 - the night of the Supreme Court arguments in MGM v. Grokster. Join us in a toast to innovation in these six lovely cities (or add your own at the bottom):

Austin, TX
* Club De Ville
* 900 Red River (between 9th & 10th)
* 6:30 p.m. onward
* Hosted by Clay Bridges, austin(at)copynight.org

New York, NY
* Bar Nine
* 807 9th Ave (between 53rd and 54th Sts), in the
back room
* 7:00 p.m. onward
* Hosted by David Alpert, nyc(at)copynight.org

Providence, RI
* Mo Joe's Bar and Grill
* 166 Broadway
* 5:30 p.m. onward
* Hosted by Joshua Backer, pvd(at)copynight.org

San Francisco, CA
* 21st Amendment Brewery & Cafe
* 563 2nd St (between Bryant and Brannan)
* 7:00 p.m. onward
* Hosted by Ren Bucholz, sf(at)copynight.org

Santa Monica, CA
* The Mor
* 2941 Main Street
* 7:00 p.m. onward
* Hosted by Michael Hart, santamonica(at)copynight.org

Washington, DC
* Timberlake's
* 1726 Connecticut Ave NW
* Metro: Dupont Circle
* 6:00-9:00 p.m.
* Hosted by Cory Smith, dc(at)copynight.org

For more information and to sign up for email updates,
check out the website.

See you there!

Harvard Friends of Amnesty International and The Office for the Arts at Harvard present
DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation

Followed by a Q&A with DJ Spooky, aka Paul D. Miller, moderated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Chair of Harvard's Dept. of African and African American Studies and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard.

MARCH 11, 2005
8 PM
Sanders Theater

$10 Harvard undergrads (2 per ID)
$20 general public
Tickets available at the Harvard box office: 617-496-2222

For more info, contact HFAI at amnesty@hcs.harvard.edu

Here are photos from the HDTV Build-in Wendy announced below, plus the unfortunately titled Steal This Show, an NYT article that reports on how people are racing the clock to create their own fully enabled, 100 per cent legal Me2Me TV before the FCC can stop them:

The build-your-own-TV advocates say they're not looking to steal content; they're just looking for a reasonable amount of flexibility to watch the same recorded program in different rooms, or on the train to work; to lend friends a TV recording the way they used to lend videotapes; to bring the same set of recordings from their city home to their vacation house.

With just five months left until the broadcast flag, EFF is staging a build-in: Build your own high-definition video recorder that lawfully ignores the broadcast flag.

We're using MythTV, a remarkably full-featured platform that can manage not only live and recorded television, but also music, movies, photos, weather, even VoIP phone calls. Because it's all Free Software, if you don't see a feature you want, you can code it yourself or find a friend who will.

While the broadcast flag mandate threatens to make TV back into a one-way, watch-only medium, open PVRs like MythTV give control back to us. Cut the commercials and watch only the show; or cut out the game and watch only the commercials, as some I know do for the Super Bowl. Re-mix television to make a point. Build your own Google video.

Watch for photos from throughout the day, and let us know the unexpected ways you use your PVR.

Frank Field, whom I miss dearly living out on this coast, is at Freedom v. Control, Rights Management in the Digital Age, where Jonathan Zittrain, Wendy Seltzer, Hal Abelson, and Siva Vaidhyanathan are speaking today. He's blogging as much of it as he can, and captures a few nice bits from Jonathan right off the bat:

"[In] the language of current copyright debate, libraries are bastions of organized piracy -- an organized conspiracy to share a book, rather than buy one; note that this [concept] runs up against yesterday’s Google search announcement in libraries."

"[We have] two copyright regimes - title 17 and reality - collision between these two regimes continues to shape everything that goes on in this."

Edward Felten, who can make any complex, obscure technical topic lively and accessible, has posted a new lecture that aims to do the same for the current battles over intellectual property online. It's entitled "Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media," and it was delivered on October 12 at Princeton:
RealPlayer 56K; RealPlayer 350K; WinMedia 56K; WinMedia 350K

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just affirmed that Grokster and Morpheus P2P programs do not violate copyright law. Still reading the opinion, but thought I'd post it ASAP.

That's where I am today. If you're in the San Francisco area, come to the Yerba Buena Gardens from 5-8 p.m. for an outdoor concert to celebrate the "F-word" -- freedom.

I'm at PFIR's "Preventing the Internet Meltdown", where today kicked off with a discussion of intellectual property (the other IP). It was a happy surprise to share the stage with Thane Tierney, of Universal Music Group, who shared our horror at the Induce Act and joined a genuine dialogue about the collision between the Internet and the recording industry. He was willing to think about a world in which the record industry shifts its role from controller and distributor to that of filter. I hope we'll be able to continue that conversation with Thane and others in his business, to move toward a solution that leaves the Internet open to innovation and pays artists and copyright holders.

Also on the panel, Ed Felten commented on the one-way ratchet of copyright legislation; Michael Froomkin called on technologists to spec and build speech-enabling technologies (like Tor); and Carrie Lowe of the ALA called our attention to the copyright-driven inaccessibility of material to libraries and the public they serve. I talked about reclaiming the Internet from amid the copyright-dominated debate in Washington.

Chronicle of Higher Education (hyperlinks and emphasis, mine):

Indiana University Press's withdrawal of a scholarly reader on the Anglo-American composer Rebecca Clarke is just the latest example of scholarship bowing to the assertion of copyright claims. The case law on fair use is decidedly murky, but increasingly aggressive assertions of copyright are affecting the willingness of publishers to include any material that asserts a right to "fair use" of copyrighted materials. So just what use are "fair use" provisions in copyright law if presses lack the wherewithal to challenge copyright claimants? Do such cases create a "chilling effect" on scholarship and in academic publishing? What steps can be taken by scholars and other groups interested in copyright law to protect the shrinking arena for fair use? When, indeed, can such claims be asserted?

[...]

Wendy Seltzer[,] a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School[,] will respond to questions and comments on these issues on Wednesday, July 14, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time. Questions and comments are welcome and may be posted now.

BlogOn: The Business of Social Media - a conference at UC Berkeley's business school in late July. More on the conference by one of its organizers (Mary Hodder) via Napsterization (BlogOn -- A Conf I'm Organizing at UCB).

The Union for the Public Domain has notes from the first day of the 11th meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, taken by Cory Doctorow, Wendy Seltzer, and David Tannenbaum.

The upshot so far: many representatives appear to be skeptical about extending copyright-like protection to databases (PDF). It's not yet clear what the thinking is on the proposed new rights in the broadcasting treaty, but there may be support for removing webcasting from the menu.

Stay tuned.

Later: A few personal observations from Cory @ BoingBoing: "There's no transparency into this process for most of the world. The doors are locked, the minutes are sealed, and you need to be accredited just to sit in the room."

This just in: the California Institute of Technology and Loyola Law School are presenting a mock trial this Friday, May 21st, to play out a scenario in which a student creates a distributed computing application to crack DRM systems, leading to the criminal prosecution of everyone involved under the DMCA.

The trial will have many realistic touches: a real federal judge will hear the case, the prosecution will be advised by real federal prosecutors, and the defense by EFF 's Fred von Lohmann. Brad Hunt of the MPAA will provide expert testimony for the prosecution, while EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen will provide testimony for the defense.

Even cooler: the event is free and open to the public. If you're in the Los Angeles area and can get away from work or study mid-day, stop by and check it out.

Frank Field has the closest-to-verbatim transcript of Larry Lessig's talk on "Free Culture" here @ ILAW; click on the "Continue reading..." below for my rough running notes.

An especially intriguing exchange, from the Q&A session with Charlie Nesson as moderator:

Nesson: You recognize that Terry's solution [compulsory licensing] depends on trust of the government. The same people who have bloated copyright almost beyond repair. In effect you conclude that's not the solution. Let's say an alternative compensation solution won't work. What's your solution now?

Larry: We're in the middle of a transition in the way people get access to content. The natural way now is to hoard. If the FCC doesn't screw it up, we could imagine that people in the future are persisently, ubiquitously connected. People would no longer need to be database managers. In that world the incentive to hoard goes away. Structure of access changes dramatically.

For political reasons I suggest a modification of Terry's proposal. Slightly higher chance the recording industry would be willing to take a step if they think it's part of a transition period. Here's the formula: set up an economic counsel to calculate loss. Write them a check, in exchange for giving up B-flag and DRM. We pay them off for ten years. Then see what's changed.

Nesson: But we're here, we're now. You have a series of critiques. If you had the opportunity, which of the threads should we pull back on to deal w/preserving the rule of law?

Larry: Small changes w/significant effect. Bill we proposed after Eldred case, for example: the Public Domain Enhancement Act. [...]

We also need to show Congress more people who are engaging in positive uses of work. Go out to schools and encourage extraordinarily creative work. Have a show for parents and ask the lawyers to give a critique.

Nesson: That's not funny. [Big laugh.]

Larry: Parents will look at this creativity and be amazed. Then have the lawyers go through and list the violations. By the end people would revolt.

Our problem is that when people think about copyright, they think about ripping off Britney Spears. They don't think about this. That's the challenge.

Continue reading "Lessig on Free Culture, Squared"