Category Archives: free culture

Check out this Liberty Film Festival. Maybe we can get some cc-d content there? Continue reading →

For those lucky enough to see Terry Fisher lecture, this is nothing new. But for everyone else, this is a four slide presentation that tries to identify the potential savings to a record company from internet distribution of CD content. Continue reading →

A group of good sorts have put together a PAC to frame and push IP-related policies. Here’s the site with the list of candidates they’re supporting. Cool if they could find some marginal sorts who have been totally obtuse about these issues to target as well. Continue reading →

Adam has a great piece about freedom of the press. Continue reading →

Professor Terry Fisher’s new book is the most serious, comprehensive treatment of the alternatives we face for protecting copyright in a digital age. While it’s famous for his particular solution, it is most effective when you see his solution against the background of the complete set of alternatives that he surveys.
I think this book deserves extremely serious consideration by all who think seriously about this issue. I’ve asked Terry to guest blog during the week of October 24, but I’d encourage people to look at the book before then. His publisher has permitted him to make only two chapters available freely. You can find them on his website. You can also get the book at Amazon. Continue reading →

The good folks at Downhill Battle have organized a call-in campaign re the Induce Act. Check it out here. Continue reading →

There’s a great article in the New Scientist about the dangers in IP extremism. As it rightly notes,

THERE are some things in life we take for granted. Among them are the ability to lend each other books, record TV programmes, back up expensive computer programs, and sell on our old CDs when we’ve got tired of them. … That could change. New technologies are giving copyright owners the power to control the time and place we can view or play digital versions of music, films and text so tightly that we run the risk of losing these rights altogether.

But to read the article at the New Scientist website, you’ll need to subscribe. Oh well. One step at a time. Continue reading →

Robert Greenwald has released the interviews from Outfoxed under a Creative Commons license, inviting others to remix the interviews to tell their own story about Fox. Robert had wanted to release the full film for remix, but fears about enabling the reuse of original Fox materials got that idea stopped. But you can download and rework the interviews from archive.org here. A bittorrent file is available here from Torrentocracy. See the blog entry there, and here. Continue reading →

One of the exciting thing about the early days of the Democratic primary was that there was at least some debate about whether the Democratic Party would continue to be led by IP extremists. Some of the worst in IP came, after all, from the Clinton administration. Reflecting on that, many were hopeful we’d see some new thinking. Many of the most passionate Deaniacs were eager to see new thinking on this issue. Senator Edwards addressed some of this on this blog.
Word now is that Bruce Lehman, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and Commissioner of Patents, is spreading the word that he is running IP policy on the Kerry campaign. In the scheme of extremists, few are more extreme. Of all the government “Czars” in our form of government, he proved himself to be most to be feared.
Yet another bit of depressing news, if true, from this extraordinarily important campaign. Continue reading →

So ordered the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Sampling, we’re told, is piracy. But be certain to see the 19 footnotes in this relatively brief opinion, or the 28 separate quotes the opinion includes from other peoples work. I assume the court got a license for those.
Now that’s not quite fair. The court’s decision turns upon its “literal” reading of the sound recording statute. The sound recording statute has no de minimis exceptions, the court held. So while you are free to copy three notes from a musical composition, you can’t copy the same three notes from a recording. So copying (so long as de minimis) is fine; cut & paste is not. It is a “bright-line” rule the Court has crafted: Ask permission first. (And don’t worry, they might have added. It’s simple.)
So once again: life in the analog world is freer than life in the digital world. You can do it, just don’t use technology to do it — unless, of course, your lawyer has spoken to their lawyer. Continue reading →