[00:00.000 --> 00:00.480]  Hi, guys.
[00:01.260 --> 00:03.160]  Sorry about the technical difficulties.
[00:03.780 --> 00:05.800]  So, as you can see, that's the name of my presentation.
[00:07.180 --> 00:12.640]  I apologize for the slideshow stuff, but I found it actually works pretty well in these situations.
[00:13.180 --> 00:16.200]  So, I'm going to talk about... there are going to be three sections to this.
[00:16.320 --> 00:22.820]  One's going to be kind of an anecdotal thing, and I'm going to throw in a little art history, and then I'm going to talk about the free culture movement, which I'm a part of.
[00:23.880 --> 00:30.940]  First thing is... well, you guys know what this is because of the caption, but this is Steve Wozniak's blue box.
[00:31.160 --> 00:36.720]  He made blue boxes back in the day, in the early 1970s, 1973 and 74.
[00:37.080 --> 00:46.660]  Him and Steve Jobs, hanging out in California, got kind of on the blue box wave, and in case you don't know, that's what 2600 is named after, the tone that a blue box generates.
[00:48.000 --> 00:55.360]  I'll spare the technical details, but it essentially generates a tone that, well, back in the day, would let you make a free long-distance call.
[00:55.560 --> 00:56.440]  You guys all know this.
[00:56.680 --> 00:58.420]  Anyway, it's on display in the Computer Museum.
[00:58.420 --> 01:00.700]  I think the Computer Museum must be in Germany.
[01:00.860 --> 01:01.600]  I'm not sure which one.
[01:01.720 --> 01:02.420]  This is on Wikipedia.
[01:03.080 --> 01:04.240]  It's a cool photo, though.
[01:04.820 --> 01:07.560]  Here's a photo of Steve Wozniak using the blue box.
[01:07.760 --> 01:12.080]  Here's him and Steve Jobs, or Steve Jobs on the left, Steve Wozniak on the right.
[01:13.040 --> 01:14.560]  So, here's Steve Jobs now.
[01:14.780 --> 01:15.880]  Doesn't really look similar.
[01:17.360 --> 01:23.460]  He's got a huge corporate logo behind him, and getting to be one of the wealthiest men in the world.
[01:26.600 --> 01:28.600]  So, here's Apple Computer.
[01:29.320 --> 01:36.040]  Just before they started Apple Computer, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak went into business selling blue boxes to people in the Bay Area.
[01:36.400 --> 01:43.180]  And that didn't work out so well, so they decided to start selling their homebrew computers, and that's what led to Apple I and Apple II.
[01:43.720 --> 01:45.920]  But now, this is the new face of Apple.
[01:46.620 --> 01:51.800]  Their hardware is cool and fashionable and stuff, but everyone knows them for their iPods at this point.
[01:52.020 --> 01:55.140]  And consequently, everyone knows them because of their DRM.
[01:55.900 --> 02:00.060]  Apple is the largest DRM retailer in the world.
[02:00.060 --> 02:12.340]  Now, how does Apple in 1970 with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak taking apart phones and using blue boxes come to be the largest DRM retailer in the world?
[02:12.560 --> 02:14.100]  That's not a question that I'm going to answer.
[02:15.420 --> 02:25.320]  I'm not so much interested in Steve Jobs' personal history and what led him to this decision, but I am interested in the effects of DRM and kind of copyright control in our culture.
[02:26.700 --> 02:31.360]  So, this is Apple we know, but a lot of people don't know that Apple's first logo is this.
[02:32.220 --> 02:33.040]  It's pretty ugly.
[02:33.240 --> 02:38.100]  It wouldn't look good on the back of an iPod now or a computer or anything for that matter.
[02:38.180 --> 02:38.900]  It just doesn't look good.
[02:39.020 --> 02:42.800]  But the interesting part is that the guy under the tree is Isaac Newton.
[02:44.380 --> 02:47.200]  And most people work with computers or physics or something.
[02:48.140 --> 02:57.260]  Anybody in the science world, of course, knows who he is, but respects him because of his kind of progressive thought on how he did his work and how other people did his work.
[02:57.260 --> 03:02.100]  And Newton's famous for saying, if I had seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
[03:02.660 --> 03:05.680]  The interesting part about this is that he didn't actually say this.
[03:05.740 --> 03:07.260]  This wasn't his first.
[03:07.440 --> 03:08.300]  This wasn't his.
[03:08.500 --> 03:09.660]  This wasn't an original.
[03:09.960 --> 03:12.280]  He actually took it from Bernard...
[03:12.280 --> 03:18.720]  from John of Salisbury, who wrote in 1159, about 400 years before Newton was around.
[03:19.820 --> 03:21.900]  A statement pretty much the same.
[03:22.680 --> 03:26.620]  We like the statement so much that we put it on the back of our T-shirts, the one that I'm wearing now.
[03:27.280 --> 03:29.420]  On the left, next to...
[03:29.420 --> 03:39.020]  That's actually a photo of my pants standing on Newton, is the quote from before, that if I had seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
[03:39.240 --> 03:40.000]  So what does this mean?
[03:40.060 --> 03:43.980]  This means that Newton accepted the fact that he didn't have that much...
[03:43.980 --> 03:45.200]  I mean, ironically, he did.
[03:45.200 --> 03:56.360]  He was one of the most kind of prolific scientists of his time, but he realized that he couldn't have gone anywhere if the people before him hadn't contributed something and let it out into the field.
[03:56.540 --> 03:58.780]  So he wrote this...
[03:58.780 --> 04:02.860]  This was in a letter to Robert Hooke, who happened to be short, so it was kind of an insult.
[04:03.040 --> 04:07.040]  But now people like to bat around that...
[04:07.040 --> 04:15.400]  People like me like to bat around that quote as an indication that culture and science, in Newton's case, doesn't progress unless you have access to the past.
[04:15.640 --> 04:26.040]  And so this is the theme of kind of my talk and what I'm interested in, is that copyright is always going to be in this tension with letting people have access to things in the past.
[04:26.200 --> 04:31.640]  So that was kind of my anecdotal story that I figured I'd introduce.
[04:32.020 --> 04:38.440]  But at the heart of it, copying is inherent to creation, regardless of whether you're a hacker or an artist.
[04:38.940 --> 04:40.920]  You're going to be using something that somebody did before.
[04:41.180 --> 04:49.420]  And copyright, as it stands now, and as it will become in a hundred years or so, stands against that.
[04:49.600 --> 04:50.580]  They don't want you to copy.
[04:51.980 --> 05:00.220]  The U.S. government and most other civilized societies put limited monopolies in hands of people who have created things before you.
[05:01.260 --> 05:05.540]  And then those people can dictate whether or not you can use their creations.
[05:05.640 --> 05:07.280]  Everyone's familiar with how copyright works.
[05:08.320 --> 05:09.960]  But here's an interesting statue.
[05:10.180 --> 05:11.000]  Is it Greek or Roman?
[05:11.680 --> 05:13.780]  The statue itself, I think, is Roman.
[05:13.980 --> 05:14.920]  But it's from a Greek myth.
[05:15.160 --> 05:20.220]  This was in the classical period in Roman civilization when they started realizing that these Greeks knew what they were doing.
[05:20.560 --> 05:23.780]  Point is, the Romans didn't have what?
[05:24.260 --> 05:24.700]  Hellenistic.
[05:24.900 --> 05:25.340]  Hellenistic.
[05:27.820 --> 05:30.120]  Before Rome, but after Greek.
[05:30.120 --> 05:31.120]  So, yeah.
[05:31.940 --> 05:36.160]  I actually read that and I was like, I can't remember if Hellenistic is before or after Romans.
[05:36.280 --> 05:36.560]  Anyway.
[05:36.800 --> 05:41.740]  The point is, the Romans decided that the Greeks knew what they were doing and decided to make a copy of it for themselves.
[05:42.100 --> 05:46.720]  And most Roman art that you see now is based on some Greek art.
[05:46.720 --> 05:56.700]  So, this idea of copying what came before you in order to kind of make something significant and culturally valid has been around since human creation has been around.
[05:56.860 --> 05:59.240]  I mean, obviously, there was a lot more human creation before this.
[05:59.420 --> 06:01.060]  But this is in the Vatican.
[06:01.740 --> 06:02.780]  It's a great sculpture.
[06:05.340 --> 06:17.600]  So, another great thing that combines kind of artists and hackers, I think, is that we both have, I mean, I don't consider myself that much of an artist, but hackers and artists both have a distinct desire to subvert the status quo.
[06:17.800 --> 06:26.060]  In that artists, what makes them contemporary and valid and kind of interesting to people is that they've done something that nobody else before has done.
[06:26.200 --> 06:28.140]  And that's the central ethic of hackers.
[06:28.320 --> 06:32.660]  I mean, at the heart of it, you're just wanting to one-up the guy before you.
[06:32.840 --> 06:35.400]  And so, art works like that, too.
[06:36.260 --> 06:42.260]  And there's no real reason to see such a distinct line between how hackers work and artists work, I think.
[06:44.280 --> 06:46.420]  This is a painting by Renoir.
[06:46.880 --> 06:50.260]  I can't pronounce that in French because you're going to laugh.
[06:50.660 --> 06:53.360]  But it's of a kind of party scene on the street.
[06:53.600 --> 07:00.600]  But here's a quote from artligno.com about what the Impressionists, what people thought of the Impressionists at the time.
[07:00.780 --> 07:05.400]  This is just to give you an idea that they were trying to, you know, they caused great offense at the time.
[07:05.820 --> 07:09.120]  In the beginning, the Impressionist painters were nothing but ridiculed by the public.
[07:09.120 --> 07:12.340]  Art critics called the paintings unfinished and declared the artists as madmen.
[07:12.560 --> 07:18.880]  In newspaper cartoons, pregnant women were warned not to enter an Impressionist art exhibition because of the danger of a miscarriage.
[07:19.040 --> 07:25.740]  In other caricatures, it was proposed to fend off the Prussian army who was marching towards Paris in 1870 by showing them Impressionist paintings.
[07:27.080 --> 07:42.360]  So they had, you know, like, this looks like a kind of stuffy old painting to us, but at the time this blew people's minds that you'd bother to be non-figurative and kind of Impressionist was used as an insult at the time, was too much for people to handle.
[07:42.500 --> 07:44.660]  But, you know, now these sell for millions of dollars.
[07:44.780 --> 07:46.620]  These are part of our culture and part of our history.
[07:46.620 --> 08:08.400]  So I find a lot of the motivations of artists in the past, if we just look back and kind of examine what angle they are coming from, are similar to the way hackers operate in terms of creating something new from what's been before and kind of putting a new light on the world for people.
[08:08.600 --> 08:27.200]  So part of this whole talk is for me to appeal to the hacker community and show you that copyright, the thing that mandates and controls these things, is an important part of your world and my world, too, and that we have to kind of... we have to have more of a dialogue going.
[08:27.480 --> 08:38.240]  And one of the biggest points, I think, is that hackers, just like artists, and artists just like hackers, reuse a bit of old technology to create something new.
[08:38.440 --> 08:42.380]  I mean, how often have you just rejigged, you know, a wire or a program?
[08:42.380 --> 08:45.640]  And just altered an input or argument.
[08:45.960 --> 08:48.840]  And it's totally changed the essence of the program, essentially.
[08:49.060 --> 08:50.820]  Or, you know, some small subroutine.
[08:51.060 --> 08:57.660]  This is what... this is actually the kind of largest theme of my argument about art and hacking.
[08:58.740 --> 09:00.280]  This is what modern art's been doing.
[09:00.440 --> 09:05.240]  I mean, this is one of the most significant... this is considered, I think, the most significant piece of modern art.
[09:05.360 --> 09:09.780]  But, you know, people will argue about that until, you know, they burn the books.
[09:09.780 --> 09:13.380]  But this is Marcel Duchamp's fountain.
[09:13.980 --> 09:18.800]  He essentially took a public urinal and put it on display in a gallery in Paris.
[09:18.800 --> 09:20.260]  And this blew everyone's mind.
[09:20.320 --> 09:22.560]  I'm sorry if I'm boring those who've already heard this story.
[09:22.720 --> 09:26.340]  But he signed it under a different name because he was just crazy like that.
[09:26.680 --> 09:29.360]  And this caused another outrage.
[09:31.620 --> 09:33.540]  So, that's just one example.
[09:34.000 --> 09:37.220]  That people just couldn't handle that you put a toilet in a museum.
[09:37.480 --> 09:40.080]  Or not even a functioning toilet in a museum.
[09:40.300 --> 09:52.200]  So, I find Marcel Duchamp's kind of motivation behind this very similar to how hackers operate in creating new code or programs or applets or whatever.
[09:52.540 --> 09:53.360]  It's the same deal.
[09:53.360 --> 09:58.920]  I mean, you know, this was laying around the shelves of every convenience store in America.
[09:59.180 --> 10:04.480]  And one artist, Andy Warhol, decided to take it into something larger.
[10:04.720 --> 10:12.060]  And he, by putting it onto a canvas, displayed that, you know, these consumer objects can actually function as art too.
[10:12.220 --> 10:18.060]  So, it's really just a matter of recontextualization for Andy Warhol.
[10:18.240 --> 10:22.400]  But it's also a matter of reusing something from the past.
[10:22.400 --> 10:24.660]  And if Campbell's went after Andy, they didn't.
[10:24.900 --> 10:27.880]  They contacted him and they thought this was a great way to promote their product.
[10:28.080 --> 10:32.940]  But if they went after him, this whole theme of pop art may not have happened.
[10:34.040 --> 10:39.900]  Now and now, copyright is becoming more of a tool to prevent people like Andy from creating.
[10:40.400 --> 10:42.580]  So, I'm going to go to one last example of art.
[10:42.760 --> 10:44.560]  And this is one you probably haven't heard of.
[10:44.880 --> 10:47.280]  And this is by an artist named Cory Archangel.
[10:47.280 --> 10:53.340]  And he basically remixes Mario and remixes video games.
[10:53.500 --> 10:54.680]  And among other things.
[10:54.780 --> 10:56.760]  This is some of his older art in 2003.
[10:57.160 --> 11:02.960]  But as you can see on the right, he took Mario out of Mario and just left the clouds.
[11:03.280 --> 11:06.140]  And I was going to try to set up an emulator and play it for you.
[11:06.440 --> 11:08.760]  He has the ROMs available on his page to download.
[11:09.000 --> 11:11.480]  But the clouds just go by and the music plays.
[11:11.680 --> 11:12.320]  It's kind of cool.
[11:12.320 --> 11:14.420]  But this is, to me, a great example.
[11:14.660 --> 11:17.200]  A perfect synthesis of the idea of hacking and art together.
[11:18.040 --> 11:20.820]  Where an artist is reusing something from the past.
[11:21.040 --> 11:21.980]  Something copyrighted.
[11:22.060 --> 11:23.520]  Something that somebody paid for.
[11:23.680 --> 11:24.780]  There was a copy made of.
[11:25.420 --> 11:30.420]  And turning it into something that really challenges our perspective on how art...
[11:30.420 --> 11:33.940]  And, you know, I mean, people talk about how he reflects upon our childhood.
[11:34.180 --> 11:38.500]  And how these icons of pop imagery are similar to what Warhol used.
[11:38.500 --> 11:46.880]  I mean, you could talk a lot about how reuse of cultural icons are important in art.
[11:47.620 --> 11:51.420]  But that's all to say that these are now possible.
[11:51.600 --> 12:02.460]  With a kind of increasing copyright regime in this country, it's not clear that people will continue to be able to make art and program like yourselves.
[12:02.740 --> 12:05.780]  So that kind of leads me to the story about free culture.
[12:05.780 --> 12:08.820]  And before I talk about this, I'll tell you how I got involved.
[12:10.180 --> 12:15.380]  I was reading the 2600 summer issue of, like, 1998 or something.
[12:15.480 --> 12:20.980]  And it was one of the first issues where they got threatened by the MPAA for publishing the DeCSS code.
[12:21.300 --> 12:22.780]  And after that, I read that.
[12:22.880 --> 12:26.500]  I kind of got hooked and stayed interested and kept reading Slashdot and followed the case.
[12:26.660 --> 12:30.080]  I actually went to the appeal when they lost the case and sued again.
[12:30.680 --> 12:33.040]  Or appealed in New York.
[12:33.040 --> 12:34.880]  And that was kind of a formative point for me.
[12:35.020 --> 12:39.800]  When I realized that this law called the DMCA was really screwing stuff up online for people.
[12:40.540 --> 12:43.860]  What I didn't realize was how significant the rest of the world thought it was.
[12:44.420 --> 12:52.780]  A couple years later, Lawrence Lessig was working on a book called Free Culture when some memos from the Diebold Corporation got leaked onto the Internet.
[12:53.240 --> 12:54.140]  Are you guys familiar with that?
[12:54.260 --> 12:55.640]  I mean, you've heard about that.
[12:56.380 --> 13:01.780]  Basically, a bunch of internal memos got leaked that displayed Diebold in a particularly bad light.
[13:01.860 --> 13:09.320]  If I remember correctly, they admitted that Diebold was going to be selling the state of California broken voting machines, among other things.
[13:09.600 --> 13:11.180]  But the memos were millions of pages.
[13:11.520 --> 13:17.480]  And in order to parse them properly, people just decided to mirror them on the websites and let the public go through it.
[13:17.480 --> 13:21.160]  So it was kind of like a cat-out-of-the-bag thing.
[13:21.320 --> 13:23.460]  Once it happened, the memos were everywhere.
[13:24.020 --> 13:37.360]  But Nelson Pawlowski, on the left, I'm sorry, was part of an anti-war group on campus at Swarthmore and figured that this was an interesting case against the Bush administration.
[13:37.760 --> 13:44.060]  So Nelson and his friends posted the Diebold memos in their Swarthmore accounts, which is like 10 megabytes on an EDU address.
[13:44.060 --> 13:49.640]  And sure enough, they got a cease and desist letter from Diebold claiming copyright infringement.
[13:49.860 --> 13:56.600]  This is kind of crazy because Diebold had left the memos in an open public FTP and they forgot to password protect something.
[13:56.740 --> 13:57.860]  It was totally ridiculous.
[13:58.140 --> 14:04.740]  And to claim that the only reason people weren't allowed to distribute them was copyright was a pretty bogus claim.
[14:05.000 --> 14:15.600]  So before they actually sued Nelson, and they didn't, Nelson got together with Lawrence Lessig and decided to sue Diebold first for abuse of copyright.
[14:16.020 --> 14:20.960]  They won that case and it started this huge national kind of commotion around the Swarthmore campus.
[14:21.180 --> 14:27.840]  And they became kind of figures for Lessig's, the kind of extension of Lessig's idea in the book that he just published, Free Culture.
[14:28.300 --> 14:31.820]  If you haven't read Free Culture, I suggest you check it out.
[14:31.940 --> 14:32.860]  You can download it for free.
[14:32.860 --> 14:35.100]  It's license under a Creative Commons license online.
[14:35.320 --> 14:39.100]  Go to free-culture.cc and you can download the whole book.
[14:39.380 --> 14:40.580]  Or you can buy it in stores.
[14:40.620 --> 14:42.180]  I think it's in its fourth printing now.
[14:43.580 --> 14:47.200]  So Nelson had started something called the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons.
[14:47.940 --> 14:49.900]  And that was kind of a wordy title.
[14:50.080 --> 15:00.660]  And once he kind of realized there was so much national attention about this one topic that had to do with this, you know, Republican corporation abusing copyright, he decided to make it larger.
[15:00.660 --> 15:05.860]  So with a couple friends, I started freeculture.org, which was going to be a kind of national student movement about this.
[15:06.040 --> 15:13.600]  Because not only was Diebold an interesting case for college students, but people were starting to be sued by the RIA.
[15:13.900 --> 15:15.800]  And that was getting attention on campus.
[15:16.000 --> 15:21.000]  So that summer, I got in contact with Nelson and kind of stayed on the email list.
[15:21.000 --> 15:34.440]  And previously, as the April Fool's prank for the spring of 2004, I put up posters on NYU's campus saying that the RIA was coming to campus.
[15:34.560 --> 15:37.100]  And you could meet Hillary Rosen and Metallica.
[15:37.300 --> 15:43.380]  And if you brought a CD with your MP3s on it, you could trade it in for immunity in future RIAA lawsuits.
[15:45.320 --> 15:47.460]  I wish I had the poster now, but it's not on this laptop.
[15:47.920 --> 15:52.120]  But it looked really official and we put all these, we put like the date and name.
[15:52.300 --> 15:55.720]  We did like April 31st and like, you know, 1pm to noon.
[15:55.840 --> 15:59.260]  All these like times that didn't make any sense so that you couldn't actually like go anywhere and do it.
[15:59.340 --> 16:02.680]  But we splattered it all over campus and we just thought we were being funny.
[16:02.840 --> 16:05.680]  We did it at like 5am, you know, the morning before April Fools.
[16:06.220 --> 16:07.460]  And we kind of forget about it.
[16:07.520 --> 16:08.540]  This is my roommate and I.
[16:08.540 --> 16:13.200]  And then like a week or two later, we hear these people get in an argument in the stairwell in our dorm.
[16:13.360 --> 16:17.320]  This like, curious argument about whether or not the RIAA was justified in suing people.
[16:17.640 --> 16:20.060]  And it was all over this stupid April Fools prank.
[16:20.220 --> 16:22.580]  But it was like, you know, then we kept on hearing about it.
[16:22.660 --> 16:25.360]  And we're like, wow, this actually, you know, people are talking about this on campus.
[16:25.480 --> 16:26.560]  It's not that they're just afraid.
[16:26.580 --> 16:32.100]  It's that they feel like the RIAA is in a morally unjustifiable position in suing college students.
[16:32.160 --> 16:34.180]  And I was like, I felt this way all along.
[16:34.300 --> 16:38.160]  I mean, I followed the DeCSS case to, you know, whatever was happening at the time.
[16:38.160 --> 16:40.060]  And especially the Diebold case.
[16:40.220 --> 16:41.580]  So I was like, now's the time.
[16:41.720 --> 16:43.320]  Like, I should start a club or something.
[16:43.480 --> 16:44.960]  I started a club in high school.
[16:45.040 --> 16:47.380]  And I was like, I can do this on college campus.
[16:47.380 --> 16:48.360]  But I can make it political.
[16:49.320 --> 16:54.680]  So I got in contact in the year of my senior year, 2005.
[16:55.080 --> 16:56.980]  Or I'm sorry, 2004 to 2005.
[16:56.980 --> 16:58.420]  I started free culture at NYU.
[16:59.840 --> 17:03.580]  I graduated and then I kind of stuck around the city and became an outside agitator.
[17:03.580 --> 17:06.040]  And we started...
[17:06.040 --> 17:08.300]  One of my ideas was to have a DRM protest.
[17:08.600 --> 17:11.740]  So this is the first DRM protest ever, as far as I know.
[17:12.320 --> 17:16.640]  And we made poster boards and sandwich boards and funny things.
[17:16.720 --> 17:24.540]  And just showed up at Virgin and made these little flyers, which I'll show you one of later, that explained what DRM was, essentially.
[17:24.700 --> 17:34.880]  And how it could damage your computer and how it was problematic for, you know, your rights as a copyright...
[17:34.880 --> 17:36.040]  Oh, look, it's 82 degrees on.
[17:36.860 --> 17:38.560]  Your rights as a consumer.
[17:40.760 --> 17:43.160]  Essentially, you guys all understand the problem with DRM.
[17:43.260 --> 17:46.360]  It's not only that it prevents you from taking a copy and putting it on your iPod.
[17:46.360 --> 17:51.760]  It's that if you want to remix it and actually create something new with that CD, it will prevent you from doing that.
[17:51.880 --> 17:54.340]  And to break that DRM is a DMCA violation.
[17:54.600 --> 17:58.940]  So if you're somebody who wants to remix Jay-Z, for example, right?
[17:59.120 --> 18:00.840]  And that CD has DRM on it.
[18:02.000 --> 18:15.000]  Ten years ago, or five years ago even, before DRM really existed, you could copy that whole CD onto your computer, make a remix, and then disperse it onto the web, hoping that it's fair use.
[18:15.000 --> 18:16.600]  And that's its own beast.
[18:16.740 --> 18:18.100]  I mean, fair use is its own problem.
[18:18.220 --> 18:24.660]  But you wouldn't actually be violating any laws by getting the songs onto your computer and remixing it.
[18:24.740 --> 18:34.280]  Now DRM presents a problem in the way that it is a violation of break DRM of the DMCA.
[18:34.480 --> 18:35.380]  Sorry, that's kind of wordy.
[18:36.320 --> 18:37.300]  So this got written up.
[18:37.380 --> 18:38.480]  We got a lot of attention for this.
[18:38.580 --> 18:39.380]  We got on boing-boing.
[18:40.080 --> 18:41.480]  And random people just showed up.
[18:41.560 --> 18:42.460]  It was phenomenal, actually.
[18:42.560 --> 18:44.700]  People showed up with their own posters and started handing them out.
[18:44.700 --> 18:50.380]  And it was this kind of, you know, Internet-meets-real-world feeling you get every so often.
[18:50.580 --> 18:57.520]  But it was especially kind of exciting to see people who knew about the issues and just wanted to do something in New York about it.
[18:57.580 --> 19:01.360]  So we ended up putting a lot of flyers inside the store.
[19:01.400 --> 19:03.520]  And the Virgin people were like, what's DRM?
[19:04.220 --> 19:05.740]  You know, we were fine.
[19:05.740 --> 19:10.520]  And because everyone just goes into Virgin and Union Square and just hands out, you know, puts flyers.
[19:10.660 --> 19:13.420]  And it's just like a, you know, might as well be a public space.
[19:13.580 --> 19:15.500]  So the clerks were just like, whatever.
[19:15.700 --> 19:19.080]  But a lot of the people on the street were like, this is really interesting.
[19:19.200 --> 19:21.260]  And we actually got no negative, like, feedback.
[19:21.440 --> 19:24.960]  Like, nobody was actually, you know, you kids, you're downloading.
[19:24.960 --> 19:29.260]  We got one person that after explaining the whole thing, he was like, well, I don't...
[19:29.260 --> 19:32.240]  I think the record companies need to keep their revenues.
[19:32.420 --> 19:36.160]  But it wasn't that somebody... there was no protest in that.
[19:36.300 --> 19:39.660]  There was somebody sitting in Virgin who actively disagreed with us.
[19:39.760 --> 19:46.300]  So we called it more of a demonstration in that we were really just informing consumers not to buy these essentially broken products.
[19:46.400 --> 19:47.760]  And that was the theme of our flyer.
[19:47.840 --> 19:49.360]  Are you buying a damaged CD?
[19:50.500 --> 19:52.120]  So those are some photos from that.
[19:53.060 --> 19:53.720]  Oops, wrong way.
[19:54.880 --> 19:56.700]  So here's the parts of the second one.
[19:56.860 --> 19:58.680]  I put less photos so I could keep them larger.
[19:59.320 --> 20:09.040]  In the original sandwich board, we had had a throwing up iPod, a really sick iPod, in that you couldn't get your CDs to your iPod, so your iPod was upset.
[20:09.900 --> 20:12.420]  Here we have a throwing up computer because this is...
[20:12.420 --> 20:22.000]  We got really lucky in between our first protest and our second protest was the Sony BMG scandal where they had essentially released a virus into public.
[20:22.000 --> 20:27.940]  And it was a rootkit, but, you know, most people understand that as a virus.
[20:29.160 --> 20:35.380]  And there... it was just this hot moment, this hot flash of DRM kind of interest by the public.
[20:35.380 --> 20:38.640]  So we made a sandwich board of a computer throwing up.
[20:38.800 --> 20:40.820]  I think you can kind of see it in the upper left.
[20:40.820 --> 20:42.900]  And we were actually fortunate.
[20:43.120 --> 20:45.220]  Richard Stallman was in the city and had heard about this.
[20:45.300 --> 20:47.800]  And I had been emailing him back and forth that he wanted to come.
[20:47.900 --> 20:49.140]  And I was like, sure, why not?
[20:49.320 --> 20:52.500]  So he just grabbed the sandwich board and wore it the entire night.
[20:52.880 --> 20:59.120]  And on the front of it, we had the old Compact Disc logo, which actually means the CD is Redbook certified.
[21:00.020 --> 21:03.160]  And DRM CDs are not that, so they're like imposter CDs.
[21:03.440 --> 21:04.560]  It's actually really interesting.
[21:04.740 --> 21:11.260]  So they have this other logo, which is kind of like a C with a triangle in it with another C, which means content protection or something.
[21:11.800 --> 21:16.360]  And so if you ever see that logo, don't buy the CD, obviously.
[21:16.560 --> 21:20.420]  But we made a sandwich board to kind of demonstrate the difference to consumers.
[21:21.640 --> 21:32.280]  Interesting part is that one of my friends had went in and bought the Sony BMG, the Van Zandt CD at the tower that we were protesting at, just in case we got questioned about it.
[21:34.220 --> 21:38.480]  And later that evening, the manager of the store comes out and he knows what we're talking about, obviously.
[21:38.660 --> 21:40.140]  And he's like, we're not selling any of those CDs.
[21:40.460 --> 21:42.960]  And he starts giving us trouble and he's like, why don't you go to Virgin?
[21:43.080 --> 21:44.680]  And we're like, we did them last month, man.
[21:44.800 --> 21:46.660]  I mean, we're just making the rounds.
[21:46.660 --> 21:51.300]  It's not like we're, you know, finding you in particular and hassling you.
[21:51.440 --> 21:57.460]  And he's, you know, he's hemming and hawing and he's like, I don't like this either because we get them returned and this whole thing, but it's what the record companies are doing.
[21:57.540 --> 21:59.060]  Why don't you go to the headquarters?
[21:59.340 --> 22:03.640]  And I was like, well, honestly, we don't care about converting a bunch of monkeys in suits.
[22:03.840 --> 22:06.660]  I mean, their jobs are obsolete in 10 years anyway.
[22:07.120 --> 22:14.760]  You know, like people like us who go, who used to go and buy CDs are the ones who are going to care about this and obviously our target in this action.
[22:15.480 --> 22:17.900]  So then finally, he's like, we're not selling that CD.
[22:18.020 --> 22:18.860]  And we're like, yes, you are.
[22:18.960 --> 22:22.040]  And my friend takes out the CD and the receipt and it's like, you know, an hour before.
[22:22.200 --> 22:29.180]  And that's actually the guy that the store manager on the upper right holding the CD looking, I don't know, flummoxed.
[22:31.220 --> 22:32.440]  So there's a group shot.
[22:32.560 --> 22:33.340]  That's Jay Saltzberger.
[22:33.540 --> 22:34.620]  He's a great guy.
[22:35.760 --> 22:36.960]  That was a really fun night.
[22:36.960 --> 22:39.600]  And that was the second DRM protest ever.
[22:39.760 --> 22:42.840]  We kind of like hadn't heard anybody doing anything else.
[22:42.840 --> 22:45.760]  And we made all the flyers available online and some people showed up.
[22:46.360 --> 22:49.820]  If you're ever going to do a protest, Union Square is really good for it.
[22:49.960 --> 22:53.400]  And the corner of West 4th Street and Broadway isn't so good for it.
[22:53.520 --> 22:54.600]  It's like really windy.
[22:54.820 --> 22:56.340]  And if you're doing it at like 7 p.m.
[22:56.340 --> 23:01.620]  or something, it's just kind of cold in November.
[23:04.120 --> 23:08.940]  So we're going to plan to do some during the day at the Sony headquarters.
[23:09.780 --> 23:11.680]  And I think we may do that next year.
[23:12.120 --> 23:13.600]  So this was a really exciting thing.
[23:13.800 --> 23:16.540]  And eventually enough people got in contact.
[23:17.100 --> 23:17.920]  Here's the flyer.
[23:18.020 --> 23:19.320]  This is the original flyer.
[23:20.680 --> 23:21.960]  So it's really simple.
[23:22.140 --> 23:28.920]  We had a lot of criticism from people in the tech world that you're like, you're not explaining the CD install software.
[23:28.920 --> 23:31.740]  And it's like you can't really...
[23:31.740 --> 23:35.460]  People just walking around on the street can't parse that kind of information that quickly.
[23:35.740 --> 23:38.840]  Like, I mean, it's kind of second nature for people like us.
[23:39.080 --> 23:42.700]  But when you're handing somebody a flyer, first they think you're selling something.
[23:42.900 --> 23:44.300]  And second, they don't want to talk to you.
[23:44.900 --> 23:51.400]  So trying to explain that there's these like obtuse technical details about the format of the CD is just going to go over their head.
[23:51.420 --> 23:53.480]  You need to explain it in terms that they really understand.
[23:53.680 --> 23:55.760]  And that's, you can't play it on your home computer.
[23:55.760 --> 23:57.220]  I mean, most CDs have this problem.
[23:57.360 --> 23:58.640]  Most DRM CDs have this problem.
[23:58.820 --> 24:01.480]  You can't put the songs on your MP3 player.
[24:01.760 --> 24:11.500]  One of Apple's big advertising campaigns was that they were letting you convert your collection from CDs to your iTunes collection.
[24:11.560 --> 24:18.440]  And they kind of stopped talking about that once they started selling DRM because Apple, of all people, doesn't like the idea of format shifting.
[24:18.580 --> 24:24.700]  They don't want you to be able to shift from iTunes to your CD and then to your home MP3 server.
[24:24.700 --> 24:28.160]  They want you to be stuck with the iTunes-approved junk.
[24:28.400 --> 24:32.180]  So that was one thing we could explain very easily.
[24:32.260 --> 24:33.700]  And then making a backup copy of the CD.
[24:33.940 --> 24:44.720]  Some of the DRM software would kind of tangentially let you do this, but it would be like a 120 kilobit version of the whole CD, which is far below CD quality.
[24:44.920 --> 24:50.220]  And they would only let you make three or four copies or maybe even one copy.
[24:50.820 --> 24:56.540]  So we kind of did a checklist and then we set up a web page that was kind of like a resource for people to kind of understand more about DRM.
[24:56.740 --> 24:58.960]  So this is just like a really simple hand flyer.
[24:59.600 --> 25:03.900]  I think we handed out like a thousand of these the first night and they weren't like littering.
[25:04.120 --> 25:07.640]  So we made the assumption that people were taking it home.
[25:09.120 --> 25:10.100]  This is the second one.
[25:10.100 --> 25:14.420]  We made like a full page flyer because we had so much to talk about with the Sony BMG stuff.
[25:15.760 --> 25:17.900]  And then we put the logo on there, which is really important.
[25:18.800 --> 25:21.240]  And then just like some quotes from the New York Times.
[25:21.360 --> 25:23.240]  And so people knew were pretty serious.
[25:23.920 --> 25:26.180]  All these are online available for download.
[25:26.320 --> 25:30.380]  So if you want to do your own DRM protest or license under Creative Commons, I don't even care.
[25:30.380 --> 25:33.000]  You can just do whatever you want with this stuff.
[25:33.160 --> 25:34.700]  I mean, they're probably typos and stuff.
[25:35.100 --> 25:37.660]  Unfortunately, the original files are in PSD.
[25:37.900 --> 25:40.760]  If I do it again, I'll probably put them in a more open format.
[25:42.840 --> 25:44.420]  But yeah, these are really useful.
[25:44.540 --> 25:45.120]  People got it.
[25:45.260 --> 25:47.620]  People loved us talking, like just talking to us on the street.
[25:47.740 --> 25:48.380]  Just random consumers.
[25:49.180 --> 25:53.640]  Like you get the idea that most people have no idea about these things.
[25:53.820 --> 25:57.720]  But once you actually stop them and once they're actually there, they want to talk to you about it.
[25:57.720 --> 25:58.560]  And they're interested.
[25:58.800 --> 25:59.920]  So people are pretty smart.
[25:59.960 --> 26:01.340]  And we found that to be the case.
[26:01.800 --> 26:04.600]  So here's an article that Village Voice wrote about it.
[26:05.660 --> 26:07.240]  This is a really interesting story.
[26:07.600 --> 26:15.880]  My friend Inga, who co-founded Free Culture at NYU with me on the left there, is quoted in this article.
[26:15.980 --> 26:16.980]  I don't think it's on here.
[26:17.320 --> 26:22.680]  Okay, here she says, If there are laws I believe are wrong, I will break them.
[26:22.900 --> 26:26.160]  At the time, she was working at a trademark law firm.
[26:26.160 --> 26:28.400]  It was a really prestigious one in Midtown.
[26:29.120 --> 26:32.140]  And it took a couple of weeks before somebody in the office found this article.
[26:32.480 --> 26:34.720]  And she got called into HR.
[26:35.220 --> 26:39.520]  And they told her, you basically can't work here because you're opposed to what we do.
[26:40.100 --> 26:43.560]  And Inga is a sophomore in college.
[26:43.560 --> 26:53.540]  And she's interested in copyright and how these things are affecting computers and technology and culture and economics in general.
[26:54.180 --> 26:55.740]  So she had a job as a paralegal.
[26:55.940 --> 26:57.400]  She was just... she wants to go to law school.
[26:57.540 --> 26:59.420]  In fact, she's applying to law school right now.
[27:00.280 --> 27:02.480]  So getting a job as a paralegal is what you do.
[27:02.600 --> 27:07.000]  But it doesn't kind of prohibit you from being a political paralegal if you're not at work.
[27:07.000 --> 27:15.160]  So the firm gave her like kind of this wishy-washy thing that we're not firing you for your views, but we are firing you because of what you believe in.
[27:15.280 --> 27:17.100]  And it's like, that's the same thing, assholes.
[27:20.040 --> 27:21.000]  So Inga wrote...
[27:22.080 --> 27:23.860]  So I was like, Inga, this is a big deal.
[27:23.880 --> 27:24.840]  And she's like, no, it's not.
[27:24.980 --> 27:25.820]  And she was really upset.
[27:25.980 --> 27:28.340]  And she, you know, of course the next day she gets a job.
[27:28.340 --> 27:30.040]  But that wasn't the problem.
[27:30.200 --> 27:33.820]  She was just like, I, you know, I don't like having like a black mark on my resume.
[27:34.000 --> 27:36.740]  I was like, no, you can't think of this as a black mark.
[27:36.960 --> 27:37.780]  This is awesome.
[27:37.940 --> 27:44.180]  This is drawing a line in the sand for people out there to understand what DRM is and what, you know, what the problems with copyright are.
[27:44.300 --> 27:46.740]  So I was like, we got to go public with this.
[27:46.860 --> 27:49.800]  So fortunately we had the advice of a pro bono lawyer.
[27:49.800 --> 27:52.080]  And he kind of stepped us through it.
[27:52.080 --> 27:54.500]  And he was like, you probably don't want to name the name of the law firm.
[27:55.000 --> 27:55.900]  So don't ask.
[27:56.260 --> 27:58.000]  But you're welcome to share your story.
[27:58.560 --> 28:01.220]  So Inga writes up this long letter about it.
[28:01.240 --> 28:01.960]  It's on our webpage.
[28:01.960 --> 28:03.860]  If you want to go to freeculturenyu.org.
[28:04.080 --> 28:05.120]  Just explaining what happened.
[28:05.280 --> 28:06.380]  Pretty much what I just told you.
[28:06.560 --> 28:11.220]  And that, you know, she finds it unfortunate that our law firm is so short-sighted.
[28:11.360 --> 28:13.840]  And like this very kind of like formal apology.
[28:14.100 --> 28:15.260]  And we start passing around.
[28:15.460 --> 28:19.120]  And every lawyer we talked to was kind of enraged about this.
[28:19.120 --> 28:21.360]  And they were like, you're doing exactly the right thing.
[28:21.760 --> 28:22.620]  And so on.
[28:22.700 --> 28:23.820]  And then it gets on Slashdot.
[28:24.120 --> 28:28.280]  And it's like, freeculturenyu got like 20,000 hits in one day.
[28:28.400 --> 28:35.380]  And there's this huge threat on Slashdot about people arguing over whether or not Inga's quote there was something to be fired over.
[28:35.480 --> 28:38.720]  But the important point was that it established some precedent.
[28:38.720 --> 28:46.720]  That if you're going to be involved in a law firm, you've got to worry about what your political views on DRM are.
[28:46.840 --> 28:48.560]  And that's a really funny thing.
[28:48.560 --> 28:54.680]  I mean, how you feel about some technology is an interesting thing to be...
[28:54.680 --> 28:56.980]  to qualify your ability to work at a law firm.
[28:57.220 --> 28:59.900]  So that was an interesting article.
[29:01.100 --> 29:03.320]  Washington Square News, we were...
[29:03.320 --> 29:06.120]  with a friend, we collaborated and wrote an op-ed.
[29:06.340 --> 29:07.480]  And it's got out to a lot of people.
[29:07.860 --> 29:11.040]  This was on Boing Boing a couple times and just on campus.
[29:11.540 --> 29:21.100]  If you're thinking about doing campus organizing or politicizing and that kind of thing, your op-ed column and your paper is a really good way to get things started.
[29:21.300 --> 29:25.800]  I mean, it really doesn't require much to write a couple hundred words about something you care about.
[29:26.020 --> 29:31.340]  And trust me, college papers are starved for interesting things to talk about, especially with technology.
[29:33.480 --> 29:36.260]  USA Today later got in contact with us and did a whole article.
[29:36.440 --> 29:38.800]  This is in the main section of USA Today.
[29:39.160 --> 29:44.240]  And that's my friend, Diana Rosenthal, with an iPod in front of an NYU bus.
[29:44.380 --> 29:47.060]  They said... she said it took like all night to get that one photo.
[29:47.180 --> 29:48.320]  They took like 500 shots.
[29:48.520 --> 29:50.220]  And USA Today was...
[29:51.220 --> 29:54.820]  They're just kind of... you know, they're good, but they didn't want to...
[29:54.820 --> 29:57.780]  they didn't care about like the actual politics of it.
[29:57.860 --> 30:02.720]  They just wanted to hear about how you can't turn CDs into iPod files.
[30:02.980 --> 30:12.820]  And it was kind of frustrating because we were trying to tell them that there was a significant political part to how these files worked and what was happening with the CDs.
[30:12.920 --> 30:15.900]  And they were just concerned about poor college students getting ripped off.
[30:17.280 --> 30:19.960]  Which is a part of our message, but it's not our entire message.
[30:19.960 --> 30:26.120]  Okay, so one of the other events we did was a Creative Commons art show.
[30:26.320 --> 30:27.640]  Are you guys familiar with Creative Commons?
[30:28.740 --> 30:34.680]  Basically, it's the attempt to do open source or do licensing for culture.
[30:34.940 --> 30:38.140]  The GPL only applies to software.
[30:38.400 --> 30:43.780]  There's the FDL that applies for software manuals, or that was designed for software manuals.
[30:43.840 --> 30:51.340]  But really, there's no good way to license your work in order to let other people know that you want them to share it and reuse it.
[30:51.900 --> 30:57.860]  So part of our goal as a club was to kind of advocate Creative Commons on campus in any way we could.
[30:57.860 --> 31:00.860]  So we decided to host a Creative Commons art show.
[31:01.020 --> 31:04.220]  And we basically just bugged a bunch of our friends for files...
[31:04.220 --> 31:13.400]  for photos or other art that they would like to license under Creative Commons that we would then put online at the same time as doing the physical art show.
[31:13.400 --> 31:19.360]  We told them that as long as they brought their own prints and framed it themselves, they were free to sell it at whatever price they wanted.
[31:19.600 --> 31:26.120]  To kind of encourage the fact that there can be real world analogs to kind of digital world stuff.
[31:26.320 --> 31:32.880]  And even if you're giving out something for free online, it doesn't mean the original proprietary version in the physical world costs anything.
[31:33.180 --> 31:34.490]  Or it can't cost anything.
[31:35.220 --> 31:36.140]  So this is one of the works.
[31:37.000 --> 31:37.940]  I'm going to go through some more.
[31:38.480 --> 31:39.160]  Here's some more.
[31:39.160 --> 31:42.340]  There are just, you know, good work that...
[31:42.340 --> 31:45.880]  you know, friends of friends and people who are already licensing under Creative Commons.
[31:46.140 --> 31:54.520]  We just kind of sent out our feelers and got enough feedback and were able to select maybe 10 or 11 great pieces of art to use in our show.
[31:55.700 --> 31:57.960]  Here's... this is Diana's piece.
[31:58.620 --> 32:02.180]  She was the girl in the USA Today article.
[32:02.340 --> 32:03.260]  She's also a photographer.
[32:04.620 --> 32:06.060]  This is my friend Will Sherman.
[32:06.380 --> 32:08.400]  He runs the site UntitledName.com.
[32:09.220 --> 32:13.580]  He does mostly graffiti stuff, but this is another piece he did in Red Hook.
[32:14.660 --> 32:19.000]  He licenses his work under Creative Commons already, so we didn't have to explain it to him.
[32:19.160 --> 32:33.420]  It was a really interesting experience talking to college students because most of them understand that copyright isn't working on the Internet and in digital media, and there's no way to really keep control of your work once you put it out there.
[32:33.560 --> 32:47.300]  So a lot of them were really amenable to Creative Commons, and they really liked the idea that they could kind of get some publicity through their name and not have to worry about, like, you know, all the problems entailed with putting things online.
[32:47.300 --> 32:57.640]  They knew if they chose, like, an attribution and non-commercial license, they could have some legal recourse if they saw their photo ended up in some Ford commercial or something like that.
[32:58.820 --> 32:59.980]  Here are some more photos.
[33:00.260 --> 33:02.960]  This is the one that got kind of picked up by the media.
[33:03.060 --> 33:04.080]  This is on a lot of blogs.
[33:04.240 --> 33:07.000]  It's being kind of like, there's a free art opening at NYU.
[33:07.340 --> 33:07.920]  Go to it.
[33:08.180 --> 33:09.260]  They're kids with guns.
[33:10.840 --> 33:15.900]  This is actually one of the... this is the photographer's brothers in Minnesota.
[33:16.300 --> 33:20.200]  I think this is what they do, is hang out and shoot rounds, I guess.
[33:21.520 --> 33:31.680]  But, yeah, what was cool is we released... we had a party at NYU and then released all the stuff online at the same time on Flickr under a Creative Commons license and kind of made sure everyone knew that.
[33:31.920 --> 33:33.420]  So here's just some photos.
[33:34.000 --> 33:35.740]  We decided to do it at a student lounge.
[33:36.120 --> 33:43.660]  We like the idea of having our meetings in a student lounge as opposed to a closed-off room just to kind of encourage people to show up and drop in and that kind of thing.
[33:44.340 --> 33:47.680]  And it was up for a month and we got a lot of great responses.
[33:48.720 --> 33:57.460]  What was even better was that Creative Commons and Second Life decided to do an art show in Second Life.
[33:57.720 --> 34:03.340]  So they kind of gave us free space in Second Life, which actually cost something, believe it or not.
[34:03.840 --> 34:05.580]  And are you guys familiar with Second Life?
[34:05.580 --> 34:12.260]  It's an online world, not a game, where people kind of create everything themselves.
[34:12.520 --> 34:18.920]  The only real things created by Second Life, the company, are the tools to create other objects.
[34:19.060 --> 34:24.100]  So everything you see here is user-created aside from maybe the ocean and the shading on the sky.
[34:24.740 --> 34:28.220]  My shirt is actually the virtual version of my shirt.
[34:28.700 --> 34:33.260]  So we did an online art show and I also gave a talk in Second Life about it.
[34:33.940 --> 34:41.680]  What was even cooler is that we then encouraged everyone in Second Life to go and remix the art that you could remix, the stuff that wasn't under a no-derivatives license.
[34:41.920 --> 34:45.160]  So this is just one example of what somebody did with it.
[34:45.340 --> 34:56.620]  He basically built the scene from the taxi cab thing and made it seem like he was hailing the cab, and then turned this into a piece of work that he then relicensed under Creative Commons.
[34:56.840 --> 35:00.200]  So I'm forgetting his name right now, but it was kind of a neat application.
[35:00.480 --> 35:14.020]  And this stuff, the graffiti you see in the kind of middle left, people then used to put up on buildings in Second Life as to make it like virtual graffiti from real graffiti, which is kind of interesting.
[35:16.500 --> 35:18.440]  Let me go forward a little bit more.
[35:19.680 --> 35:23.460]  So this spun off the Harvard Free Culture Art Show.
[35:23.640 --> 35:25.000]  So they decided to do something too.
[35:25.140 --> 35:26.460]  And this is the art from their show.
[35:27.100 --> 35:32.200]  And you can see it's kind of, you know, it's just more student art.
[35:32.380 --> 35:34.380]  But they had a huge reception in an art gallery.
[35:36.600 --> 35:37.460]  And it was really fun.
[35:37.540 --> 35:38.640]  Here are some photos from that night.
[35:38.640 --> 35:46.100]  They had live performances from people doing cell phone ringtone stuff, and just live remixing in general.
[35:48.140 --> 35:54.160]  So here, this brings me to our last project of this year, which was a remix contest.
[35:54.340 --> 35:55.220]  Did anyone hear about this?
[35:55.340 --> 35:56.280]  Are you guys familiar with this?
[35:56.540 --> 35:56.800]  Cool.
[35:57.100 --> 35:58.240]  Yeah, it was on Boing Boing and stuff.
[35:58.700 --> 36:02.780]  We decided to sponsor people remixing DVDs.
[36:03.300 --> 36:14.260]  And this was like a cause that was really near and dear to my heart because the whole reason I got involved in this whole movement and my whole interest was from that one DeCSS case back in 1998 or whenever it was.
[36:14.880 --> 36:24.420]  And I just have still been thinking how insane it is that people don't really have access to movies that they want to create and remix.
[36:24.720 --> 36:27.520]  So after a lot of talking...
[36:28.120 --> 36:30.420]  Actually, I just presented this idea to the Free Culture Group.
[36:30.520 --> 36:31.620]  And they were like, this is okay.
[36:31.800 --> 36:33.300]  This is, you know, a good idea.
[36:34.040 --> 36:36.180]  Why don't we remix...
[36:36.900 --> 36:48.420]  Why don't we encourage people to remix movies into those kind of trailers that you're seeing online now, like the Brokeback to the Future one and the SpongeBob Mountain or whatever it was.
[36:48.620 --> 36:49.480]  What was the other one?
[36:50.060 --> 36:51.820]  The Shining one was really good too.
[36:51.960 --> 36:52.540]  You guys seen that?
[36:52.980 --> 36:56.020]  So we wanted to kind of capitalize on that...
[36:56.020 --> 37:01.920]  or capitalize, but jump on that bandwagon and encourage people to do remixes of movies.
[37:01.920 --> 37:05.980]  And we didn't know what movies we were going to do because we kind of got up...
[37:05.980 --> 37:08.820]  got caught up in talking about the legality of it.
[37:09.420 --> 37:12.760]  Because a lot of those projects are just things that people did themselves.
[37:13.100 --> 37:16.200]  Like, it's just like, I found the tools, found the movie, and did it myself.
[37:16.400 --> 37:17.480]  Nobody told them to do that.
[37:18.320 --> 37:27.100]  Telling somebody to remix a DVD, to take apart a DVD, and essentially decrypt it, isn't itself illegal.
[37:28.020 --> 37:40.740]  If you instruct somebody how to turn a DVD from its encrypted form to its decrypted form, if you give them specific instructions, or even tell them where to get those specific instructions, you're trafficking a DMCA violation.
[37:41.920 --> 37:46.420]  So, as a club on campus, we didn't quite want to get too angry.
[37:46.960 --> 37:49.500]  We didn't want to get the administration too angry with us.
[37:49.560 --> 37:51.400]  So we kind of talked extensively.
[37:51.400 --> 37:58.280]  And we were also interested in this, about the legality of hosting a contest where we would be telling people to essentially break the law.
[37:58.760 --> 38:06.340]  And one of our older members told us that the one thing we had to do was consult a lawyer.
[38:06.360 --> 38:14.140]  So we go back to our pro bono lawyer friend, and we tell him that we want to do a film remix contest, and he understands all the implications of the DMCA.
[38:14.780 --> 38:23.480]  And we have these long meetings, and we decide that we can give a link to a guide that gives a link to a guide of how to decrypt a DVD, if you get what I mean.
[38:23.600 --> 38:31.060]  We can say, here are guides on how to decrypt DVDs, and then they themselves have links to other pages that give you the specific instructions.
[38:33.040 --> 38:42.000]  That kind of degree of separation from the offending, the illegal code, was enough for our lawyer to be happy.
[38:42.160 --> 38:45.420]  But what he also wanted us to do was to create a legal waiver.
[38:45.720 --> 38:46.680]  Let me get to it.
[38:48.020 --> 38:51.700]  So we created this huge legal waiver that was just...
[38:51.700 --> 39:05.320]  I mean, if you look at this page, freeculturenyu.org slash film remix, there's this kind of initial explanation about the project, and then kind of how do I participate in formats, and then there's a legal waiver, which ostensibly you would have had to sign,
[39:05.500 --> 39:09.880]  or people did sign and enter when they submitted their work.
[39:11.200 --> 39:12.700]  And it's this kind of long...
[39:13.560 --> 39:25.760]  It's not as legal-y as it could be, but it basically indemnifies the club from any DMCA lawsuits if your work happens to get picked out by the MPAA and so on.
[39:27.320 --> 39:36.800]  We did this not so much to play by the letter of the law, but to indicate how absurd the letter of the law was.
[39:36.800 --> 39:46.320]  A lot of the project was just to demonstrate that the DMCA makes media creation for, like, new media artists using DVDs very difficult.
[39:46.600 --> 39:58.400]  We wanted to show that you have to jump through all these legal loopholes if you want to just take a DVD and remix it, or if you want to take, like, a photo of a soup can and turn that into a painting, there's no DMCA violation there, right?
[40:00.280 --> 40:09.600]  So we had people read through this whole legal disclaimer and kind of sign it, and we have, like, a PDF that you can download, and it's all, like, formal and legal, and that kind of thing.
[40:10.100 --> 40:13.780]  And then we have an FAQ kind of explaining why we did all this.
[40:14.440 --> 40:18.160]  So this got featured on Boing Boing, and we had examples.
[40:18.380 --> 40:20.080]  Do you guys want to watch the Shining one?
[40:20.740 --> 40:21.040]  Yes.
[40:21.260 --> 40:21.540]  All right.
[40:21.680 --> 40:22.540]  Let's see if this works.
[40:28.960 --> 40:30.720]  Is the line-out working?
[40:35.020 --> 40:35.500]  All right.
[40:35.820 --> 40:36.180]  Nothing?
[40:38.060 --> 40:39.400]  Do you have to bring up...
[40:39.400 --> 40:41.080]  I mean, I'm okay on this side.
[40:42.660 --> 40:43.020]  Yeah.
[40:44.560 --> 40:47.780]  Anyway, while we wait, we were fortunate enough to have...
[40:47.780 --> 40:53.380]  to be able to show the contest submissions at a conference that we were invited to talk at.
[40:53.480 --> 40:55.480]  It was a conference on fair use at NYU.
[40:56.280 --> 40:56.840]  Should I try it?
[40:59.580 --> 41:00.780]  No, it may be my...
[41:00.780 --> 41:01.800]  Let me see if it's working here.
[41:02.860 --> 41:04.800]  No, it's not even working on here, so...
[41:05.320 --> 41:06.220]  Well, you got the idea.
[41:06.360 --> 41:07.120]  I'll just let that play.
[41:08.760 --> 41:10.520]  Well, I guess you kind of have to have the audio.
[41:12.940 --> 41:13.800]  Sorry about that.
[41:15.780 --> 41:18.720]  No, it's totally something up with my machine.
[41:19.200 --> 41:21.040]  But it's no big deal.
[41:23.120 --> 41:25.340]  So we showed these at a fair use conference.
[41:25.360 --> 41:30.300]  And if you're actually interested, you can go to archive.org.
[41:30.300 --> 41:32.740]  There's a function button that cuts off the volume altogether.
[41:33.140 --> 41:33.920]  Yeah, it's not on.
[41:34.020 --> 41:34.780]  I mean...
[41:38.230 --> 41:39.690]  It would be playing from my laptop.
[41:39.850 --> 41:41.090]  Usually flash stuff works.
[41:45.090 --> 41:46.310]  Well, I'll wait for archive.
[41:52.290 --> 41:57.070]  So we were part of this fair use conference at NYU, and we were able to show the videos.
[41:57.070 --> 42:01.670]  But what was really cool is that they had an ex-lawyer from the MPAA sitting on the same panel.
[42:01.850 --> 42:03.330]  Like, I actually got to sit next to this guy.
[42:04.090 --> 42:09.010]  And then they had some other lawyer from a music organization on the same panel.
[42:11.910 --> 42:14.290]  And they basically shot...
[42:14.290 --> 42:14.950]  One of them...
[42:14.950 --> 42:16.810]  The guy from the MPAA was like, This is garbage.
[42:16.810 --> 42:17.730]  How could you consider...
[42:17.730 --> 42:21.150]  Because I showed some of the shining stuff too, as well as the other entries to the contest.
[42:21.390 --> 42:22.790]  And the guy's like, This is an art.
[42:22.890 --> 42:23.830]  What are you talking about?
[42:24.370 --> 42:24.730]  And...
[42:25.490 --> 42:30.110]  How could you consider, you know, kind of these satires and parodies even satires and parodies?
[42:30.210 --> 42:30.830]  These are silliness.
[42:32.530 --> 42:32.890]  And...
[42:34.370 --> 42:34.730]  So...
[42:34.730 --> 42:36.570]  That was a really interesting experience.
[42:37.210 --> 42:39.350]  I have some of the films, but if the movie...
[42:40.070 --> 42:41.570]  If the time isn't...
[42:41.570 --> 42:43.930]  Or if the sound's not working, I'm not sure it's really worth it.
[42:45.290 --> 42:46.530]  Let me go back to my talk.
[42:47.050 --> 42:47.930]  I think that's it.
[42:48.010 --> 42:49.130]  Here's some future reading.
[42:53.050 --> 42:55.190]  I kind of already told you guys about these.
[42:55.710 --> 42:56.730]  There's some good sites.
[42:56.970 --> 43:03.590]  If you want to get involved kind of locally and you're interested in kind of participating in protests and that kind of thing, definitely join our email list.
[43:03.690 --> 43:09.450]  If you go to FreeCultureNYU.org, you can kind of sign up and get on our email list.
[43:09.690 --> 43:11.610]  FreeCulture.org is a national organization.
[43:12.330 --> 43:15.890]  We have chapters in over 13 colleges right now that are like up and running.
[43:15.890 --> 43:19.630]  And like 40 different universities interested in starting their chapters.
[43:19.850 --> 43:21.610]  If you go to university, please talk to me.
[43:21.810 --> 43:25.350]  I'm very excited about meeting people from other universities and getting started.
[43:27.650 --> 43:30.430]  You can check out Lessig.org for updates from Lawrence Lessig.
[43:30.530 --> 43:31.850]  He wrote the book FreeCulture.
[43:32.010 --> 43:33.610]  He's a very smart lawyer.
[43:35.690 --> 43:37.190]  Boingboing.net is always good.
[43:37.350 --> 43:39.870]  Cory Doctor is kind of on this beat constantly.
[43:40.970 --> 43:51.810]  And Slashdot Your Rights Online slashdot.org/YRO will detail a lot of the stuff going on with laws and that kind of thing.
[43:53.270 --> 43:55.530]  I'm trying to think if there's anything else.
[43:55.730 --> 43:57.310]  If you'd like, I just wanted to add.
[43:57.950 --> 44:07.630]  But if you like the, you can find the Comedies of Fair Use is the name of the conference that I set up.
[44:07.810 --> 44:10.370]  That I was a part of that NYU ran.
[44:11.010 --> 44:17.070]  I was able to get all the audio from this conference online and upload it to archive.org, licensed under Creative Commons.
[44:17.270 --> 44:18.490]  So you can download it all.
[44:18.490 --> 44:21.710]  It's one gigabyte of 192 kilobits MP3s.
[44:21.770 --> 44:23.510]  But they also encode it into Ogg for you.
[44:23.630 --> 44:27.370]  Which actually is a lot smaller, incidentally, than MP3.
[44:28.250 --> 44:30.050]  But there's some great people talking here.
[44:31.490 --> 44:32.810]  Lawrence Lessig gives a talk.
[44:35.030 --> 44:36.230]  There are two great artists.
[44:36.330 --> 44:40.090]  Joy Garnett and Susan Mizell talk about copyright and that kind of thing.
[44:40.230 --> 44:41.470]  I guess I'm just plugging this now.
[44:41.630 --> 44:45.210]  But feel free to download it and send it around.
[44:47.110 --> 44:49.530]  I guess, you know, now I'll open up to questions.
[44:49.790 --> 44:51.290]  Anybody interested in, like, the student movement?
[44:51.530 --> 44:52.190]  Where we're at?
[44:52.250 --> 44:53.170]  What our next projects are?
[44:53.890 --> 44:57.070]  I can tell you, next year at NYU, I'm going to be a grad student.
[44:57.270 --> 45:02.130]  And I'm going to start agitating about how much NYU pays for journals.
[45:03.630 --> 45:09.010]  If you've ever worked in a library or know people who work in libraries, you'll know how much academic journals cost.
[45:09.490 --> 45:10.130]  They can cost...
[45:10.130 --> 45:15.610]  A single journal that comes out maybe two times or even quarterly can cost up to $30,000 a year.
[45:16.150 --> 45:19.490]  I think that's astrophysics A and B I've heard quoted.
[45:20.670 --> 45:23.670]  Right now there are all alternatives, but there need to be more.
[45:23.830 --> 45:35.250]  And there needs to be agitation from the university level so that those people doing research at universities know to publish their stuff under open access rather than with a publishing machine.
[45:35.450 --> 45:36.910]  So that's one of my big projects.
[45:36.910 --> 45:49.510]  I'm going to start kind of fighting with NYU to have them disclose how much they're paying for their journals and make that available to the students so they know how much of their tuition goes to paying for copyright on journals that could be free.
[45:49.730 --> 45:54.850]  Scientists pay these journals themselves to publish their own work and then get charged to get access to it.
[45:56.830 --> 45:59.050]  So I want the students to know about that.
[45:59.050 --> 46:04.830]  I want them to know that X percent is going to kind of silly copyright fees.
[46:05.590 --> 46:06.310]  That's one thing.
[46:06.430 --> 46:09.210]  I think we're going to probably do another DRM protest here or there.
[46:09.710 --> 46:13.190]  By all means, sign up and you'll know about it before everyone else does.
[46:14.790 --> 46:16.850]  I think... I don't know.
[46:16.930 --> 46:17.970]  We have some other stuff in the works.
[46:18.170 --> 46:21.710]  One thing we're interested in doing is setting up a freedom toaster.
[46:21.930 --> 46:22.950]  Does anybody know what that is?
[46:23.830 --> 46:29.910]  This is more of a Linux project, but it's interesting because it's starting to incorporate Creative Commons licensed music and art.
[46:30.410 --> 46:34.510]  Freedom Toaster is a project set up by the Shuttleworth Foundation.
[46:34.770 --> 46:38.010]  Mark Shuttleworth is the guy that runs Conical, that runs Ubuntu.
[46:40.330 --> 46:51.730]  So they designed a kiosk that would burn Linux, Project Gutenberg, all these kind of freely copyable media things onto DVDs for you.
[46:51.930 --> 46:55.830]  They made 30 of these kiosks and distributed them around South Africa.
[46:55.830 --> 46:57.070]  Which was pretty cool.
[46:57.550 --> 47:04.070]  And they found that over a year, these kiosks became incredibly important in these communities.
[47:04.730 --> 47:10.870]  Shops would set up next to them and just sell blank media for people to use on these kiosks.
[47:10.910 --> 47:13.470]  So it created this own kind of like small local economy.
[47:13.670 --> 47:18.650]  But I was just at the iCommon Summit in Brazil and I got to meet a bunch of them.
[47:18.650 --> 47:27.830]  So I'm going to work on trying to build one of those and put it in a NYU dorm and see what happens to kind of get Linux farther into the community.
[47:28.150 --> 47:32.350]  And now they're going to start supporting Creative Commons content.
[47:32.550 --> 47:38.830]  Stuff from ccmixter.org, which is the kind of, I don't know, YouTube of Creative Commons music.
[47:39.590 --> 47:41.590]  Stuff from Revver hopefully will be on there.
[47:41.590 --> 47:52.930]  Revver is a YouTube alternative that incorporates Creative Commons licenses, but also allows you to charge advertising fees before and after your video.
[47:53.650 --> 47:55.330]  So those are the kind of things we have in the future.
[47:55.490 --> 47:58.590]  So let me open the floor to more questions because I feel like...
[47:59.130 --> 47:59.550]  Yes?
[47:59.550 --> 48:00.770]  I just wanted to...
[48:05.840 --> 48:10.240]  The whole academic journal thing is really a good thing to talk about.
[48:10.440 --> 48:10.540]  Yeah.
[48:10.580 --> 48:13.680]  I'm an astrophysicist and I know exactly what you're talking about.
[48:13.920 --> 48:14.020]  Right.
[48:15.080 --> 48:27.120]  But, you know, most of us who are past the tenure hurdle, who are in academic institutions or national laboratories, most of us are publishing on XXX.lanl.gov.
[48:27.280 --> 48:27.820]  Rich doesn't...
[48:27.820 --> 48:28.260]  Which is free.
[48:28.540 --> 48:28.660]  Right.
[48:29.600 --> 48:30.580]  That's physics though.
[48:30.720 --> 48:32.800]  I mean, there's a whole biology field that...
[48:32.800 --> 48:33.020]  Yeah.
[48:33.180 --> 48:35.680]  So I think there is a movement out there.
[48:35.940 --> 48:36.060]  Right.
[48:36.060 --> 48:40.020]  People just creating these sort of databases and people submit papers.
[48:40.220 --> 48:40.280]  Yeah.
[48:40.740 --> 48:41.940]  And it's interesting.
[48:42.700 --> 48:50.240]  It's often more useful than the sort of traditional journals because you get a lot more feedback on your work.
[48:50.500 --> 48:50.540]  Right.
[48:50.540 --> 48:54.660]  People email you and say, Hey, I read that paper that was posted on the site blog.
[48:54.800 --> 48:56.580]  Can you explain what you meant by this, that or the other?
[48:56.660 --> 48:57.640]  I thought that was really good at air.
[48:57.740 --> 48:58.500]  I thought that sucked.
[48:58.660 --> 48:59.760]  That's totally wrong.
[49:00.020 --> 49:00.480]  Mm-hmm.
[49:00.480 --> 49:01.760]  You know, so...
[49:02.200 --> 49:02.560]  Cool.
[49:02.660 --> 49:02.740]  Thanks.
[49:02.740 --> 49:04.740]  I keep going.
[49:05.080 --> 49:05.300]  Well, yeah.
[49:05.440 --> 49:06.000]  Get in contact.
[49:06.220 --> 49:10.520]  I mean, the more people we have from kind of tenured academia agreeing with us, the better.
[49:11.400 --> 49:11.760]  So...
[49:12.540 --> 49:13.640]  Guys, we've got to cut it short.
[49:13.640 --> 49:17.380]  If you want to ask me questions afterwards, I'm free for a while.
[49:17.540 --> 49:17.960]  Please do.
[49:18.180 --> 49:18.780]  Come on up.
[49:18.860 --> 49:19.620]  My name is Fred Benenson.
[49:19.800 --> 49:21.000]  I'm from freeculture.org.
[49:21.000 --> 49:25.720]  You can email me at fred at freeculture.org if you'd like.
[49:26.680 --> 49:27.280]  Yeah.
[49:27.940 --> 49:28.220]  Thank you.