internet.artizans - copyright

my 3 minutes at NESTA Uploading

internetartizans — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:04:57 +0000

UPDATE: see this talk on YouTube (tx to Lloyd Davis.)

a post of the rough notes from my 3 minute 'provocation' at today's NESTA Uploading Innovation Event.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CAMPAIGNING

not amnestyâ€™s official view

architecture of participation for campaigning

amnesty, greenpeace, witness

disruptive innovations, bypassing and displacing

move-on, avaaz, genocide intervention network

post-deferential era

people will do it anyway

youtube and human rights; wael abbas; first ever prosecutions of egyptian police for torture

ice cream flash mobs of belarus

THE DARK SIDE: SURVEILLANCE AND CONFORMITY

chance social media will lead to conformity

privacy invasion

google & yahoo - everything about us and our relationships

privacy backlash

pentagon

social media makes a social difference

blogger kareem amer, critical comments, protected freedom under intâ€™l law

CREATIVITY VERSUS COPYRIGHT

Internet Governance Forum - titanic clash, aggressive IPR & copyright versus Freedom of Expression

make a big difference to what innovation we can do with social media

Joichi Ito - remixing is a new form of freedom of expression

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN RIGHTS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

Q. how do we shape policy to optimise social media innovation?

best hope for human rights activism in C21st

not just social. media for human rights, but human rights for social media

how to preserve that quality that Jonathan Zittrain calls â€˜generativityâ€™

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

policy & law: we need more than creative commons

code: psiphon: anonymity - also spread via social networks

culture: providing a safe space for people to network and campaign

c.f. hispanic kids in LA using myspace to organize against anti-immigrant legislation

maybe org not doing the campaign, but providing campaigning context

provide a safe space for collaborative innovation and say to people: 'be part of the change you want to see'

mashups on the frontline

internetartizans — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:52:37 +0000

Dirk Voorhoof was kind enough to send me a copy of the FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION vs. COPYRIGHT presentation I blogged about earlier . This also quotes the US Supreme Court decision allowing the 2 Live Crew Parody of 'Oh pretty woman'. I remembered Joichi Ito making a comment about remixing at the Internet Governance Forum; a trawl back came up with this inspiring quote (via Intellectual Property Watch ); â€œIto added that the editing of multimedia has become an essential part of social discourse in the United States, and that â€œbeing able to share and remix video and music is vitalâ€ to political debate. But he said copyright law is interfering with political commentary by preventing the use of video material. â€œI think weâ€™re inhibiting an entirely new form of free speech,â€ he saidâ€.

Well, i think that nails it - all this mixing and mashing is the emergent free speech of our times.

can dialectics break bricks?

But of course, this is a mode of counter-hegemonic expression with a pedigree. As Lawrence Liang points out in the The Black and White (and Grey) of Copyright , the Situationist International were putting this in to practice in the 1960's and 70's (and he reckons they were inspired by the late romantic poet LautrÃ©amont!)

[Note 1] For a Human Rights geek like myself, it's doubly cool that mashups are the frontline of of expression, because I reckon that technology mashups are the current tech trend with the biggest potential for online activism.

[Note 2] For a good example of a Situationist mashup (aka detournement), check out "Can Dialectics Break Bricks?" by RenÃ© ViÃ©net.

Copyright versus Campaigning

internetartizans — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 22:29:31 +0000

I caught a great presentation at the Internet Governance Forum called FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION vs. COPYRIGHT given by Dirk Voorhoof . The folk at my day job are good enough at spotting traditional censorship i.e. direct repression by governments, but one of the main things I wanted from the IGF was to sharpen up on how copyright impacts freedom of expression. Dirk's presentation hit the spot by showing how copyright is used as a tool to inhibit campaigning, by harassing groups like Greenpeace when they use something similar to a logo or brand to criticise a corporate through parody or imitation. This also seems to me a great way to get the message through to traditional campaigning NGO's that copyright is a key issue. oil logos The other great aspect of Dirk's presentation was the image he conjoured up of a titanic clash between two legal regimes, namely Intellectual Property Rights versus Human Rights. As he put it, we need to decide between "Copyright/trademark protection as a principle and freedom of expression as an exception or Freedom of expression as a principle and copyright/trademark protection as exceptions".