Henry Jenkins speaks about popular and participatory culture in relation to participatory democracy. This is one of the most enlightening discussions I’ve seen this year. Please check out the video here.
Archive for March, 2007
Henry Jenkins keynote at Beyond Broadcast
March 29, 2007Jonathan Lethem on the cultural commons
March 28, 2007
Jonathan Lethem has written an article in Harper’s entitled The Ecstasy of Influence. This piece presents an important reflection on the history, pervasiveness, and ulitimately, necessity, of sharing a cultural and creative past.
Lethem will be speaking at the Ann Arbor District Library on Thursday, April 5th at 7:00pm in support of his new book, You Don’t Love Me Yet.
Who’s the rat?
March 21, 2007
As previously reported, students from the University of Michigan are caught in a cold sweat, waiting for the RIAA to come a-knockin’ at their door. The RIAA has already issued pre-litigation statements to several universities thoughout the U.S., hoping to entice administration officials to hand over infringing users, thus circumventing the legal process. However, The University of Wisconsin says they won’t become a shill for the RIAA.
Brian Rust of UW’s IT department: “These settlement letters are an attempt to
short circuit the legal process to rely on universities to be their legal agent.”
EFF FAQ on pre-lawsuit letters
Viacom bites that hand that feeds it
March 18, 2007Viacom has sued Google for copyright infringements on YouTube.
Damages sought: $1 billion.
Check out what Free Culture friend Siva Vaidhyanathan has to say about it on WNYCs “On the Media.”
“Now, we haven’t heard a lot from Jon Stewart in the last few months as Viacom’s taken these very aggressive stance toward Google and YouTube, but I’d be willing to bet that the folks who really understand how fans build upon the work of The Daily Show, they understand that having stuff up on YouTube is priceless. Being kind to your fans by giving them content that they can use and reuse and sometimes even abuse is never a bad business strategy.”
Michael Crook issues apology
March 17, 2007A colleague writes that if the world of copyright and intellectual property could be captured in the pages of a comic book, Michael Crook would be “the villain fighting Free Culture.”
Crook sent a fabricated DMCA takedown notice to the website 10 Zen Monkeys for posting a photo of him from a segment on Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes. He claimed that he held the copyright on the image (which he didn’t, it was held by Fox News).
The EFF & Jeff Diehl (owner of 10zenmonkeys.com) filed a lawsuit against Crook, leading to Crook’s withdrawl of the complaints.
EFF’s press release.
Apology on Blip.tv
