Beehive Collective presents “DISMANTLING MONOCULTURE: Tales of Ants and Economics in the Americas.”

With three giant illustrated portable murals, a six foot tall fabric storybook “slideshow”, and an engaging narrative, the Bees take audiences on an interactive VISUAL tour of the connections between COLONIZATION, MILITARIZATION, and RESOURCE EXTRACTION in the Americas.

When: Thursday, April 12, 7:00 p.m.

Where: Henderson Room of the Michigan League, 911 N. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.

Who: Sponsored by the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality (SOLE).

Free and open to the public.

The Bees say: The Beehive Design collective’s work is anonymous and anti-copyright, for free use as popular education tools. We are working to dispel the tradition of activism that is based on books, experts, speeches, and “hoarding knowledge”, by creating communication methods that are more holistic, accessible and invite participation… inspiring action, instead of passive listening or absorbing. We build, and disseminate these visual tools with the hope that they will self-replicate, and take on life of their own. The overwhelming success of our graphics campaigns testify to the ability of visual tools for conveying ideas in powerful, effective ways unavailable to other forms of communication.

By kino-eye|by-nc-nd

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.

Beyond Broadcast 2007

By dingdingwang|by-nc-nd

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.

ipso photo|by-nc-nd

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 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.”

A 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

This petition pushes for free and open access to research paid for by the U.S. Federal government.

Photo by Yaniv Shneck, by-nc-sa/2.0

Gilberto Gil, Creative Commons, and Free Culture discussion in today’s NYTimes.

Check out this disturbing/frightening/hilarious propaganda from the RIAA concerning P2P file-sharing. The FAQ section is especially engaging…

A few short samples:
Why are the record companies filing these lawsuits?

“The unauthorized uploading or downloading of music is illegal. It is just as wrong as shoplifting from a local record store – and the impact on those who create music and bring it to fans is equally devastating.”

If I promise never to do this again, do I still have to pay?

“Yes. The settlements are designed to recoup a very small piece of the massive damage inflicted on the music community as a result of piracy.”

What payment methods [for lawsuit settlements] can I use?

“Payments can be made by check or credit card (MasterCard, Visa and Discover).”