OSCON 2007 Talks
Update: Rick's keynote at OSCON went fantastically — people literally came up to him afterwards and pressed money into his hands to donate to the Swedish Pirate Party. If you'd like to do the same, just visit www.piratpartiet.se/donate. It's a good cause, and they make it easy for you to help. You can view a video of his keynote here
Rick Falkvinge and I just got back from Portland, Oregon (USA), where he gave a keynote speech at OSCON, the annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention. Rick is the founder of Sweden's Pirate Party, and his speech was Copyright Regimes vs Civil Liberties.
The next morning, I gave a talk called Adventures in Copyright Reform, offering a broad, global overview of copyright reform trends, with help from Rick, who explained how copyright policy gets made in Europe.
Now we're in the San Francisco Bay area, where Rick will give more talks during the week of Sunday, 29 July - Friday, 3 August
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Let's Trade Links
I just linked your site prominently from my essay
Repeal the Copyright Act!
Would you consider giving the piece a link from your homepage?
Keep up the good work!
Michael D. Crawford legaldownloads@gmail.com
Coyyright Act!
Is the real concern is that we return to the way America approached intellectual property law throughout most of its history.
Re: Let's Trade Links
Thanks, Michael. We generally avoid formal link-trading arrangements, but the link is in your comment :-). We're glad you like the site, and thanks for the encouragement!
Re: Let's Trade Links
Ah -- I must have clicked on the wrong thing last time, because I got a page full of other links, rather than your essay. I'll take a closer look, thanks for the prod.
Explanation of my article
I should explain something about my article. The section on repealing the copyright act is about halfway through a page that is itself called Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.
I wrote the article as I did to help educate file traders, and to help keep them out of trouble. But one of my strategies was to offer them a lot of free stuff - legal music - but giving them an education on copryight and political activism while I've got their attention.
I realize that most who stumble across my article don't read the whole thing, and just click the download site links, but many do. I know this based on the comments I've received.
I welcome any feedback you might have on my piece.
Thanks! -- Mike
Re: Explanation of my article
Okay, I was careful to go straight to the article this time. Thanks for urging me to re-read it, Mike.
Some comments: first of all, I like the piece a lot and, as you might guess, agree with much in it. But I also have a few reservations.
The article reiterates the oft-heard theme that copyright was invented to give artists an economic reward for their activities, and that the main problem is that it's become corrupted and gone bad in recent years (hence the call for a return to the original 14-year copyright). As you may know from reading elsewhere on this site, I don't actually think that's true. The origins of copyright are quite complex, and have much more to do with reproduction than with creation. We try very hard here not to repeat the "copyright is a good idea taken too far" mantra; we think a more fundamental reconsideration than that is necessary.
The no-derivs license, and your statement explaining it, while understandable, are counter to the spirit of creative, unauthorized modification that QuestionCopyright.org presents as fundamental to human freedom. The reason you give for it...
"The Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license I have chosen for this work doesn't permit derivative works. Unfortunately a translation is a derivative work. I chose the NoDerivs option because so much of this article is an expression of my deeply held personal opinions. However, if you contact me at legaldownloads{...}gmail.com I can grant you a separate license to do a translation."
...is exactly the confusion of attribution on the one hand with copying and derivation on the other that we argue aganist. Your personal opinions absolutely should be sacred, and should never be misrepresented. But ideally, that would be an issue of correct crediting, and of noting when something has been modified from its original form, rather than an issue of permission to make the modification in the first place.
Again, I really like the article, I just think there are a few ways in which its argument differs subtly (but importantly) from the argument we're making here.
Re: Let's Trade Links
Hi,
I understand not wanting to engage in regular link swapping, but I think if you were to read my piece, you might feel it was worth including in your External Resources section.
It discusses the history of copyright in the US, and gives several specific steps one can take to reform or even repeal copyright, stuff like voting, supporting campaign finance reform, joining the EFF and so on.
It also examines the question of whether copyright should even exist in the Internet era.
Regards -- Mike
Where's the text of this
Where's the text of this Adventures talk downloadable from? The title is a link but it seems not to lead to anything of the sort.
Re: Where's the text of this
I don't have the text written out, but the slides are here. They're just an outline, unfortunately, but they're all I can offer.
-Karl Fogel
Oops. I don't recognize the
Oops. I don't recognize the data format "odp" and doubt I have anything on my system that can view .odp files. A plain web page with images would be universally viewable by just about anyone able to reach your site.
you can read "odp" for free with a cool piece of software
Hey there folks,
Sure, it's not quite the same as a web-page, but "odp" files can be read for free.
Basically "odp" is an open/ free implementation of presentation/ slide files, not unlike ppt (Microsoft's PowerPoint).
To view odp files, you can go to http://www.openoffice.org/ which has *free* software you can use on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
If you're on a Mac, I recommend NeoOffice instead. It's a fork of OpenOffice for Macs. Also free.