Free Culture Swarthmore

Two excellent articles on the MPAA threats to clubs that show movies on campus came out this week, with the Daily Gazette reporting Campus movie screenings in limbo and the Phoenix declaring Movie showings may be illegal. Unfortunately, I missed the meeting with the deans, but Free Culture Swarthmore will continue to be involved in this process.

It seems to me that one key legal question is what matters to the public performance classification: the number of people that you invite, or the number of people who actually attend? For many of our movie groups, the entire campus of 1400 people is invited, but only 5-10 people show up each week. It may prove difficult for them to justify a budget for licensing fees if they don’t have high attendance.

If what matters is how many people you invite, it seems to me that our movie groups may have to do three things that they do not want to do, in order to avoid the “public performance” classification and licensing fees:

(1) Stop accepting college funds to buy/rent their movies, because if they do they have to make the event open to everyone on campus.
(2) Stop advertising to the campus, which will reduce the number of people who show up even further.
(3) Move from the nice classrooms and lecture halls on campus to TVs in dorm lounges, because you have to reserve space in order to use classrooms, and reserving space makes your reservation appear online and counts as advertising.

However, I’m not sure that the “number of people you invite” standard makes sense…. you may invite many more people to your private party than the number you expect to actually intend. You may even post a general invitation on your blog, as I did for my last house party. Are you then forced to get a public performance license when only 10 people show up to your house party, as expected? The key difference there, of course, is that your private party is supposed to be composed of your friends. However, it may be more like friends of friends, or social acquaintances, or people who were randomly passing through… I’m not completely convinced there is a qualitative difference. Oh well, I’ll try to research it some more.

This Saturday night, January 28, we will be having our 3rd annual LAN party! It will take place in Science Center 199, starting at 7pm and running until they kick us out. Through some error our reservation says we only have until 10pm, but we intend to run much later, so feel free to swing by anytime that night

A LAN party is traditionally a computer gaming party, featuring a “Local Area Network” so that people can play network games against each other, and we will indeed have both wi-fi and ethernet hubs. However, we will also have console gaming for people who don’t bring computers, including DDR, Halo, old school Nintendo, and whatever else people can bring to plug into our TVs, so don’t be shy!  Bring your laptop, bring your PS2, or just bring yourself and your friends, we’re not picky.

This year we would like to introduce computer gamers to some addictive open source games, since they are perfectly legal to share and therefore ideal for LAN parties. Our recommended games are also available on all platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, so that nobody feels left out.  More details to come.  (Pictures will be posted during and after the party.)

If you walk into McCabe library’s popular reading room, where all of the newspapers, magazines and comic books are stashed, where the coffeebar is sometimes located, there you can find a free culture library display! We have a bookshelf with a small but growing collection of free culture reading matter, a Creative Commons comic hanging on the wall, a very large Free Culture Swarthmore banner, and a couple of display cases with pertinent exhibits. Check it out:

Some of the text used in the library display can be found on our library display wiki page.

The MPAA has threatened all student groups and individuals at Swarthmore who show films in such a way that it meets their definition of a “public performance.” I talked a bit about this issue in one of my old Phoenix columns: How the law makes us all criminals.

Some preliminary comments, which may turn into an angry op-ed at some point:

* Do these showings hurt anyone? Really now, isn’t it equally plausible that showing these movies increases demand and makes people more likely to buy personal copies, or to promote the movies to their friends?

* Do the statutory damages in the law make any sense? The MPAA’s nastygram says “Even inadvertent [copyright] infringers are subject to substantial civil damages, ranging from $500 to $20,000 for each illegal showing.” The numbers I’m familiar with are “from as “low” as $750, for a single infringement, to as much as $150,000 per infringement, all depending on the judge’s discretion.” Either way, is that a reasonable punishment for an act which may not hurt anyone, and may even benefit the copyright holder? Free promotion using legally purchased videos can’t be that bad.

* We have to ask permission every time we show a movie? How much red tape do we have to suffer through? This reminds me of the copyright clearance house for educational course packets, which drive prices up to as much as $500 per course packet at other colleges. Fortunately professors here tend to use e-reserves and Blackboard, although the publishing industry is trying to stop that practice as well.

* How many of our rights will be taken away so that they can be repackaged and sold back to us? I think that when the movie industry tries to illegalize fast-forwarding, they’ve lost all credibility. It’s a neat trick that the content industry has been using: rewrite the laws so that uses we take for granted become illegal, and then try to charge people extra for doing what they’ve always done. I say it’s time they got a bit of their own medicine.

Possible responses:
- show movies not covered by the MPAA / Swank (i.e. indie movies)… has anyone seen Star Wars Revelations yet? It’s better than anything Lucas has done recently
- show movies in people’s dorm rooms
- make our own movies instead (who needs a Hollywood budget? Students at Swarthmore are creative)

On October 31, 2005, Mark Russinovich, chief software architect at Winternals Software discovered thatSony BMG Music was putting hidden copy protection software on their CDs and not adequately notifying customers. In fact, security researchers have described Sony’s technology as “spyware,” saying it is difficult to remove, transmits without warning details about what music is playing, and that Sony’s notice to consumers about the technology was inadequate. Sony executives have rejected the description of their technology as spyware.

This would be a big enough deal if the rabbit hole didn’t go any deeper, but it does. Sony’s technology, whichthey call “XCP” actually makes your computer vulnerable to hackerswho distribute malicious programs over the Internet that exploit the antipiracy technology’s ability to avoid detection. Hackers discovered they can effectively render their programs invisible by using names for computer files similar to ones cloaked by the Sony technology. In fact, this got so big, thata senior Homeland Security official cautioned entertainment companies against discouraging piracy in ways that also make computers vulnerable. Although he didn’t cite Sony by name, Stewart Baker, a secretary for policy at DHS said,”It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property, it’s not your computer, and in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it’s important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.”

The program, which works only on Windows computers, prevents customers from making more than a few copies of the CD and prevents them from loading the CD’s songs onto Apple Computer’s popular iPod portable music players. Some other music players, which recognize Microsoft’s proprietary music format, would work. XCP is included on about 20 popular music titles, including releases by Van Zant and The Bad Plus.

What is even worse, is that Sony tells people to install this software without telling them what is does or how to reverse the process. (of course this in only for the CDs in which the program is not set to auto-install.) In fact, if you visit the site, Sony tells you that in order to remove the software, you must contact customer service,and that if you do, the CD that you paid for will no longer work in your computer.

Needless to say, this caused quite a stink when it hit the surface, and Sony has made a statement saying that they will “halt manufacturing CDs with the XCP technology.” Although they admit no wrongdoing on their part, and still defend their action under the need to fight piracy.

Since this came to light many of the anti-virus software companies have released patches and updates for their programs that allows the programs to seek, see, and destroy the program, removing it from your computer.

What really gets me about all of this is that Sony is willing to go as far as they have in order to “stop piracy.” They have essentially written and distributed a program that helps hackers attack people. What is funny is that they are actually giving people incentive to pirate their music. I mean, the software may not allow you to put the music you paid for onto your iPod, but is still allows you to put the music on your computer, which allows you to share it. So, in all actuality, Sony is not preventing piracy, they are invoking and inviting it. So, next timeyou go to the store and get ready to pony up $17 for that new CD, remember, Sony loves you so much that they are not only giving you 13 songs on that CD, but they are going to give you a nice little piece of spyware that opens a backdoor for any hackers who might want to give you some presents of their own. So, enjoy your Sony music, while you still can, because soon your computer will be acting like a troubled child on crack, and your operating system will be as unstable as Charles Manson.

I’ve always liked customization, especially in cars. In my eyes, it is one of the best things that you can do. You can make your car look, feel, smell, and even drive the way you want it to. You can actually modify every aspect of your vehicle if you are willing to put in the time and effort. This is very much like open source software. If you see a way that you can make it better, you can go into it and redo, tweak, or modify the entire thing, and if there is something that you want that doesn’t yet exist, you can make it. Now, imagine if you were not able to do this. That is what proprietary software is.

It is like buying a car that has its hood welded shut that explodes whenever you try to add something new to it that isn’t approved or installed by the manufacturer. If I didn’t have the freedom to put in things like superchargers, turbochargers, cold air intakes, forced cowl induction, led lighting system, GPS, and other stuff, I would be sad.

I mean, if I couldn’t insall an airbagged suspension, and use it to raise one wheel off of the ground without making the car lean to one side, I would have that much less meaning in my life. Without that system, I wouldn’t be able to freak people out by saying. “OMFG someone just stole my wheel!” and then in the same sentence, be able to say, “Oh, I forgot I left the car on three wheels.” If it were not for this ability to install this system, I would not have all of the memeories of the faces people would make when trying to figure out what I had just said and what was going on with my car. Just as if I couldn’t switch between the text and graphical interface of linux, and tinker with the source code, I wouldn’t be able to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or freak out my friends. But on a more serious note, the customization is not only for comedy, it is for the enjoyment of the customizer, the user, and anyone who likes what the customizer has done. Open source software allows for that, just like the openness of my car. Enjoy and embrace customizability and open source, because if it were not available, the world would be a much more boring place.

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Those who haven’t been to one of our business meetings in a while may wonder what we’re up to these days.  You could read the minutes from last Tuesday, or you just take a gander at the pie chart on the right there… clearly, we spent far too much time planning the Pirate Parrrty for next semester, but hey, you can’t talk too much about about pirates.  SAC-funded bandannas promise to be a highlight, and we’re planning to make music video remixes to project on the walls during the dance as “pirate art.”  When you go home for winter break, don’t forget to bring back a pirate costume to wear!

Last Sunday (Oct 23rd), we hosted the Free Culture Re-Mixer, which was a “mixer” for prospective students where we tried to teach them to “remix” their favorite TV shows to make their own music videos. (Yes, it’s a bad pun.) As you can see from the picture, we had an excellent turnout! I’m guessing about 30 people were there, maybe more. We began with a short talk about why the right to remix is important, and I played some examples of samples and mashups, including:

* How you remind me of someday - A Nickelback mashup which consists simply of playing two of their songs side by side, one out of the left speaker and one out of the right. Yes, they just wrote the same song twice and sold it back to you. It makes you wonder, does copyright really encourage creativity?

* A Stroke of Genius - A mashup of Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a
Bottle” with the Strokes’s “It’s Hard To Explain.” This one took some
creative thinking and good timing, but it’s still just a mashup.

* The Grey Video - A music video for the famous Grey Album, which mixes together Jay Z’s Black Album with the Beatles’s White Album. This undeniably took a great deal of talent, effort, and creativity to produce, but is still subject to the same legal difficulties that lesser remixes are subject to.

Once the talk was finished, we began trying to set up our remixing workstations, while we let the audience eat our pizza and drink our soda. Unfortunately, Rob Matthews ‘09 who actually does remixes for Fox, using their shows such as the Family Guy, was on a deadline and some of his computers were busy processing video for them. Rob uses Muvee autoProducer for Windows, which is proprietary software but is relatively inexpensive ($70?), and it makes it possible to produce a music video, with the music at least vaguely matching the video transitions, in a matter of minutes. Clearly, the power to play with and re-work the culture around us is coming within the reach of the average citizen: in this case, all you need is a laptop and some free time.

Many people left before we were able to get the computers working, but the ones who stayed were very impressed. Lesson learned: get the computers running beforehand. We’ll do a much better/faster job next time.

I just wanted to mention my latest two articles for the Swarthmore Phoenix, Business method patents hurt local stores, which is my contribution to the Cereal Solidarity campaign, and Hidden contracts, a diatribe against EULAs and the abuse thereof.

In case you’re wondering, yes, things happen at Swarthmore which are not related to my Phoenix column! We’re working on updating the website, and as soon as that’s finished, a lot more people should be posting about different stuff, hopefully ^_^

I know it’s not necessarily news every time I write a column, but as Gavin Baker at our UFlorida chapter likes to say, “If you don’t blog it, it didn’t happen!” So check out my latest article, Movie industry too strict on DVD imports, and learn how a simple martials arts movie club has difficulties with copyrights.

UPDATE: An e-mail from Tom in Madison, WI, reads:

I just read your article from a link on kungfucinema.com (the best website on martial arts film genre). Check out this [Wired News article, Film Fans Befuddled by Copyright….]

It sounds like you’re talking about a different issue than the above article, but I thought you might find it interesting anyway.

If you want to get your hands on the uncut, unedited version of the masterpiece “Fist of Legend”, go to kungfumovies.net. Search by Jet Li, then select “Fist of Legend” (DVD) (Chinese). That’s the one. Its all code (0) NTSC, original language track (Jet Li’s voice), perfect picture. The menus are in Chinese, though.