An illustration of a futuristic battle taken from the October 21st 1916 issue of the German news weekly, ‘Die Wochenschau‘ (The Weekly Review). Translation of the caption: ‘Fighting machines of the future :battle between a gigantic trenchdestroyer and a powerful electrically driven ‘circlecruiser”.
A story which seems to drag on forever now is closed?
The auction site ran by Yahoo was ordered by a French court to stop providing auctions of Nazi memorabilia to the french public in violation to French law. Yahoo! stopped since their French assests were threatened but then compained that their rights to free speech were being violated by the French.
This case was an excellent example of a culture clash. It provides a look at the difference between European and US free speech regulation. Whether corporation should have speech rights. Whether free speech means speech without any limitations. American legislation tends to grant speech rights to corporations and is disinclined to limit free speech – nomatter the cost. European law (if there is such a thing) tends not to grant speech rights to corportations and is very much inclined to limit speech rights.
The case also demands a re-appraisal of the view that the Internet cannot be controlled by governments. It shows that the US cannot control the internet through its legislation.
It also shows the different approach a multi-national corporation takes towards governments. The difference between Yahoo!’s attitude to the French compared to the Chinese governments is an excellent example of the way in which multinationals act.
Anyway Yahoo! has now lost its lawsuit were it claims that the French courts violated the companies rights to sell Nazi memorabilia. The Yahoo! Case has been a central part of cyberlaw since 2000 – is it all over now?
Source: The Register
The Center for Social Media has produced interesting material on Fair Use:
Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
Peter Jaszi – â??Yes, You Can!â?? â??Where You Donâ??t Even Need â??Fair Useâ?? a guide offers to what falls into the category of free use.
Peter Jaszi – Fair Use: An Essential Feature of Copyright hearing testimony by explains the legal significance of the doctrine of fair use, for creators, consumers and commerce.
Peter Hirtle – How to Find Out What is in the Public Domain explains when copyrighted material falls into the public domain.
Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi – Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers – 2004 study shows how rights clearance problems hobbled creativity in documentary filmmaking.
Or watch the 7 minute video summarizing the results of the study Stories Untold: (43 Mb, streaming)
Another cool website collecting everyday culture is Pictures of Walls. This is a site full of messages written on walls. The idea is that this is the individuals attempt to comment and create the culture which appears around her.
The project has also resulted in a book called Pictures on Walls. There the importance of social commentary is stressed through the manifesto.
MANIFESTO
Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. We, the public, fill concert halls and cinemas every day. We read novels by the millions and buy records by the billions. We, the people, affect the making, the taste and the quality of our culture.The Art we look at, however, is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Not more than 5000 people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist waving flags at a parade. A parade where the winner was decided without you.
We want to make Art that charts. We thought of calling it a revolutionary new way to sell Art but it’s not revolutionary. It’s just cheap.
The malls are coming out of the walls.
Once again we see that by collecting the bits and peices of life, or the commentaries of people around us, we get thoughtful commentaries on our existence. Not only is this art (or whatever you want to call it) an effective and thought-provoking form of communication, but it is also additionally interesting since it is ephemeral. Here today, gone tomorrow.
In Russia the Simpsons cartoon has given a hard-core adults-only rating. The show is being blamed for corrupting Russian schoolchildren and degrading family values.
The Russian State Duma have voted (417-1) to limit the cult of violence and cruelty on television. This legislation will have serious effects on the Simpsons. One MP said, “The experts gave just the result we feared. They found The Simpsons were crammed with violent and aggressive episodes. These cartoons also introduce antagonism between children and parents.” Did they need to hire an expert to find out that the Simpsons include violence???
The Russian television channels are faced with a choice: self-regulation or censorship.
The vote asks for television companies to more strictly adhere to a voluntary code of conduct signed in June by the chief executives of six leading national channels to avoid promoting a “cult of violence and cruelty”. The First Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska said it was a “yellow card” for the channels (was this an intended pun we ask?)
Considering the troubles in Russian with crime (organised or not), poverty and terrorism you might think that the Simpsons was the least of their worries.
Going to be teaching in Stockholm for the rest of this week, dont know if this will effect the ability to blog?! Three full days of teaching will probably melt my mind…
Will be reading this on the journey: Bowrey, K “Law & Internet Cultures” Cambridge University Press
The new Swedish NGO has now established its first web presence. http://www.libre.se/.
The “Association for free culture and software” (Föreningen Fri Kultur och Programvara) is called Libre for short and will be active in four areas Infrastructure, Culture, Access & Digital Rights. Since the main focus of the NGO is to bring a major part of an international discussion into the Swedish domain the site is in Swedish.
The European Commission today unveiled its strategy to make Europe?s written and audiovisual heritage available on the Internet. Turning Europe?s historic and cultural heritage into digital content will make it usable for European citizens for their studies, work or leisure and will give innovators, artists and entrepreneurs the raw material that they need. The Commission proposes a concerted drive by EU Member States to digitise, preserve, and make this heritage available to all. It presents a first set of actions at European level and invites comments on a series of issues in an online consultation (deadline for replies 20 January 2006). The replies will feed into a proposal for a Recommendation on digitisation and digital preservation, to be presented in June 2006.
Time: Monday, October 3, 2005, 09.00 – 17.00
Venue: Hammarskog Conference Centre, Uppsala
Registration: johan.hellstrom@kus.uu.se
More practical information Background material
Why is there no debate or no media reports in Sweden about the emerging and existing information society and Internet governance issues? Internationally, the discussion is at its peak, with the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) coming up in November in Tunis. Sweden, being one of the countries with the highest Internet access rates and with the ambition to be a leading nation on information and communication technology (ICT) usage and development, should be more involved in the international debate and also more concerned about the implications of Internet governance and Internet usage for society at large.
One reason for the absent debate is the existing intellectual divide between ICT and Internet management experts on the one hand, and democracy and human rights experts on the other. Technologists know how information technology can be managed and manipulated – but show little interest in or do not understand the implications for democracy and human rights.
More background
Keynote Speakers
Avri Doria (USA/Israel). Member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). Technical Consultant, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. Researcher at the School of Technoculture, Humanities and Planning, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Astrid Dufborg (Sweden). Special ICT Adviser, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sweden. Convenor of the UN ICT Task Force Working Group on Enabling Environment.
Mathias Klang (Sweden). Researcher in the field of access to technology and technology rights at the Department of Informatics, University of Göteborg. Responsible for Creative Commons in Sweden. Editor of the book “Human Rights in the Digital Age” (Glasshouse Press, 2005).
Website
http://www.kus.uu.se/en/activities/activities/20051003e.shtml
James Boyle on the Public Domain
“My goal here has been to offer a theory, and a practice, of the public domain. The theory and practice come with a change in attitude. It’s time to think about expanding the public domain, not just defending or salvaging it. Some of the decisions that have already been made were unfortunate. There was no need to extend the copyright terms, in my view. It was not economically justified, it didn’t harmonize the law, and we’ve locked up 20 years of culture for no good reason. But the good news is, I don’t think that the term extension would pass today. What we have to do now is to think of all of the ways in which we can use the wonderful technology that is available to us, and build a public domain that people can get access to practically, but also a public domain they are aware of. Because if people have a sense of this world of available, accessible information, and understand what they can do with it, not just as passive consumers, but as people who can actually use and build on it, then we will solve the theoretical problem I started out with. We will have our rich and complex idea of public domain because we will all be living it every day.”