From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Sun Mar 7 22:24:55 2004 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2004 22:24:55 -0500 Subject: Stay Free! | March 7 Message-ID: Posted at: http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/index.html SONY SENDS LEGAL THREATS TO ILLEGAL ART ISP If there's anything more mind-numbing than dealing with legal threats it's writing about them, so I'll keep this short: Capitol/EMI seems to have backed off on its threats to sue us (and others that have posted DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album) but now Sony has stepped forward with threats of its own. There are, after all, two sets of copyright for every music recording: rights to the composition and rights to the master recording. EMI owns the rights to the master recording of the Beatles' White Album (which the Grey Album samples) but Sony owns the compositions. This past week, lawyers at Sony/ATM told our internet service provider (ISP) to take down the Grey Album recordings from the Illegal Art Exhibit site or risk legal action. Our ISP complied, but we're now happy to report that we've moved the site to another web host. The Grey Album is once again now available, along with other "infringing" works, at http://www.illegal-art.org. Thanks to our ace legal team (EFF, Kurt Opsahl, and Kohel Haver) and the Online Policy <>Group for helping get us back up. MEANWHILE, HAPPIER LEGAL NEWS... Stay Free! just received a contract asking us to approve the use of Stay Free! issue #21 as set dressing for an upcoming Hollywood production... which means that at some point during The Jacket (starring Adrien Brody, Kris Kristofferson, and Jennifer Jason Leigh), a copy of Stay Free! may appear. The fact that companies feel they have to clear every copyrighted or trademarked item that appears on screen is problematic but, hey, I've always wanted to be a product placement. INTERVIEW WITH CARRIE McLAREN OF STAY FREE! http://www.crimewaveusa.com/pages/articlepages/stayfree.html (I did this a year ago but it's still mostly relevant. From the fine zine Crimewave USA. ) UPCOMING NYC EVENTS Saturday, March 13, 10:30 pm - Stay Free! is sponsoring a screening of Wizard People and Harry Potter Parking Lot at the New York Underground Film Festival. Hope to see you there! Anthology Film Archives, 2nd Ave. at 2nd Street. Wizard People: Brad Neely took the first Harry Potter movie, cut out the sound, added his own narration and -- voila! -- Wizard People. Apparently, the home-made mutation was so hilarious that NYUFF folks leapt at the chance to show it. As I have yet to see it, I'll take their word for it. Harry Potter Parking Lot is another installment in Jeff Krulick's "Parking Lot" series, this time documenting mega-fans waiting in line to meet author JK Rowling. Memo to non-New Yorkers: you can watch this short online. Saturday and Sunday, March 13-14, Socialist Scholars Conference at Cooper Union. Stay Free! will be tabling on both days. -- Carrie McLaren Editor, Stay Free! www.stayfreemagazine.org www.illegal-art.org 718.398.9324 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/stayfree/attachments/20040307/6b7024f0/attachment.html From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Fri Mar 26 23:56:59 2004 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 23:56:59 -0500 Subject: Stay F--- | March 27 Message-ID: Note to readers: We're no longer using the f-word in the magazine title to avoid spam filters. Hello, For those of you following the copyright wars, our hero, Lawrence Lessig, has a new book out that should be required reading. "Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity" is available in hardback from Penguin Press. But leave it to Larry to go and give the whole damn thing away! Yes, Professor Lessig has posted the entire book online, under a Creative Commons, so users can download it gratis: http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/ Or if you prefer a short excerpt: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/lessig.html?tw=wn_tophead_6 In other copyright news, Lessig is involved (albeit indirectly) in another challenge to the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). Two archives that post public domain books, films, audio, and other works on the internet have asked a federal court to declare that copyright restrictions on orphaned works -- works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available -- violate the constitution. This may sound a lot like the recent Eldred v. Ashcroft case ( http://www.eldred.cc ) but it's not. Essentially, this suit is about allowing works whose copyright owners are missing in action to revert to the public domain. The plaintiffs in the case are the Internet Archive ( http://www.archive.org ) and Prelinger Archives ( http://www.prelinger.com ). The Prelinger Archives, for example, contains thousands of educational, industrial, and "how to" films, from the late 1920s to the present. Many of these films can't be digitized and posted online because the copyright owners can't be found. Back when you had to renew copyrights, over eighty percent of all copyrights were not renewed, which enriched the public domain. But with the passage of CTEA, the public domain is withering, and these films are likely to deteriorate and be lost. What's interesting here is that they're using the Eldred Supreme Court decision *upholding* CTEA to argue *against* the CTEA and the related Berne Convention Implementation Act (BCIA). Stay F---! interview with Rick Prelinger of Prelinger Archives: http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/prelinger.html Kahle v. Ashcroft FAQ http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/kahle_v_ashcroft.shtml JOYWAR! New York-based artist Joy Garnett has been threatened with a lawsuit for creating Molotov, a painting based on a 1978 photograph. Though Joy has removed an image of the offending work from her website, supporters have rallied around her cause and created art based on HER art. You can see the image and read more about it here: http://rhizome.org/netartnews/story.rhiz?timestamp=20040308 http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=12168&text=23419#23419 My personal faves, of the Molotov-inspired artwork: http://www.sicplacitum.com/arte/molotov.htm http://sasnak.org/archives/000092.html RAPE, MURDER, AND FILE SHARING A bill now circulating in Congress would make it easier to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers. According to Sen. Orrin Hatch ("Sen." stands for Senile), operators of peer-to-peer networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62830,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1 BROOKLYNITES UNITE! Don't forget the rally this Sunday, March 28, 2 pm, to protest the Brooklyn Yards development scheme. Info: http://www.fairdevelopmentbrooklyn.org/rally_mar28.php love, carrie