Free The Hackers: Episode 1 (23:54) Download OGG
Welcome to the first episode of, “Free the Hackers”. I will start this series with a condensed recap of the last 20 weeks events, and more about my experience as a freelance hacker, developing artist websites, in Los Angeles in the last five years.
Background
I’ve been curious about the other side of copyright, from the point of view of record labels, and record stores to find the area of agreement. I thought perhaps there could be something I could learn from them, a part of the story that I didn’t see. And what I’ve learned is that the same people that are currently benefiting from the war against “sharing”, are the worst culprits of this “sharing” behavior themselves. They like the effect that file-sharing has because it’s free publicity and promotion, yet they are somehow convinced that it is hurting their sales, but not to the point of total destruction and forcing them to shutdown their business, only hanging by a thread, instead of changing to remain relevant. They enjoy the thought of it as illegal, as their last chance of validating their business. They are against file-sharing when they hold the rights, but for file-sharing when they don’t hold the rights. It’s narcissism, and turning into enormous music of socially destructive harm. My suggestion, is to stay away from the entire industry that is so confused in an old business model. This is what I am doing, taking the leap of faith, even if it means a sacrifice in the short term.
When I worked at several record labels. One of them, a large proponent of copyright laws, at least upfront about it, was the owner of a smaller electronic record label, at one point he agreed that file-sharing was a good thing, because he had already payed for an album, supported the artist, but had lost the copy or had been damaged. It was like having a backup that is always available.
At record stores that have been my clients, those whom work there behind the counter will bittorrent the latest shows of copyrighted extreamists material or incourage and thank people for “bootlegging” their album, or even use copyrighted works in their own work. They “benefit” from the war on sharing, and are also “harmed” by it. They are selling copyrighted works after all, and further legitimizes the system; yet they are still a part of the problem themselves. They don’t agree with copyright, yet they agree with copyright. Publishing any work, is by default under copyright, you don’t need to register it for copyright to exist, and by doing nothing you’re inheritly agreeing with copyright. A statement must be made that says one will not enforce their rights, such as many artists are already doing. Doing nothing is the the absolute worst, remaining indifferent, you’re actually supporting copyright. So in not believing the system, you’re believing the system. That system exists, and it’s shutting down websites, issuing take-down notices, censoring speach, and all because of copyright laws.
When broadcasting radio over the Internet, I am usually the one that is most concerned with streaming copyrighted works, and I am in support of file-sharing. I’ve raised several times my concerns with copyright songs used repeatedly, and have been ignored. The effect that this has, is a limiting of success, as it introduces a fear of an unwanted cease and desist letter, or takedown notice, with draconian punishments. I don’t think we should stream songs illegally, and it shouldn’t be considered a crime, but it is and I am okay with that for now because that is how it is for now. There is already so much music available to be able to stream that is available under “some rights reserved”, and not illegal, instead of the absolute “all rights reserved”; it’s just not even worth it to stream music that is copyrighted to watch or listen, because it has no value.
There is an increasing amount of free culture everyday, it keeps getting deeper and richer. Its a bit gnarly to wrap ones mind around. It’s difficult to find consistent, on-going quality. Because the format is so much more free, there is also a lot more to go through, and we spiritual music guides with vast knowledge to show us the way. It’s just unfortunate that one must also pay such close attention about copyright, in order to do this online without worrying about draconian punishments. So we must avoid all copyrighted works completely. With this show I want to draw attention to these works, so that we can avoid the potential landmine. And at all else, there is always the option of going back in time with Shakespeare, Plato and Agatha Christie and countless other classic writers.
The Hackers
Over this last year there has been an increased dramatization to deter from copyright infringment and sharing information. The method of enforcement has been propaganda, with a pattern targetting those whom promote the idealogy of sharing.
Cambodia extradited Anakata to Sweden, after he had fled for four years to avoid his one year sentence over the file-sharing website he co-founded, The Pirate Bay, because of “copyright” laws. As being in The United States, we have to be more careful with copyright, we don’t need to be extradicted since we’re already here. I’ve critizied The Pirate Bay in the past because it promotes and advertises movies and software that is not free, instead of supporting those whom are releasing free works already. However with the increased attention of the website after the UK Internet providers have been ordered by the high court to block access to the website, there has been much more support for legitimate free culture on The Pirate Bay. I’ve put together a website at stophollywood.org with some films I’ve found and watched that are available to download.
Shepard Fairy was sentenced Friday, September 7th, for two years of probation and 300 hours of community service, for the destruction of evidense and manufacture of false evidense. This is nonesense, because he was ashamed of basing work on someone elses. It just further shows the affect of the propaganda that strikes fear into people for sharing. There is nothing to be ashamed of, we are all standing on each others shoulders. It’s building of community and solidarity of people, that is benefitial to the public and society. While manufacture of false evidense is wrong, the reason for it is the first place, is more of an injustice.
Back in January, Megaupload was raided the day after massive protests against SOPA and PIPA. In April, Judge O’Grady informed the FBI that MegaUpload was never served criminal charges that which are required to start trial. Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken says that, unlike people, companies can not be served outside US jurisdiction. Kim Dotcom of Megaupload is outraged. The damage to their company and website can not be undone. Dotcom in an interview with TorrentFreak said towards closing, “This Mega takedown was possible because of corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood…”
On March 15, 2012, Bassel Khartabil was detained in a wave of arrests in the Mazzeh district of Damascus with no official explanation for his detention or information regarding his whereabouts. Bassel, a Palestinian-Syrian, 31, is a respected computer engineer specializing in free software development, that the Internet is built upon, and he is a part of the Creative Commons community.
Richard O’Dwyer is facing extridiction to the US for alleged copyright offences relating to the website tvshack.net, a website that linked to places to watch TV and films online, which isn’t a crime in the UK. Jimmy Wales has launched a campaign to stop the extridiction. However Theresa May has told the House of Commons that she will not revist the plans to extradite O’Dwyer to the US as the decision had “already been taken”.
Ecuador, likely in their own agenda to silence sharing information about their government, has granted Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, political asylum on Thursday August 16th, after several months staying within the the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The fear is that he will be extradicted to the United States over his work on Wikileaks and the release of the largest release of restricted documents to the public. This is after an order for him to be extradited to Sweden from his home country Australia over allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, to which he has avoided.
Sabu, Hector Monsegur, has been arrested last summer after the Lulzsec “50 days of lulz” release of accounts and passwords from many different sources. He has pleaded guilty last summer, and worked for six months as an informant for the FBI helping to lead to further arrests such as Topiary and T-flow. While I do not agree that breaking into systems and releasing account information is right, it’s important to look at the motivations behind their activities. What they are doing isn’t that much different than what the FBI currently has the ability to do with National Security Letters that has greatly expanded in the last ten years, and able to invade peoples private lives without warrants.
One way to get away from the electronic surviellance problem is to avoid it completely, and as Topiary said in an article in The Guardian, “I’m often asked: what is life like without the net? It seems strange that humans have evolved and adapted for thousands of years without this simple connectivity, and now we in a modern society struggle to comprehend existence without it. In a word, life is serene…”
Free Culture
Master Blaster from RocketNews24 reports that Shuho Sato, the writer of Burakku Jyakku ni Yoroshiku is, “planning to make the award winning, 10 million copy selling manga available for free “second use.” This means that after 15 September anyone in the world will be free to novelize, televise, create merchandise, or in any way adapt the original work for either commercial or non-commercial purposes without having to pay royalties. This is the latest move in the writer’s quest to find alternatives to the “outdated” model of intellectual property rights.” The legal print reads in Japanese (if someone wants to do a proper translation let me know): “Terms of Use: You do not need to contact us in advance. We do not require any royalty or reward. You are happy to you can use the work freely.” For more information you can visit mangaonweb.com, the site is in Japanese, happy digging.
Any films made before 1923 are in the public domain which include many silent films, I’ve been told by multiple employees at the Downtown Los Angeles Public Library. Movies after 1964 have had their copyright automatically renewed by the “Copyright Renewal Act of 1992″. And there are several movies made during the 50s that have entered into the public domain, as their copyright was not renewed. Here is a list of the ones that I have found from the Film Superlist Volume 3 1950-1959 published in 1989, collected by attorney Walter Hurst. I’ve gone through and removed thirty films that have a renewed copyright since the publication, according to the online records from 1978 to present. In the United Corporations of America, public works enter the private domain. Here are the last that remain in the public from the fifties, some of them are available on archive.org: Africa Screams, Badman’s Gold, Bandit Island, The Beast of Hollow Mountain, The Bigamist, Behave Yourself, Borderline, Bride of the Gorilla, The Bushwhackers, Creature From Haunted Sea, Cyrano De Bergerac, D.O.A., Decameron Nights, F.B.I. Girl, Fabiola, Felix In Outer Space, Go For Broke, The Great Rupert, Harlem Follies, The Hitch-Hiker, Indestructible Man, Indiscretion of an American Wife (a.k.a. Terminal Station), The Inspector General, The Invisible Woman, The Jackie Robinson Story, Jail Bait, Jesse James’ Women, KaraMoja, Killers From Space, The Last Time I Saw Paris, La Cabeza De Pancho Villa, Lumber Jerks, The Man on The Eiffel Tower, Mr. Imperium, The Naked Hills, One Too Many, Outlaw’s Son, The Pace That Thrills, Radar Men From The Moon, Rage At Dawn, Red Planet Mars, A Run For Your Money, The Snow Creature, A Tale of Five Women, The Torch, Two Dollar Bettor, Unknown World, Woman on the Run, and Yellowneck.
The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, has donated more than 19,000 freely-licensed images of artworks to Wikimedia Commons. On March 26, uploading was completed. Much of the work was by Dylan k from Walters Art Museum, Jarekt with after-upload metadata internationalization and categorization, Aude with metadata preparation, Jeremyb with technical assistance, SarahStierch with online and offline support and categorization. The collection includes ancient art, medieval art and manuscripts, decorative objects, Asian art and Old Master and 19th-century paintings. The images and their associated information will join the Wikimedia Commons collection of more than 12 million freely usable media files. You can view more works at art.thewalters.org
Upcoming Films
Coming in early 2013 is a movie about the inside story of how a cluster of hacktivists, Gottfrid Svartholm-Warg, Peter Sunde, and Fredrick Neij built the Internet’s most resililant and largest file-sharing site, The Pirate Bay. The film is financed by The Swedish Film Institute, The Danish Film Institite, the Norweigan Film Institute, crowdfunding and other organizations. It’s called The Pirate Bay – Away From Keyboard, and will be available under the terms of an Attribution ShareAlike license.
In a goal to do something about the distorted image hackers, the idea of making a film was born after a hackerspace was raided by masked police in November of 2009. The film is called Hackitat and is being worked on by the RåFILM collective from Sweden. The project is currently raised a total of $27,910 through crowdsourcing.
Another film called The Gamers: Hands of Fate, a sequel to “Dorkness Rising”, has hit a record and raised a near half million through crowdsourcing. The film will be released under the terms of an Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike license.
Ross Pruden is starting to raise funds to write 100 stories for 100 fans that will be released to the public domain. And backers have several options available to choose from $1 to $5,000 dollars, and will recieve benefits accordingly.
For FreeTheHackers.com this is Braydon Fuller signing offline.
Attribution
The music in this production is from the Dublab Bonus Beat Blast that is available under an Attribution license, these fourteen tracks below of the total of seventy three have been used. Thank you for providing this music to be free for second use, it adds another level to the show that would otherwise be very boring!
- 05 / Anenon / Embers and Ashes
- 07 / Asura / Scattered Wave
- 09 / Asura / Whispering Through
- 13 / co_fee / Calabash
- 20 / Galapagoose / Get Motivated
- 24 / Golden Hits / Barn Beat Beat
- 29 / Grimm Reality / Love Vertebrates
- 40 / James Pants / Sweet Lord
- 47 / Lawrence Grey / Laundromatted
- 54 / Raleigh Moncrief / Nocturne No 3
- 69 / Wake / Honeys Pie
- 73 / Yuichiro Fujimoto / The Boys
©2012 Braydon Fuller. This recording is available under the terms of an Attribution license.