Free Culture @ NYU

Old and New Net Wars over Free Speech, Freedom and Secrecy or….
How to Understand the Hacker and Lulz battle against the C0$

NYU’s very own Gabriella Coleman, Assistant Professor, New York University, will be speaking at Columbia this Thursday at noon. Gabriella is a talented scholar and friend. This is a great opportunity to see her speak. Details below.

  VS.  

Thursday November 13: noon - 2:00pm
Columbia University Communications Colloquium
270B IAB (International Affairs Building:
http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/tour/11.html
http://www.iserp.columbia.edu/calendar/

In this talk I present a cultural history and political analysis of one of the oldest Internet wars, often referred to as ?Internet vs Scientology,? which in recent times has witnessed a different incarnation in the form of ?Project Chanology,? which is orchestrated by a group called Anonymous who has led a series of online attacks and real world protests against the Church of Scientology. I argue that to understand the significance of these battles and protests, we must examine the culturally antipodal relationship between Scientology and hacker/geek culture. In so doing I will demonstrate how long-standing liberal ideals take cultural root in unexpected ways in the context of these battles and I will use these two cases to reveal important political transformations in Internet/hacker culture between the mid 1990s and today.

Technorati Tags: anon, hackers, GabriellaColeman, Scientology

FC NYU is proud to be sponsoring this screening with Computers and Society:

Released in December 2007 by the League of Noble Peers (Alan Toner, J.J. King, Jan Gerber, Sebastian Luetgert, Luca Lucarini, and others), Steal This Film 2 tries to go beyond the current discussions around file-sharing to look at what kinds of social change are precipitated by massive changes in our capacity to communicate. The film argues that the changes wrought by networked, peer distribution are historical on the scale of the printing press and tries to explain why.

For many of you these argument will be familiar. These are strange times, in which to many of us the battle already seems to have been won. Yet governments continue to enact harsh laws expanding the scope of copyright protection and increasing sanctions for its infringement, lawsuits are levied against filesharers, fines imposed and arrests made - all intended to destroy or delay what is an inevitable change in how we look at creative work.

At the same time there has developed a burgeoning area of cultural production outside of both the institution of copyright and the historical channels of distribution, be they television, cinema or music stores. Deep beneath the sand the playing field of culture is shifting, in no small part due to the combined actions of millions of peer produsers.

Alan Toner, one of the peers responsible for the film’s production, will be present for a discussion afterwards, during which there will
also be a demonstration of STF’s footage archive.

http://stealthisfilm.com/Part2/
http://footage.stealthisfilm.com/
http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Film

Sunday, November 16, 2008
7:00pm - 9:00pm

Room 109 Warren Weaver Hall
251 Mercer Street
New York, NY

RSVP on Facebook

Technorati Tags: copyfight, screening, StealThisFilm

We haven’t had a chance to blog the Free Culture 2008 conference yet, but Kevin Donovan of FC Georgetown just posted his summary.

FreeCulture NYU is a co-sponsor of Evan Korth’s Computers & Society speaker series at NYU this fall. The next talk is this Sunday. It will feature Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University. His topic is “Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy.”

The content industry has convinced industry in general that extremism in copyright regulation is good for business and economic growth. In this talk, Professor Lessig describes the creative and profitable future that culture and industry could realize, if only we gave up IP extremism.

Date: Sun November 9 2008
Time: 6pm - 7pm
Location:
Warren Weaver Hall NYU
251 Mercer Street
Rm 109 New York, NY 10012

Members and public welcome. Enter via W. 4th St. Photo ID required.

This is pretty cool.  Our video tribute to Lawrence Lessig was remixed by Brave New Films along with video from Jonathan Zittrain, Craig Newmark, Davis Guggenheim and people at Creative Commons).  Check it out!

can be found here:
http://www.evernote.com/pub/aditi/fc#1ba5f0c0-58b7-4827-85d5-325589b56e48

Also, if you look through the rest of the notes there, I have really sketchy notes from the Free Culture conference! Thanks for coming out this past Monday guys, and hopefully we’ll see you again soon.

In celebration of the release of Lawrence Lessig’s new book, “Remix“, we made a short 20-second spot for his book release party. Check it out:

View the rest of the photoset…

To everyone who came out to the meeting last night - thanks! We’re really excited for this upcoming year, and we’re always looking for ideas, links, etc. Just a handful of the things we talked about last night:

• Introduction (again) to Free Culture - we’re also working on a Free Culture 101 document, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
• Sarah Palin’s email account hacked
• Tor and being anonymous on the internet
• History of Copyright
• QuestionCopyright.org asked us for help - if anyone is interested, check out the website!
• Upcoming ideas for the term
• fcnyu delicious.com tag - delicious.com is a social bookmarking site, and if you see anything vaguely related to Free Culture, either ‘tag’ it with ‘fcnyu‘ (without quotes) or email it to maxwell [at] nyu [dot] edu and he’ll post it.

Lastly, just a reminder to check out Wikis Take Manhattan this Saturday, and attend next week’s Creative Commons salon (Tuesday, 9/30 at The Open Planning Project, 7-10) if you’re interested.

Today is the main event of OneWeb Day! Anyone interested should check it out…especially NYU’ers, since it’s right on campus!

Where: Washington Square Park, Teen Plaza (SE part of the park)

When: Monday, 9/22/2008, 11:45am to 2pm

Who: Moderator Sree Sreenivasan (Columbia Journalism & WNBC-TV), plus Tim Westergren (Pandora), Prof. Lawrence Lessig (Stanford), Craig Newmark (craigslist), Dharma Dailey (Ethos Group), City Councilwoman Hon. Gale A. Brewer, John Perry Barlow, Andrew Baron (Rocketboom), SJ Klein (OLPC), Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard), others.

What: FREE event

Who should attend: Anyone who likes the internet and its transformative effect on human lives

Purpose of this event: To initiate an environmental movement for the internet. The theme this year: online participation in democracy. The internet is under pressure around the world - inadequate connectivity, censorship, huge digital divides threaten its future. This rally is designed to raise awareness of these issues and to help us focus on how the internet has changed democratic involvement in America.

Also, we have another event upcoming, “Wikis Take Manhattan.” It’s a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest aimed at illustrating Wikipedia and StreetsWiki articles covering sites and street features in Manhattan and across the five boroughs of New York City. The event is based on last year’s Wikipedia Takes Manhattan, and has evolved to include StreetsWiki this year as well. For more information, check out http://www.livablestreets.com/projects/wikis_take_manhattan/project-home.