This session will also be for those people who are interested in learning more about the OLPC in general, and what they can expect if they’re expecting a special delivery. Come with a jump drive, and of course if you have one — your OLPC.

Here’s the info for those of you who can’t be bothered to read non bolded sentences:

NYU OLPC Jam Session
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
12pm-5pm
721 Broadway, 4th Floor
Room 442

Please RSVP here (registration required) here. If you are not NYU and have not registered by Saturday AM, we will not be able to accommodate you.

Having an OLPC is not a requirement but please come prepared to do work and learn.

It’s about half an hour and you can watch it here:

I was previously on the show last year talking about bagels and trademark.

In cooperation with the Media Education Foundation and La Lutta, Free Culture @ NYU is screening Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property at 9pm on Thursday, January 31.

Narrated by Naomi Klein, the film features interviews with Stanford Law’s Lawrence Lessig, Illegal Art Show curator Carrie McLaren, Negativland’s Mark Hosler, UVA media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Free Culture @ NYU co-founder Inga Chernyak, among many others. This 53-minute documentary will be preceded by selections from Negativland’s new DVD, Our Favorite Things, and it will be followed by a Q&A with Freedom of Expression® author and director Kembrew McLeod and co-producer Jeremy Smith.

Freedom of Expression Screening and Q&A with Creators
Sponsored by Free Culture @ NYU, NYU ACM, and WiNC
Free and Open to the Public (bring ID if non-NYU)
Thursday, January 31, 2008
9:00pm
NYU’s Courant Institute
Room #109
251 Mercer Street b/w Bleecker and W. 4^th

Visit http://freedomofexpression.us for more about Freedom of Expression® (including video clips, a Creative Commons-licensed PDF of McLeod’s book, a CC-licensed version of “This Land Is Your Land” by the Mekons’ Jon Langford, an in-depth interview about copyright and culture with novelist Jonathan Lethem, additional educational resources, ordering information, and other fun stuff).

For more info on Negativland’s DVD, visit http://www.negativland.com.

About the documentary:

In 1998, university professor Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase “freedom of expression”—a startling comment on the way that intellectual property law can restrict creativity and the expression of ideas. This provocative and amusing documentary explores the battles being waged in courts, classrooms, museums, film studios, and the Internet over control of our cultural commons. Based on McLeod’s award-winning book of the same title, Freedom of Expression® charts the many successful attempts to push back the assault on free expression by overzealous copyright holders.

In cooperation with Digital Freedom, NYU ACM, Free Culture @ NYU will be hosting the first American screening of the 2007 film Good Copy Bad Copy. The documentary highlights the current state of copyright and culture, and features prominent copyright players such as Girl Talk, Lawrence Lessig, Renaldo Lemos, and Dan Glickman.

We’re especially excited to announce that immediately following the screening, we’ll be hosting a question and answer session with the film’s award-winning Danish co-director, Henrik Moltke and Fritz Attaway, the MPAA’s Executive VP and Special Policy Advisor. If you’re at all interested in these issues, or want to meet a director working in free culture, or even just want to meet someone from the MPAA, you should absolutely come! The film is a wonderful introduction to the topics that Free Culture @ NYU deals in and this screening will be a fantastic opportunity to learn more about what we’re working towards.

Good Copy Bad Copy Screening
Followed by Q&A with Co-Director Henrik Moltke and Fritz Attaway, MPAA
Tuesday, October 16th 2007
9:15pm – 11:15pm
NYU’s Courant Institute
251 Mercer Street b/w Bleecker and W. 4th
Room #109
Free and Open to the Public (bring ID if non-NYU)

From a recent Washington Post article on Jhannet’s arrest:

“I was terrified,” said Sejas, her voice breaking. “I was crying. I’ve never been in trouble before.” She said the assistant manager of the theater saw her holding up the Canon Power Shot and reported it to the general manager, who called police.

Sejas said she had no intention of selling the 20-second film clip. She just wanted to show it to her 13-year-old brother, who had said he wanted to see the movie. She was shocked when the officers showed up.

Sejas faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500 when she goes to trial this month in the July 17 incident. Arlington police spokesman John Lisle said it was the decision of Regal Cinemas Ballston Common 12 to prosecute the case, a first for Arlington police.

While the question of whether or not Jhannet’s Transformers clip counts as fair use (it is our opinion that it does, as it is private, non-commercial use of an unsubstantial portion of the original), there is another question we should be asking, and that is whether or not we should be patronizing a corporation that insists on pressing charges against someone who is clearly not the intended target of anti-piracy laws. Regal Cinemas should be ashamed of itself and its silly zero-tolerance policy.

Here’s a list of Regal Cinemas in New York City that you should not patronize:

Regal Union Square Stadium 14
850 Broadway, New York, NY 10003

Regal E-Walk Stadium 13
247 W. 42nd St., New York, NY 10036

Regal Battery Park Stadium 11
102 North End Ave., New York, NY 10281

UA 64th St and 2nd Ave
1210 Second Ave., New York, NY 10021

UA East 85th St
1629 First Ave., New York, NY 10028

UA Court Street Stadium 12
108 Court St., Brooklyn, NY 11201

UA Kaufman Astoria Stadium 14
35-30 38th St., Astoria, NY 11101

Regal Atlas Park Stadium 8
80-28 Cooper Avenue, Glendale, NY 11385

UA Brandon Cinemas
70-20 Austin St., Forest Hills, NY 11375

UA Midway Stadium 9
108-22 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills, NY 11375

UA Sheepshead Bay Stadium 14
3907 Shore Pkwy., Brooklyn, NY 11235

UA Staten Island Stadium 16
2474 Forest Ave., Staten Island, NY 10303

UA Hylan Plaza 5
107 Mill Road, Staten Island, NY 10306

Click here for a page where you can find Regal Cinemas in your area.

We wish Jhannet the best of luck in defending herself against Regal Cinemas and hope that the chain will soon realize how inappropriate and sadistic its actions were.

Click here to Digg the story and help publicize our Boycott!

UPDATE: The President of Regal Cinema’s e-mail address is : ddelaria@regalcinemas.com and their official number is 1-877-835-5734. Call and/or e-mail to tell Regal Cinemas that they’re wrong!

Click here for exclusive coverage of Jimmy Wales’ presentation on Wednesday the 31st.

Click here for exclusive coverage of Cory Doctorow’s presentation on Friday the 19th.

Thanks again to Mike and NowPublic.com for hosting the video and photos!

These stories are for filmmakers or dramatists to adapt. They’re available non-exclusively — meaning other people may be working from the same material — and the cost is a dollar apiece.

There’s a simple written agreement to sign, which imposes a couple of restrictions, and that’s it — once you’ve paid your dollar and signed the agreement, you’re free to adapt or mutate the story as you please.

People are making films, writing songs and doing all kinds of other cool things with Lethem’s work. Check out more information here.

Fred Benenson spent a recent drizzly Saturday afternoon with friends in Manhattan wearing yellow hazmat suits. They were in front of the new Apple store on Fifth Avenue, distributing flyers and explaining to passersby why iTunes, Apple’s online music store, “sucks.” The target of their ire: a technology the recording and film industries call “Digital Rights Management.” DRM, as it’s known, is encoded onto downloadable digital content so that copyright owners can prevent piracy. But it also prevents people from transferring downloaded content as they might like. Since different companies use different DRM technologies, an iTunes-bought song can’t be moved to a Zune, Microsoft’s new answer to the iPod, or even e-mailed to a friend. Since the vast majority of online music is sold on iTunes, “Apple has a stranglehold,” says Benenson, 23, a graduate student at New York University’s interactive telecommunications program. “There are some musicians who I like who will only offer music on the iTunes store.”

Now, an increasingly vocal grassroots resistance to DRM is cropping up. An anti-DRM campaign called “Defective by Design,” which is organized by the Free Software Foundation, has 15,000 registered members; the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that DRM places limits on “your ability to make lawful use of the music you purchase.” Web sites like stopdrmnow.org and digitalfreedom.org have been launched “to protect individuals’ right to use new digital technologies” and urge boycotts on DRM-tagged content. David Berlind, executive editor of tech trade journal ZDNet, coined his own term for DRM: “Content Restriction, Annulment and Protection.” (Figure out the acronym).

(Image from the July 2004 Newsweek issue where Steve Jobs released the 4th Generation iPod)

Full story here.

I’m very excited to announce the second Creative Commons Salon in New York City:

CC Salon is a free, casual monthly get-together focused on conversation, presentations, and performances from people or groups who are developing projects that relate to open content and/or software. Please invite your friends, colleagues, and anyone you know who might be interested in drinks and discussion. There are now CC Salons happening in San Francisco, Toronto, Berlin, Beijing, Warsaw, Seoul, Johannesburg, and now New York

CC Salon New York City this Friday, NOV 17th, 6:30pm at Fontana’s

This salon features Megan Miller from PopSci.com who will be discussing and presenting Popular Science’s recent foray into the digital world known as Second Life. Tim Schwartz from the Museum of the Moving Image will also be joining us and discussing the recent projects and digital exhibitions at his museum.

So drop by on Friday for some cheap drinks ($3 drafts and well drinks), and come ready to talk about the Commons in NYC. This is the last salon of the year, as our December salon is combined with a special birthday party for Creative Commons on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15th.

• Megan Miller from PopSci.com

  Megan will be discussing and presenting Popular Science’s recent foray into the digital world known as Second Life, which includes a rock concert and the creation of an all new PopSci.com Lounge. Megan is the editor of PopSci.com, the Web site for Popular Science magazine. She’s the host of a Web show called Future Girl, as well as hostess-with-the-mostest of events at PopSci’s new Second Life Lounge. You can find her in-world by looking up her Second Life avatar, Megala Marx. In the real world, you’re likely to find her cycling around New York City or indulging her handbag-purchasing addiction.

• Tim Schwartz of The Museum of the Moving ImageTim will be presenting some of the Museum of the Moving Image’s recent exhibitions and talking about his work as a digital curator.

We’re having it at on Friday, November 17th, from 6:3pm-10pm at Fontana’s, 105 Eldridge St. between Broome and Grand in the Lower East Side..

See you then!

November Creative Commons Salon

Help Creative Commons raise money for their annual fundraiser by checking out the above video. Lawrence Lessig, CC’s CEO writes:

So we’ve launched a hack of the advertising system to try to raise funds for CC a bit differently. This is a new CC video (3 minutes). It’s been Revverized — meaning at the end is an ad. When people watch the video through to the ad, we get paid. Thus, by spreading and watching our video, you can help CC. And if this technique works, maybe others as well.

You can see all our videos here. All of them have now been Revverized, though of course, we also make them available in an ad-free way. But the more who watch the Revver version, the more we raise.

So if you’d like a simple (and cheap) way to help CC, please use the email form to send the videos page to your 10,000 best friends. Ask them to send it to their 10,000 best friends. And them, to their 15,000 best friends. And soon we’ll be finished with the fundraising for the year.

So check it out and pass the Revver link along.