Aram Sinnreich

MediaCon Panel with Trevor Pinch & DJ Spooky (audio)

This weekend, I was fortunate to host a keynote discussion between media theorist (and Moog afficionado) Trevor Pinch and DJ/author Paul D. Miller, a/k/a DJ Spooky. It was part of an excellent conference called "Extending Play" organized by the doctoral students at Rutgers SC&I. 

Our panel was a lot of fun -- a freewheeling discussion that ranged from music and tech geekery to broad social theory. You can listen to the audio transcript here:

ExtendingPlay_Keynote_Sinnreich_Pinch_Miller

 

 

New album from my band Brave New Girl

My band Brave New Girl has released its first studio album in over a decade, called "Thanks for Being on the Show," under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike 3.0 license. You can stream the entire album for free on SoundCloud:

If you want to download the tracks and support the cause, please buy them from CD Baby:

You can also get the album almost anywhere else, including:

• iTunes
• Spotify
• Amazon

Stay tuned, we'll be doing more recording soon!

Aram talks Piracy Crusade at the New School (video)

I recently gave a guest lecture about my forthcoming book The Piracy Crusade via Google Hangout for Josephine Dorado's classes on internet culture at the New School. Here's the video:

Moscow Panel: "Culture: Create or Copy" [video]

Last month, I returned to Moscow to speak at Google's Big Tent Event. My panel, which was entitled "Culture: Create or Copy," was focused on the question of whether configurable cultural practices like memes, mashups and remixes are legitimate and socially valuable, and therefore whether communications and cultural policy should provide a degree of support for them. Obviously, I was there to bang the "yes" drum. This was not an idle "academic" topic; the panel's moderator was Ekatrina Chukovskaya, Deputy Minister of Culture for the Russian Federation.

Here's the video of the panel:

Video of "Beyond the Internet" panel

Last night, I was was fortunate to host an excellent panel on Internet freedom, cyberliberties, mesh networking, and next-gen networks at Rutgers University, with Laura DeNardis, Jonathan Baldwin, Michael Potter, Josh King, and my colleague, Aaron Trammell. ISOC-NY generously offered to livestream the event, which is now archived on their site.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

internetsocietychapters on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Happy American Censorship Day

Today, in honor of American Censorship Day, I've replaced my standard banner with a cheerful black bar.

I do this as a form of protest against the spirit of censorship pervading the regulation of the Internet and other communications platforms -- specifically, the pending legislation known as ProtectIP and SOPA being discussed in a Congressional hearing today. This legislation would criminalize huge swaths of the Internet as we know it today, and put a politically unacceptable degree of censorship power in the hands of government and large corporations. I stand with organizations like Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as publishers like TechDirt and BoingBoing, in opposition to these measures, and I hope you will as well.

To find out more, and to take action, please visit AmericanCensorship.org.

 

"Beyond the Internet" event at Rutgers tomorrow

Tomorrow, I'll be hosting an event at Rutgers called "Beyond the Internet." It continues the themes I've been working on with the MondoNet project, surrounding the potential of new and emerging platforms (e.g. ad hoc, wireless mesh networks) to provide a more robust platform for free speech and the exercise of cyberliberties.

The cornerstone of the event will be a panel featuring some of the technologists and thinkers at the forefront of these issues, including:

• Laura E. DeNardis, American University / Yale Information Society Project
• Michael Potter, Geeks Without Frontiers
• Jonathan Baldwin, Parsons
• Josh King, New America Foundation/OTI
• Isaac Wilder, founder, Free Network Foundation

The event is free and open to the public, hope you can make it!

Time and location:
Wed, November 16
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Rutgers University, College Ave Campus
Alexander Library
4th Floor Lecture Hall
Map: http://bit.ly/t5fDnq 
Event website: technologies.rutgers.edu

Aram's Keynote on Remix Ethics at DMY Berlin [video + slides]

A few days ago, I gave a keynote speech at DMY Berlin's Copy/Culture Symposium. The subject was the ethics of configurable culture, and the ways in which our cultural norms and expectations are increasingly more complex than -- and in conflict with -- our intellectual property laws.

Although the presentation drew on themes I've discussed in previously published work and presentations, it featured brand new qualitative and quantitative data from a survey I recently fielded with Mark Latonero and Marissa Gluck. My audience was largely design professionals, so I tried to keep the academic jargon to a minimum.

Here's a link to the video:

(Unfortunately, the engineer screwed up and for a few minutes, this video relies on the room microphone instead of my direct mic).

If you'd like to follow along at home, here's a link to my PowerPoint presentation:

Aram to Russian Gov: Ease Up On the Capitalism, OK? [audio + slides]

A few weeks ago, I had the honor and pleasure to give a talk in Moscow for the Russian Government, who are in the process of assessing their Intellectual Property policy, as well as Google, who co-organized the event.

While most of the other speakers (record and movie execs, WIPO officials, IP attorneys, think tankers, etc) focused on specific IP policy items, I chose instead to focus on creative communities themselves, in whose name intellectual property law is enacted and enforced. Specifically, I focused on six creative communities (three traditional, three emerging) that have thrived in the absence of copyright control or enforcement, both in terms of cultural innovation and economic benefit. (For more in-depth analysis, see the book chapter about music and fashion I co-authored with Marissa Gluck a few years back).

The specific creative communities I discussed included quilting, food, fashion, mashups, doujinshi, fansubbing, and Filipino cover bands.

The talk went over well, but whether I swayed the Russians away from potential copyright maximalism remains to be seen. Below are audio from my talk, as well as my PowerPoint slides.

You can listen to the audio here: http://bit.ly/sinnrussia2011

And here are the slides: http://slidesha.re/jKSMJM

UPDATE:

A few weeks after my talk, President Medvedev addressed the G8 summit, and expressed his doubts about the strategic value of copyright maximalism. In his words:

"The declaration reflects an absolutely conservative position that intellectual property rights should be protected according to the existing conventions. No one questions that, but I have repeatedly stated that, unfortunately, those conventions were written 50 or almost 100 years ago, and they are unable to regulate the whole complex of relations between the copyright owner and users. . . Unfortunately, this was not included in the declaration because, in my opinion, my colleagues have a more conservative opinion than is necessary at the moment. Or maybe they just don't use the Internet and have little understanding of it."

I'm sure I can't take full credit for this, but I'd like to think I played a small role.

Social media and the news: Aram interviewed on MPR Midmorning [Audio]

This morning, I was interviewed on MPR Midmorning (along with Andy Carvin from NPR) about the increasingly complex role of social media in the gathering, analysis and dissemination of news. It was a lively and interesting conversation, although as usual, I didn't get a chance to make half of the pithy observations I'd prepared.

You can listen here: