Aram Sinnreich

Help me choose a cover for my new book, The Piracy Crusade

My new book The Piracy Crusade will be published this December, and I'm incredibly excited to have illustrator and comic journalist Josh Neufeld doing the cover art for me. Josh has now sent me initial sketches outlining a few cover ideas, and has consented to let me use the "wisdom of the crowd" to help develop the cover idea further, just as I did with the text of the book itself.

The book's basic premise is that "digital piracy" is a boogeyman promoted by legacy content cartels in order to justify increasingly draconian intellectual property laws, treaties and policies whose primary purpose is to bolster their (eroding) market dominance. Unfortunately, the secondary effects of this agenda (exemplified by initiatives such as PIPA, SOPA, ACTA and CISPA) is to undermine the foundations of democratic society by eliminating protections for free speech, privacy and market competition, while weakening checks and balances against corporate and governmental overreach.

Josh has sent me four cover ideas, and I'd love your help in choosing between them. The first is the one that I initially outlined for him -- in which two battleships, one flying the copyright flag and the other flying the copyleft flag, are engaged in a naval battle, and the resulting smoke creates the phantom of the Jolly Roger:

The second cover idea is very similar, but it eliminates the Jolly Roger smoke, which Josh says would give more prominence and detail to the ships, and unclutter the overall design:

The third concept also features the copyright and copyleft ships, but puts them in relation to each other along the Z-axis with foreshortening, rather than portraying them side-by-side:

Finally, the fourth cover idea is a radical departure from the nautical imagery, and just features a Jolly Roger with copyright and copyleft symbols for eyes:

I need to choose one of these ideas, or propose a new one, to Josh ASAP, so he can get to work on the art itself. I welcome your comments and suggestions!

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 NYU (video)

Last month, I got a chance to give a talk based on my forthcoming book The Piracy Crusade at NYU, as part of the Computer Science department's Computers and Society lecture series. I always love talking to those folks, in large part because the guy who puts it together, Professor Evan Korth, is one of the coolest people I know. At a certain point, I just abandoned the presentation altogether and got into the nitty gritty. Fun ensued.

p.s. Big ups to Joly for recording and posting the video!

New Syllabus: Copyright, Culture & Commerce

This semester, I'll be teaching a class called "Copyright, Culture & Commerce" at Rutgers SC&I. I used to teach a very similar course at NYU (which I inherited from Siva Vaidhyanathan), but this is basically a complete reboot. I've built the syllabus from scratch, and made a real effort to balance some of my own opinions with conflicting ones, and to integrate debate into the classroom experience.

One of the biggest problems I've faced is that I know so much more about the subject than I did 5 years ago when I first taught the class, and have read so many more texts, that it's much harder to squeeze it all into one coherent undergraduate experience. 

I welcome your feedback -- especially over the next few days, before I have to finalize the syllabus and hand it out to my students.

Week 1: Introduction

Week 2: Why Do We Have Copyright?

• Readings:
  • Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs, Ch. 1
  • Patterson, Copyright in Historical Perspective, Ch. 1 & 12
  • Also peruse: http://www.copyright.gov/history/
• Debate: Madison vs. Jefferson, U.S. Constitution
• EXTRA CREDIT: Attend Amy Goodman talk, 7pm at RSC Multipurpose Room

Week 3: Commons & Anticommons

• Readings:
  • Boyle, The Second Enclosure Movement: http://j.mp/VFVrtH
  • Heller, Gridlock Economy, Ch. 1
• Debate: New York Times Co. v. Tasini: http://j.mp/VfXvrb

Week 4: The Growth of Copyright

• Readings:
  • Lessig, Free Culture, Ch. 10: http://j.mp/UovJIa
  • Netanel, “Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society”, Section I: The Expansion of Copyright Holder Rights: http://j.mp/Y5TdXa
  • Hatch, Introduction of The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1997: http://j.mp/VfX9B2
  • Miller, Extending Copyrights Preserves US Culture: http://j.mp/VfX5Bb 
• Debate: Eldred v. Ashcroft: http://j.mp/Y5RxNp

Week 5 : Fair Use and the Public Domain

• Readings:
  • Aufderheide & Jazsi, Reclaiming Fair Use, Ch. 1-4
  • Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism: http://j.mp/W9Kj5B
  • Article about Rupert Murdoch opposition to fair use: http://j.mp/W9IaXA
• Debate: Rogers v. Koons: http://j.mp/UkOtYQ

Week 6: IP & Corporate Power

• Readings:
  • Bollier, Brand Name Bullies, Ch. 8 & 11
  • McLeod, Freedom of Expression, Ch. 5: http://j.mp/UoKxX1
  • Steiglehner, 10 Questions for Evaluating a Company’s IP Portfolio: http://j.mp/W9Lxh4
• Debate: Toywar: http://j.mp/11BOoFQ

Week 7: Copyright & Globalization

• Readings:
  • Brown, Can Culture be Copyrighted?: http://j.mp/Upmzef
  • Drahos & Braithwaite, Information Feudalism, Ch. 5: http://j.mp/UpnJqa
  • Interview with Francis Gurry, WIPO Director: http://j.mp/VIzDgY
• Debate: ACTA: http://j.mp/X8Eu6Y

Week 8: Piracy & Punishment

• Readings:
  • Sinnreich, The Piracy Crusade, Ch. 4-5
  • Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars, Ch. 15
  • Drahos & Braithwaite, Information Feudalism, Ch. 2: http://j.mp/UpnJqa
• Debate: MGM v. Grokster: http://j.mp/VKL1ZK
• Guest Lecture: Ray Beckerman, Recording Industry vs. The People
• Midterm Assigned

Week 9: DRM & DMCA

• Readings:
  • Copyright Office DMCA summary: http://j.mp/X7zAHq
  • EFF, Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA: http://j.mp/X7Aqnm
  • Doctorow, Content, Ch. 2-3: http://j.mp/X7zeAq
• Debate: Felten v. RIAA

Week 10: Copyright, Convergence & Configurability

• Readings:
  • Sinnreich, Mashed Up, excerpted on Truthdig.com: http://j.mp/W9T5QX
  • Jenkins, Convergence Culture, Ch. 5
  • Latonero & Sinnreich, The Hidden Demography of New Media Ethics
• Debate: Newton v. Diamond: http://j.mp/X8NEQW & Bridgeport v. Dimension http://j.mp/VKNIuD

Week 11: Open Source, Free Software & Copyfight

• Readings:
  • Stallman, GNU Manifesto: http://j.mp/VKktrO
  • Barlow, Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace: http://bit.ly/axHR1T
  • Lessig, Free Culture, “US, NOW” pp. 276-286: http://j.mp/UovJIa
  • Coleman, Coding Freedom, pp. 185-205: http://j.mp/X7KigV 
• Debate: tk 

Week 12: In Defense of Copyright

• Readings:
  • Levine, Free Ride. Ch. 3
  • Sherman, What Wikipedia Won’t Tell You: http://nyti.ms/y59NF7
  • Day, In Defense of Copyright: http://j.mp/UQG11Q
• Debate: tk
• Guest lecture (via Skype): Robert Levine 

Week 13: Can Copyright be Fixed?

• Readings:
  • Lessig, Free Culture, “THEM, SOON” pp. 287-306: http://j.mp/UovJIa
  • van Schijndel & Smiers, Imagining a World Without Copyright: http://j.mp/X8bhsW
  • Patry, How to Fix Copyright, Ch. 2
  • Public Knowledge, The Internet Blueprint: http://j.mp/Wi6Pcn
  • Debate: OPEN Act: http://j.mp/VKlMqL
• Final project assigned

Week 14: Is Democracy Piracy?

• Readings:
  • Sinnreich, The Piracy Crusade, Ch. 8-9
  • Hyde, Common As Air, Ch. 9
  • Ray Kurzweil interview: http://j.mp/X8zaAD
• Debate: Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics: http://j.mp/VKHVoM

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:

INET NY Copyright Panel (video)

Two weeks ago, I sat on a panel at INET New York about the "six strikes" Copyright Alert System, the bargain struck between Hollywood and America's major broadband ISPs to identify people suspected of illegally infringing copyrighted content and slowly cut off their bandwidth.

The event was very informative. For the first hour, corporate stakeholders (e.g. RIAA, MPAA, Verizon, Comcast) discussed the specifics of their plan. For the second hour, a bunch of us critics and consumer advocates (e.g. Gigi Sohn, Jeff Jarvis) responded to the plan, raising several questions and concerns.

Then there was a final mega-panel in which both groups got to address each other directly. I don't think any of us had our minds changed 180 degrees, but I'm pretty sure we all gained some deeper insight into what's at stake here. The full video of the event is below. Surprisingly riveting for a wonkfest.

 

p.s. As of today, the CAS launch has been postponed till next year (ostensibly due to Hurricane Sandy)

Code vs. Code event (video)

A few weeks ago, I spoke at an event with P2P defense attorney Ray Beckerman on behalf of Ben Kallos' bid for a NYC Council seat. Here's the full video of the event, which covers a fair amount of copyright, law & policy stuff:

KCBS interview: Spotify, Pandora, Royalties, IRFA

There's a lot of talk going on these days about the business model for streaming music, specifically about what fair royalty rates might look like, and how to move the business model forward while compensating everyone fairly. I plan to address this in a longer blog post soon, but in the meantime you might be interested in hearing my quick take, recorded during a KCBS radio interview yesterday.

The MP3 of the interview is available here.

Aram interviewed at iMinds in Belgium (video)

Last week, I went to Ghent, Belgium, to speak at the iMinds conference about creativity and copyright in the digital age. Here's a quick video interview I recorded there:

And here's a copy of the presentation I gave: