Aram Sinnreich

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:

My new book project: PiracyCrusade.com

My new book project, loosely based on my LimeWire expert testimony, is called "The Piracy Crusade." Although it will be published as a paper book next year by University of Massachusetts Press, I'm also publishing draft chapters as I write them on an open, Creative Commons-licensed, comments-enabled platform hosted by the MediaCommons project.

This kind of prepublication is increasingly being used as "peer-to-peer review," a crowdsourced alternative to the traditional academic "peer review" process, in which 2-3 anonymous readers with unclear motives and levels of interest weigh in on your work after 6-12 months of waiting. Obviously, when you're covering something fast-moving like law, technology, culture, or all three, that kind of a waiting process can be deadly.

If you have any interest, experience, or opinions regarding music, intellectual property law, new technologies, or the digital media industry, I encourage you to take a look, and leave a comment. All constructive commenters will get a shout-out in the final version of the book's Acknowledgments section.

The first two chapters are already up, and Chapter 3 is in process. Check it out on PiracyCrusade.com!

p.s. I'm also looking for some cover art -- if you're interested in creating something (I can't pay you, but I'll give you a credit on the cover), let me know.

Breaded Newt

Someone needed to do this, and for once, I seem to have beaten the internet to the punch...

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

"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.

Arista vs. LimeWire: My Expert Report

Earlier today, LimeWire and the major labels announced they've reached a settlement in the damages portion of their lawsuit, ending the biggest P2P trial since Grokster. The settlement was reportedly for $105 million -- a big chunk of change, but a small fraction of the billions (revised downward from trillions) sought by the RIAA.

I haven't commented publicly on this case for the past six months, because I was retained by LimeWire as the primary expert witness for the defense. In fact, I was scheduled to take the stand today, and only found out yesterday afternoon that the settlement talks were likely to bear fruit.

I was actually really looking forward to testifying, both because I felt that the RIAA's argument was largely bogus, and I hoped to have a chance to contradict their claims on the record, and because I find the larger subject of the music industry's transformation such a fascinating subject.

Fortunately, most of the testimony I would have given on the stand is part of the court record in written form. To be specific, I prepared a 20,000-word (65 page) report detailing the many reasons for the downturn in music sales, the many sources of free music available to consumers, and some of the many mistakes the labels themselves have made, contributing to their financial woes. I also weighed in on the scale of damages sought, arguing that a large damage award would likely have little or no effect on the amount of free music available online.

I'll probably turn this all into a book one of these days, but in the meantime, you can download and read the report in its original form here. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

 

Introducing MondoNet: The censor-proof, unsurveillable network [video]

A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at TEDxUSC, in which I laid out the basic argument for MondoNet, a new project I'm working on with a few of my grad students at Rutgers. My basic point is that, despite the many amazing cultural, economic and political uses to which it's been put, the Internet has a fundamental flaw preventing it from being an effective tool for democratic political action and cultural innovation.

The flaw lies in its centralized architecture and hierarchical governance; no matter how much people resist against institutional power through innovative cultural forms, and no matter how much we lobby against oppressive and exploitative uses of the technology (e.g. the current battles over net neutrality), the network provides its operators with an excess of power that will necessary be exploited.

We propose to remedy this situation with an architectural intervention: namely, using ad-hoc, mesh networking technology to create a global network that is fundamentally resistant to censorship, surveillance and exploitation, because no single individual or institution can control the information flow on any significant scale.

Clearly, there is a lot to discuss here; we plan to publish a full-length academic article in The Information Society in July, and a pre-publication copy can be read at MondoNet.org. But we're still working on developing funding and fleshing out the engineering, so I welcome your feedback, criticisms and offers of help! 

Here's the video:

Audio of my artists panel at EMP Pop Conference 2011

I was in LA last week for the annual EMP Pop Conference, which was pretty awesome. My roundtable, "Look Ma, No Contract: Making Money Making Music in the Post-Label Economy," featured a diverse bunch of professional musicians, including Zoe Keating, Ahmed Best, Chris Murray and DJ Shyboy. I also added Professor Nancy Baym, who studies musical cultures, to add some extra brainpower and perspective.

They didn't take video of our panel, but fortunately, I recorded the audio of the entire conversation. You can download it here.