[DMCA-Activists] Students Fight Copyright Hoarders

[Seth Johnson]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: pho: Students Fight Copyright Hoarders
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 01:41:54 -0500
From: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden

From: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,65616,00.html

Students Fight Copyright Hoarders
By Katie Dean 

Students at a dozen colleges around the country are organizing to
teach their peers about the consequences of overly broad
copyright law, hoping to prevent creative freedom from being
stifled. 

They are forming Free Culture groups on campuses to explain
copyright law to fellow students. Stressing its importance for
culture and society, the group says copyright law is being
abused. To illustrate their point, the groups hold remixing
contests, promote open-source software and rally against
legislation like the Induce Act, which would hold technology
companies liable for encouraging people to infringe copyrights.

While copyright law might seem like a dull topic to ponder on
campuses, Free Culture groups say it is a critical time for
students and young people to pay attention. Large copyright
holders -- namely Hollywood studios and record companies -- are
gaining veto power over technology at a time when digital
technology and the internet allow more people than ever to film,
record, edit and distribute their own movies and music, among
other forms of expression. 

"If the technology is not locked down and the (copyright) laws
don't stop us, we can build a democratic, free culture in which
everyone can participate, in which you don't have to have the
major backing of a studio to make a movie," said Nelson Pavlosky,
co-founder of Free Culture Swarthmore, which launched the
national movement in April and is hosting a Free Culture Fest
this week to promote the organization. 

Pavlosky is also known for successfully suing voting machine
maker Diebold Election Systems after the company misused the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act to threaten Swarthmore students
who posted copies and links to some 13,000 internal Diebold
memos. 

"The (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Creative Commons are
doing really good work, but people our age don't seem to know
about it," he said. "If we could show (students) how this is
relevant to their lives, they would be really excited and
involved in the movement." 

So, Pavlosky and other Free Culture leaders are finding clever
ways to illustrate the importance of copyright in their daily
lives with projects like Undead Art, which challenges students to
remix the cult classic Night of the Living Dead, now in the
public domain, and turn it into something new -- like a zombie
techno video or comic short. Participants can then mark their
work with a flexible copyright license from Creative Commons so
people can share the work freely and easily. These licenses allow
other people to take a work and modify it however they like, as
long as they don't try to make money from the new work without
permission. 

The students also encourage their peers to get involved with
legislative issues. They created Save the iPod, a site that
encourages students to write their congressional representatives
to stop the Induce Act.

While the Free Culture movement believes that copyright law has
been overextended, the students are not advocating ripping off
the entertainment companies, Pavlosky said. 

"The danger we face is being labeled rich white kids who want
free music," he said. 

One of the speakers at the Free Culture Fest, Wayne State
University law professor Jessica Litman, said the Free Culture
movement is a terrific idea. Historically, copyright law has been
crafted by lobbyists for powerful copyright owners who represent
the software, music and movie industries, she said. Consumers
have not had a place at the bargaining table, and that will
continue until they demand a seat.

"I'm hoping that awareness (about copyright law) spreads like a
virus and infects the rest of the country," Litman said.
"Consumers ought to have a significant say in what the law says
is legal and illegal."

The student-run festival is also hosting speakers from the Free
Software Foundation and the band Negativland.

It's an important movement, students say. 

"I don't just want to be spoon-fed content from MTV and Time
Warner," said Rebekah Baglini, a sophomore at Bryn Mawr College,
which runs its own Free Culture club. "I'd really like to see a
more diverse, more bottom-up participatory approach to culture." 

"It's not just about some abstract copyright law," said Nicholas
Bergson-Shilcock, a student at Franklin & Marshall College in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. "It's about free speech and the ability
to express yourself."