We're all pirates. The situation is similar to that of marijuana use, but even worse. Not everyone smokes pot (i personally don't), and policy reform seems to finally be coming along now. Piracy on the other hand, is something hardly anyone isn't "guilty" of, including anti-piracy and copyright advocacy groups, yet public awareness isn't rising and it seems nothing is being done about it.
I would like to announce the Download Disobedience campaign which aims to raise awareness of the misinformation concerning piracy, dispel myths, and spread the truth about copyright and other forms of intellectual property by and while encouraging the act of piracy as a civil disobedience. I've chosen to host the project on the infoAnarchy wiki which was co-founded by Erik Möller, Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
There are currently two ways to get involved with the campaign. Firstly, i have created a couple of flyers that can be distributed in the real world. One is a general handout which provides lots of information about piracy and debunks many myths surrounding it all in bullet form. The other is targeted towards US universities and reads as a letter to school administration while meant for circulation by students. It contains some of the information from the first flyer and tells students to download as a civil disobedience. I also used a comic along with some action ideas for a page which can be used as the back side of either flyer. I hope some artist will come along and "steal" them to pretty them up! Please print them out and hit the streets.
Secondly, you can make your opinion known and raise awareness of the issue by singing Happy Birthday against copyright. Time Warner claims to own the copyright to "Happy Birthday" so it is actually illegal to sing it in public unless royalties are paid. Post recordings of yourself singing the happy birthday song to YouTube and other social media sites as a protest against copyright insanity. Here's mine:
We're all pirates. The situation is similar to that of marijuana use, but even worse. Not everyone smokes pot (i personally don't), and policy reform seems to finally be coming along now. Piracy on the other hand, is something hardly anyone isn't "guilty" of, including anti-piracy and copyright advocacy groups, yet public awareness isn't rising and it seems nothing is being done about it.
I would like to announce the Download Disobedience campaign which aims to raise awareness of the misinformation concerning piracy, dispel myths, and spread the truth about copyright and other forms of intellectual property by and while encouraging the act of piracy as a civil disobedience. I've chosen to host the project on the infoAnarchy wiki which was co-founded by Erik Möller, Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
There are currently two ways to get involved with the campaign. Firstly, i have created a couple of flyers that can be distributed in the real world. One is a general handout which provides lots of information about piracy and debunks many myths surrounding it all in bullet form. The other is targeted towards US universities and reads as a letter to school administration while meant for circulation by students. It contains some of the information from the first flyer and tells students to download as a civil disobedience. I also used a comic along with some action ideas for a page which can be used as the back side of either flyer. I hope some artist will come along and "steal" them to pretty them up! Please print them out and hit the streets.
Secondly, you can make your opinion known and raise awareness of the issue by singing Happy Birthday against copyright. Time Warner claims to own the copyright to "Happy Birthday" so it is actually illegal to sing it in public unless royalties are paid. Post recordings of yourself singing the happy birthday song to YouTube and other social media sites as a protest against copyright insanity. Here's mine:
Yankee's definitely not Dutch slang for 'pirate'. Definitely. It comes from the common Dutch names 'Jan' and 'Kees' and because there were so many people with those names living in a certain area(the North? the South?) people started referring to them as Yankees, the English pronunciation of those names. Slowly it was used for a larger and larger part of the population until people started using it for all US Americans.
Hi, while I applaude you intent to inform folks about the nature of the abuse of copyright in todays world, some of your fact are not quite true. copyright is a limited monopoly that allows for limited income for the creator. Just because various corporations have twisted copyright into a long term money-making control mechanism does not remove its intent. We just have to fight even harder to get it back to its original intent and tell people about the benefits of copyright as it is suppoed to be. The DMCA, WIPO and ACTA are more things to tell poeple about. Oh, and the issue of the google book deal.
What exactly is your ultimate goal with this campaign? It's really unclear. Are you hoping to see copyright revoked completely? Are you looking to broaden/strengthen the doctrine of fair use within the scope of existing copyright protections? Are you looking to rollback the length of time that a creative work is subject to copyright protection? What's the endgame here? What is a satisfactory outcome which would signal the end of a prolonged organized civil disobedience campaign?
6 comments:
Yankee's definitely not Dutch slang for 'pirate'. Definitely.
It comes from the common Dutch names 'Jan' and 'Kees' and because there were so many people with those names living in a certain area(the North? the South?) people started referring to them as Yankees, the English pronunciation of those names. Slowly it was used for a larger and larger part of the population until people started using it for all US Americans.
Hey. Can you please fix your link to infoanarchy on the picture of your flyer - it has one too many h's in http.
Please, modifiy image poster link. It has hhtp instead http.
Thanks,
tom
Hi,
while I applaude you intent to inform folks about the nature of the abuse of copyright in todays world, some of your fact are not quite true. copyright is a limited monopoly that allows for limited income for the creator. Just because various corporations have twisted copyright into a long term money-making control mechanism does not remove its intent. We just have to fight even harder to get it back to its original intent and tell people about the benefits of copyright as it is suppoed to be. The DMCA, WIPO and ACTA are more things to tell poeple about. Oh, and the issue of the google book deal.
What exactly is your ultimate goal with this campaign? It's really unclear. Are you hoping to see copyright revoked completely? Are you looking to broaden/strengthen the doctrine of fair use within the scope of existing copyright protections? Are you looking to rollback the length of time that a creative work is subject to copyright protection? What's the endgame here? What is a satisfactory outcome which would signal the end of a prolonged organized civil disobedience campaign?
-jef
Kevix, LOL @ your original intent comment. You sound like a tea bagger crying about how no one follows the constitution anymore.
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