Difference between revisions of "Fred Beckersted's Free Culture in Second Life"

Transcript of Fred Beckersted's talk on Free Culture given in Second Life

The talk was given on May 18, 2006.

Fred Beckersted: Thanks for coming everyone. Shall we begin? So first things first. There will be a transcript made available later for everyone, so if you don't want to be on that. Let me know.

Cool. So my name is Fred Beckersted - in real life I'm Fred Benenson I graduated NYU last year, and have been working extensively with FreeCulture.org and CC.

So this talk I'll be talking about three things: one is FreeCulture.org, the student organization that I'm on the board of then Free Culture @ NYU, the chapter of FreeCulture.org that I started at NYU: http://freeculture.org and the other is how Free Culture can work in SL or rather, how we can work with and progress ideas of free culture inside SL

So first link you'll want to check out is freeculture.org the other will be http://www.freeculturenyu.org - which is the site for my chapter. Its a blog set up but you can get a feeling for what we do

So who knows how FreeCulture.org, the student group got started? Anyone? Ok great I love this story.

Inamorata Alphabeta: i do

Inamorata Alphabeta: you spoke to my class about free culture

Fau Ferdinand: some really unjust lawsuit?

Fred Beckersted: Fau : pretty much.

Two students at Swarthmore, Luke Smith and Nelson Pavlosky published memos from the Diebold voting machine corporation. Diebold is in the business of manufacturing kiosks -- things like ATMs and voting machines. The interesting part is that Diebold chooses to use Microsoft Windows. So they're machines, not surprisingly, don't work very well. A couple of years ago, Diebold accidentally left open an FTP directory on their webserver, that had a lot of memos where they admitted the fact that the machines they were selling to the California state government were not up to par. These memos started circulating around the internet, and because there were so many of them, a lot of people started looking at them. Among those thousands of people who posted these memos were Luke Smith and Nelson Pavlosky at Swarthmore.

Diebold then proceeded to try to stamp out people distributing these memos by sending DMCA notices (Digital Millennium Copyright Act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA) and claiming that by reposting these memos, you were infringing on their copyright. This was a pretty bogus claim, because if the memos were authentic (which they were), then the public should know about the faults with the voting machines and copyright shouldn't come into play. The DMCA was simply a way for Diebold to bully people into submission. So Luke and Nelson stood their ground after receiving a cease and desist letter and switched hosts, after Swarthmore bailed out

Dexter Tones: Fred, did Diebold ever say that the memos contained any "trade secrets?" Fred Beckersted: They might have, but they were using the DMCA and claiming copyright infringement Jesse Malthus: which protects both

Fred Beckersted: interesting, I'll check with Nelson in a moment, he should be on soon. Anyway, so before Diebold could really sue anyone, Nelson and Luke got in contact with the EFF and Lessig. (They) sued Diebold for abuse of the DMCA essentially claiming that Diebold was using the DMCA to silence them. It was classic David v. Goliath. So They ended up wining that lawsuit against Diebold.

Dexter Tones: Great news

Fred Beckersted: and became quite notable on campus.

Yes, so during that process they had started a group on campus that focused on copyright and the commons. When they realized they had such an audience, they decided to take it global and start a real student movement. At the time I was at NYU and beginning to realize that it was more than just me and my friends who were interested in these topics.

So this was Spring of 2004.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) had just started suing kids on campus. As a April Fools' joke, I started putting up posters that said the RIAA was coming to NYU.

Dexter Tones: Don't forget the MPAA too, Fred ;)

Fred Beckersted: and you could trade in your MP3s for immunity against any future lawsuits.

Jesse Malthus: :)

Fred Beckersted: I also said members from Metillica and Hillary Rosen were going to be there. I didn't think anyone was going to notice besides my friends. But after a couple of weeks, people were still talking about them.

Fred Beckersted: So at that point I realized that these topics actually matter, and will continue to matter for college kids.

So after reading about Luke + Nelson Slashdot. I got in contact, and that summer decided to start Free Culture @ NYU. SO thats a bit of history about my involvement.

Fred Beckersted: In terms of current events, FreeCulture.org has a number of very active chapters. We routinely hold conferences to find new students and so on. You can find the full list on the website along with our mission statement and bios.

Fau Ferdinand: how are they scoring overseas ?

Fred Beckersted: Well we've been in contact with people in the UK and South America - so its picking up. But right now, the most active people are on the East Coast, I'd have to say.

Fred Beckersted: So I've been working with CC and FC since I graduated and one of the things I did was make FreeCulture.org t shirts. (They are available for sale in RL.) I am wearing the design right now. There's a box on the other side of this sim, where you can get them for free in SL.

So let me move on to Free Culture @ NYU and talk a bit about what we've done in New York City. So one of the first things I wanted to do this year with FC @ NYU was protest something. I figure if you're a political student group, you have to be able to protest something, right? So after a couple of meetings, people seemed most interested in DRM. Right, just show up with some fliers and make some noise. So we decided to do a DRM protest at one of the record stores in New York City. Our first instinct was Virgin Megastore in Union Square. For a number of reasons: First, Union Square has a colorful history as being a political spot in the city. Its where a lot of people go to protest the war, Israel, Palestine, etc. And there's a great statue of Washington. The other reason we wanted to do Virgin was because it promotes this anti-authoritarian attitude like by shopping at Virgin you're really cool or something. And its just a huge façade of coolness.

Jesse Malthus: and it's still a RIAA lackey

Fred Beckersted: So we kind of wanted to attack that

Vinci Calamari: marketing

Fred Beckersted: Jesse : Exactly

Its all a marketing campaign. So the spot was chosen and then it was really just a matter of making the pamphlet. And this is really a big point because you have about 5 seconds to entice someone or they're totally gone. Shoppers in New York have some pretty serious BS-filters on and rarely stop to take anything from anyone on the street. So after talking a bit we decided to ask a simple question…

"Are you buying a broken CD?"

And then list some interesting facts about how DRM works and what your alternatives are. We went as far as to instruct people how to get it off their machines and prevent it from installing. Let me get that link:

http://wiki.freeculturenyu.org/wiki/index.php?title=DRM_Protest

The point was -- most consumers had no idea what DRM was and that it could install some pretty nasty stuff on their computers. So our protest became more of an information session where we were really educating shoppers that the CDs they just bought, were probably not compatible with their iPod this was a lot of leverage -- you start talking about iPods and people listen.

So we had made a sandwich board with a crying iPod on it and crosses over its eyes holding a CD. People loved that -- Sandwich boards work really well.

And we had no negative reactions the entire night. Every person we stopped really wanted to hear what we had to say and asked intelligent questions. But let me back track a bit -- One really interesting part was that this was actually the first DRM protest, as far as we could tell.

So we got some good press this way - it got written up on BoingBoing and suddenly all of these people were contacting us and telling us they wanted to participate. So at that point it became less about some scraggly students, and more about a larger action. The day of, people showed up whom we had never met with their own posters and ready to help out.

This was really exciting because it demonstrated how powerful the internet was in this respect. It cost us virtually nothing besides time and some copies to get a pretty serious demonstration going. So let me get the photos from this event:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/sets/1229792/

After that first protest, we were contacted by a reporter at USAToday he ended up writing an article about the protest and our movement and my friend Diana was featured holding her iPod in the newspaper. That was pretty exciting for everyone. Not a lot of on-campus political groups get such national attention So we decided we might as well keep the ball rolling and do another protest.

Then, the Sony BMG fiasco happened. Does everyone know about that?

Scope Cleaver: *nods*

Miller Copeland: Yes.

Scope Cleaver: rootkit?

Minna Childs: yes.

Fred Beckersted: Ok, basically Sony released a rootkit that was really nasty

So we decided to rub it in, and a month later did another protest A great part about this was our timing. Not only was everyone talking about the rootkit, but Richard Stallman was in NYC and wanted to help out. RMS is the founder of the GPL license and the author of a lot of important Linux code

Vinci Calamari: emacs

Fred Beckersted: GNU, etc

So RMS actually showed up at our protest and wore our sandwich board, which this time, instead of a crying iPod, had a vomitting computer

Check out photos from that here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/sets/1485493/

So FC @ NYU had gotten a lot of attention for being anti-DRM. The Village Voice wrote an article about us:

http://www.villagevoice.com/generic/show_print.php?id=71635&page=blumenkranz&issue=0602&printcde=MzQxMTAzMDA0Mg==&refpage=L2FydHMvaW5kZXgucGhwP2lzc3VlPTA2MDImcGFnZT1ibHVtZW5rcmFueiZpZD03MTYzNQ==

Oops, sorry thats such a nasty URL…Anyway, so we decided we needed to vary our message. Diversify, if you will. So we decided to do an art show that focused on artists in NYC who were using Creative Commons licenses on their work. We realized this could be a really neat opportunity to educate the university community about CC and get some young artists working with it. Also, we wanted to show that CC can work in the real world, and most important, you can still sell CC licensed work. So we were going to allow the artists to sell the work and choose their own prices. The big step here was first finding artists who were interested in CC and then getting the actual work. It turns out, finding student artists at NYU is really not that difficult. So we basically asked our friends and so on and came up with 10 or so people who had either heard of CC, used CC, or wanted to try it out. We really didn't have a hard time convincing people to use CC on their work which was a bit surprising to me. College students tend to be more open to this idea. I guess the record companies had just gotten me pretty cynical and bitter. But once we explained the whole project, people were quite excited. Plus, the fact that we had gotten so much press recently probably helped. So we chose the space where we met for our meetings and negotiated with NYU to keep the art up for a month then we just planned for an opening, hung the art, and that was that. One thing I should mention is that we posted all of the art on Flickr using the appropriate licenses

Check out this site for all the links to the art and artists: http://freeculturenyu.org/ccartshow

So this inspired the Free Culture @ Harvard students to do their own art show. But instead of just Creative Commons, they used other licenses too, which is something we'll probably do in the future if we do another art show.

Rizzermon Sopor: There is a lot of nice CC licensed work on flickr, I used a couple pieces myself to make a CC licensed work.

Fred Beckersted: http://www.sharingisdaring.org/ Thats the Free Culture @ Harvard show

So our last project of the year was a bit more ambitious. We started noticing that people were sending around these trailer mashups: like the Brokeback to the Future one or the Shining one.

have people seen those?

Miller Copeland: Yes. Jesse Malthus: I saw Brokeback to the Future

Fred Beckersted: Cool, well they were quite popular at the time (a couple of months ago) and we decided that we wanted to endorse that idea. Remixing culture is really what we're all about. But there were a couple big hurdles, in endorsing such a project. Our idea would be to hold a contest where people would remix films that we chose into funny little shorts. But, as many of you probably know, remixing a movie now is quite difficult.

Jesse Malthus: Copyrights and such

Fred Beckersted: It actually requires breaking the law, if you're using a DVD.

Fred Beckersted: Jesse : its more than copyright.

Fred Beckersted: Its the DMCA.

Jesse Malthus: thus the and such

Fred Beckersted: Which is like bizarro mutant copyright.

Rizzermon Sopor: like when I watch DVD's on linux? :D

Fred Beckersted: Rizzermon : Exactly.

Vinci Calamari: CSS

Fred Beckersted: Basically you're not allowed to 'decrypt' a DVD, which out the MPAA's permission. The only way you can get an editable movie nowadays is by decrypting a DVD. VHS -> AVI is a total pain and not feasible. So if you want to mashup a movie, you're going to have to use a DVD as your source.

Plus, most college students don't even have VHS tapes any more.

Vinci Calamari: or use copies from p2p lol

Jesse Malthus: the analog hole is the slowest and shurest way to get things

Fred Beckersted: Exactly

But it doesn't give you a lot of legit options. Basically, there are no legit options. So FC @ NYU really wanted to do this project. But we realized there would be significant legal hurdles that we would have to overcome in order to be responsible and not get sued. We'd basically be encouraging people to break the DMCA in order to create a mashup. We probably wouldn't retain our status as a NYU club for very long after getting anything that looked like a Cease and Desist letter. So luckily, we were able to get in contact with a lawyer who was willing to do some pro-bono work for us.

Fau Ferdinand: fair use ?

Fred Beckersted: Thats what it would come down to, eventually. But there's this problem with the DMCA. In that even if your final product is Fair use, you still can't break the encryption scheme. Our lawyer reccomended a number of things. First he said, we should encourage people to make parodies of the films. This would ensure a solid Fair Use defense. Parody is one of the few parts of fair use that is still protected. Let me just pause and make some clarifications here. Satire, on the other hand, isn't as protected. The difference lies in the subject matter that you are making fun of. A parody makes fun of the subjet it is taken from, ie., me making fun of the Simpsons using the Simpsons cartoon. Satire, on the other hand, is when you use the Simpsons to make fun of Bush, or second life, or whatever. The catch lies in the fact that courts have to protect your ability to make fun of something -- and its hard to make fun of something without using some copyrighted material. But on the other hand, with satire -- you're can always go and create the content yourself.

Scope Cleaver: Who gets to decide whats fun and what isn't?

Fred Beckersted: using the content of a party not involved is seen as lazy

Well, thats a whole nother can of worms. And part of what makes copyright law so interesting. You essentially have the courts deciding what is "fun" or "art" or "music" which is problematic, to say the least.

So our first task was to encourage people to make parodies -- the greatest protected fair use.

Miller Copeland: Is there also disagreement over satire versus parody? Or is that cut and dry?

Fred Beckersted: Miller : I feel as if it is pretty cut and dry, but I am not a lawyer so I can't say, with any legal guarantee

Anyway, our second task was to make sure that we were liable for explaining to people how to decrypt a DVD because merely explaining that process is illegal under the DMCA even giving links to websites that explain that process is illegal. So we had to some how explain to people that they needed to decrypt a DVD, not specifically how to do it, and then use that DVD to make a mashup, that had to be a parody

Vinci Calamari: isnt there a legal way on windows?

Fred Beckersted: Vinci : no, unless you're using WinDVD or some DVD player to watch it, decrypting a DVD is never legal.

Jesse Malthus: that's a lot of qualifiers

Fred Beckersted: Jesse : yes, that was kind of the point

We realized that if we had to go to a lawyer and essentially jump through all of these hoops. That it'd provide some kind of signpost, some kind of indicator of how ridiculous things have gotten for people who want to remix culture. So, our lawyer suggested drafting a waiver that we had people read / submit during their remix process. This waiver would essentially indemnify Free Culture @ NYU from any harm from the MPAA. We also wanted to make it clear to people what they were doing.

http://freeculturenyu.org/filmremix All of the information is up there.

So the best part of this project was that we were able to screen the final parodies at a conference dealing with Fair Use at NYU. I'm going to be getting the parodies online soon

Miller Copeland: Did the MPAA ever have an official response?

Fred Beckersted: Nope, we obviously didn't tell them

Fred Beckersted: and they didn't bother us.

Miller Copeland: (long laugh)

Jesse Malthus: hehe

Fred Beckersted: I think if any lawyer from the MPAA saw that page, and they might have, they probably just would have sighed and not bothered. We were extraordinarily careful. AH, I've heard that we do have a working video and we'll be showing it later. So stick around.

Anyway, I have a feeling if the MPAA tried to sue us we could have made it quite an interesting fight and it wouldn't have worked out well for them -- We would have argued that hey, we're just students and people interested in remixing culture. If you're calling us pirates, well you're just wrong

But even so, if you want to stop us, you're being quite hypocritical As some hollywood studio had just offerred a job to the guy who made the Shining remix.

Miller Copeland: Given the attackdog actions of late, did your group actually worry about that happening anyway?

Fred Beckersted: No, by the end of it, we had enough people behind us and interested that we probably would have been ok., but who knows.

We still haven't posted the videos (people have been busy with finals and other projects) So maybe when they go up, we'll get a cease and desist letter, but I doubt it. So that pretty much details the work that I've been doing with Free Culture. Next year we're hoping to organize a trip to DC to meet some politicians and then some more DRM protests and possibly a music show.

Minna Childs: what's the average age of everyone in this group?

Jesse Malthus: young.

Fred Beckersted: Here? Or in FreeCulture.org?

We're mostly, almost all, students of some sort. The idea is that the college campus is the ideal place for free culture ideas.

Minna Childs: freeculture.org. do you have some sort of outside counsel?

Fred Beckersted: We have pro-bono lawyers here and there that help us out with drafting things. But no one full time or under contract.

Rizzermon Sopor: Fred with your discussion on DRM, it almost seems that DRM is becoming slowly accepted, esp when it's touted in a warm and fuzzy way ala the ipod, sort of discouraging for me.

Fred Beckersted: Rizzermon : THis is indeed concerning.

The real fear is that DRM will be in everything and vendors will stop supporting other formats such as mp3. If you're interested, there are some up coming actions that I can get you involved in - if you IM me your e-mail address. I can get you in contact with people who are workin on making a fuss about the pervasive ness of DRM

Adeghord Malthus: are you speaking of actions in NY? or online/national?

Fred Beckersted: In NYC and other places

Rizzermon Sopor: Fred isn't CC licensing a form of DRM ultimately, a form meant to empower others, but perhaps a hope that DRM need not always be negative? I just thought of this so maybe I am wrong, dunno.

Fred Beckersted: Rizzemon : CC Is not DRM.

Instead of allowing a computer chip to dictate what you can or can not do with copyrighted material, CC allows the user to decide what she can or cannot do with the copyrighted work., CC notifies rather than restricts.

Vinci Calamari: but is DRM and Trusted Computing the same?

Fred Beckersted: Not necessarily. They weren't always the same, but now it is looking like they are.

Jesse Malthus: when taken literally, DRM can be perceived as including licensing.

Fred Beckersted: Jesse: I disagree.

Jesse Malthus: TC is a method for ensuring DRM is inforced

Fred Beckersted: DRM, to me, means techinical measures that prevent you from using copyrighted works licensing is contractual measures

Vinci Calamari: i c

Rizzermon Sopor: thanks for that explanation Fred, that helps me a lot in seeing the difference

Fred Beckersted: Glad it helps. CC and FC are not against copyright.

Vinci Calamari: I also was asking me a time ago if DRM always has to be negative...

Fred Beckersted: What we are against is the kind of brute force assault on fair use that DRM promotes

Vinci Calamari: but that contract vs technical explains it

Fred Beckersted: DRM and fair use are essentially incompatible.

So yeah, I'd love to answer any questions but I'd also like to talk a bit more about Second Life and what we can do as a movement in here

Miller Copeland: Would you like this to be a group discussion?

Fred Beckersted: Yeah, why don't we move over to the Art area and we can mingle and I can try to show this film remix

Vinci Calamari: I have seen so much free content that is displayed in proprietary formats like Quicktime and MP3. I have the feeling that often not much thought goes into free formats

Rizzermon Sopor: Vinci I saw your comment on the boards about that issue

Fred Beckersted: Its that the vendor support is not there. Yes, it really comes down to Apple using OGG or whatever, but they're the 800 lbs gorilla and if they don't support free formats then its going to be a long time.

Rizzermon Sopor: Vinci, I made a recent video in ogg theora after reading your comment about formats being used, but copyright concerns has prevented me from posting it :(

Vinci Calamari: but is also questionable if creative commons promotes Quicktime

Fred Beckersted: Vinci : We don't. That is SL.

Fred Beckersted: We can't show the films in any other format

Jesse Malthus: inside SL

Fred Beckersted: right.

Jesse Malthus: and many people don't have Theora/Vorbis Players

Vinci Calamari: Fred: yeah in SL, right

Zenigma Suntzu: How long will MP3 remain in patent?

Fred Beckersted: Ok, so let me just introduce this work. So Anyway, you'll see the art here is from the Free Culture @ NYU and Free Culture @ Harvard art shows. If you click on any of the work you’ll be able to read the licenses. You'll go to the page on Flickr and get higher resolution versions

Vinci Calamari: Jesse: Yeah many ppl use DRM, we need to start somewehere

Jesse Malthus: oh, the plight of the unsupported linux user

Jesse Malthus: I hope 1.10 will help fix that...

Vinci Calamari: Jesse: its not about Linux, its all about freedom

Jesse Malthus: Vinci: I was referring to the SL client's lack of full Linux support

Inamorata Alphabeta: i gave up and used my brother's mac...i'm afraid to test sl on my linux machine

Jesse Malthus: Linux SLers are second class citizens (I don't want to rant...)

Genevieve Junot: (we have CC'ers who have made SL run on Linux.)

Vinci Calamari: Genevieve: they use Linux and the Linux client?

Inamorata Alphabeta: the linux client is still being tested, isn't it?

Jesse Malthus: Inamorate: Yeah, alpha version.

Vinci Calamari: Jesse: Every Linux user can use the Windows Client if he wants

Jesse Malthus: Vinci: that's untrue

Inamorata Alphabeta: vinci: really? have you tried it?

Jesse Malthus: for example, I can't run with wine my machine

Monty Marx: not on ppc tho :(

Vinci Calamari: why not?

Jesse Malthus: WINE is incomplete and buggy, still

Fred Beckersted: Also, please check out the other work

Vinci Calamari: i dont agree

Jesse Malthus: and it takes too much power to run

Jesse Malthus: WINE is not a fully viable option at this time for all users

Simon Oz: I can't imagine how it would run through emulation.

Genevieve Junot: Rejon McLuhan is the CC-er to talk to about running SL on Linux

Vinci Calamari: Jesse: Well with SL you have to have a powerful machine anyway

Jesse Malthus: SL runs fine on my 1.1ghz 256meg machine

Fau Ferdinand: get sl to support an open video format is on the roll ?

Vinci Calamari: Fau: They told me yes . seems many video formats will be supported

Fred Beckersted: So this is something I'm excited to announce CC and FreeCulture.org wants the SL community to remix this art. We'll be doing a show in June here, of the remixed art. And have an event about it. So click on the work, download it and get remixing. We'll be posting some announcements on it, but you guys are the first to know. We'd love to see what you guys can do with it. One important note is that you should pay attention to the specific licenses.

Minna Childs: I'm ready to create a mashup. Fred Beckersted: Some might be ND which means No-Derivs Jesse Malthus: but what about the NoDerivs on some of these pieces? Inamorata Alphabeta: we can't remash NDs? Rizzermon Sopor: yeah, no mashing up ND stuff , right? Fred Beckersted: Right,

Once you guys finish the remixes please IM Gen with your finished remixes. This just a sampling of all the CC licensed work in the Free Culture shows

Inamorata Alphabeta: fred: are you planning on having another free culture show soon at nyu? Fred Beckersted: Inamorata ; Hopefully. We'll probably try to get one together next year.

Rizzermon Sopor: Fred is this the only stuff we can mash up, or can we use whatever is from free culture posted on flickr? Fred Beckersted: Rizzermon : Anything on the flickr accounts too. Genevieve Junot: Depending on the licenses In Kenzo: fred, i'm sending you our print mashup now Zenigma Suntzu: Oh goodie...my Sl shots are CC Fred Beckersted: the two flickr accounts are FreeCultureNYU and then SharingIsDaring Zenigma Suntzu: Remix the ones on those two accounts.

Inamorata Alphabeta: fred: does the free culture club at nyu ever meet...in RL person? Fred Beckersted: Inamorata : Of course. We have weekly meetings during the school year. Inamorata Alphabeta: i'm doing research on the concept of free culture and sharing through tech and i was wondering if i could meet with any of you Fred Beckersted: Inamorata : Please Rizzermon Sopor: Inamorata I could meet with you, I have done limited stuff with CC licensed materials, but if you wish. Inamorata Alphabeta: that's awesome., all the experience i have with CC is on flickr for my photos In Kenzo: on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amoration/ Inamorata Alphabeta: flickr.com/photos/showmetheworld i'm shutter_lust on flickr Fred Beckersted: My account is 'mecredis' on flickr In Kenzo: i laid out a coic of the CC: comix we did this week if anyone else wants one IM me.....this is our first print remix of SL culture

Minna Childs: Are there other New Yorkers here? Fred Beckersted: Yes, I live in NYC right now Inamorata Alphabeta: so am i Minna Childs: I do as well. Fau Ferdinand: I'm a Londoner

One place we should all meet is at CopyNight. Have you guys heard of this? Minna Childs: Not I. CopyNight is a once a month night I host where people involved and interested in Copyright. Come and drink beer!

htttp://www.copynight.org

Oh, I should add, my e-mail address is freeculture@fredbenenson.com Fau Ferdinand: would do you guys run a mailing list?

Vinci Calamari: Fred: I have only seen PDF files of your flyers. Are you also providing sources like for OpenOffice to better edit flyers?

Zenigma Suntzu: If you feel so inspired you may donate to freeculture.org through the sign at the entrance. freeculture.org: Thanks for the donation, Zenigma Suntzu! freeculture.org: Thanks for the donation, Monty Marx!

Vinci Calamari: BTW I also think ppl interested in free culture in SL need a regular meeting Fred Beckersted: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/ Fred Beckersted: Vinci : I think this is a good idea and also something I wanted to suggest starting a SL chapter Vinci Calamari: time is problem Fred Beckersted: or something like that Vinci Calamari: because of time zones Zenigma Suntzu: We have the Free Culture group with about 200 people in it. Fau Ferdinand: I'm interested in art related stuff Fred Beckersted: Thats great. Zenigma Suntzu: It would be natural to just call a meeting. Fred Beckersted: I was thinking we should do a protest or something Vinci Calamari: i know, already member Fred Beckersted: in SL Inamorata Alphabeta: an SL protest sounds fun Miller Copeland: Okay, cool. 6 pm - just pick where you want to meet up. Fred Beckersted: Yeah, the first virtual protest Jesse Malthus: Fred: An sl protest would be cool Jesse Malthus: but where and why? Simon Oz: Hehe, a somewhat regular occurrence, but this one might have a point ;) Fred Beckersted: good question Miller Copeland: Gen, I'm Miller Copland - that was a great event tonight. My first CC one, RL or SL. Monty Marx: curry castle ;) In Kenzo: what will you protest now? Fred Beckersted: Thats a good question. Fred Beckersted: Maybe we could burn something in effigy? Zenigma Suntzu: The only thing we lack Vinci is someone to call a meeting. If you want to get a venue (here?) and call one, we can announce it. Inamorata Alphabeta: a sony cd? In Kenzo: was there any fodder in philip linden's town hall today? Zenigma Suntzu: on Free Culture and the Forums. Minna Childs: ha, burning man culture. Jesse Malthus: SL doesn't have many injustices In Kenzo: haha i heard you minna Simon Oz: You could do an awareness invasion rather than a protest (until there's more to protest) Fred Beckersted: Yeah, though Sony is getting better In Kenzo: <--- builds the man Inamorata Alphabeta: did anyone mention a listserv for SL users interested in CC? Minna Childs: ha ;- Minna Childs: ;-) Fred Beckersted: Ok Fred Beckersted: So why don't we try showing this film Fred Beckersted: Everyone want to follow me? Simon Oz: There's a section in the forum for CC I think. Fau Ferdinand: I'd like to see more open scripting here Fred Beckersted: hah, I keep facing the wrong way Minna Childs: hm, and I'm following you. Simon Oz: Later all, I'm out of juice, thanks for the talk Fred. Fred Beckersted: Simon, thanks for coming Zenigma Suntzu: Fred, is the movie set to the right URL? You should tell us when to press play. Zenigma Suntzu: so we're more or less at the same spot. Genevieve Junot: Does everyone see a movie control at the bottom? Zenigma Suntzu: I do Vinci Calamari: yep Inamorata Alphabeta: yeah Genevieve Junot: press play Fred Beckersted: Cool Fau Ferdinand: yeah Fred Beckersted: so Hit play Genevieve Junot: when you're ready Fred Beckersted: I'll talk a bit about this Fred Beckersted: This was one of my favorite film remix submissions Minna Childs: I'll just watch backwards. Fred Beckersted: where someone turned Star Wars into a silent film Rizzermon Sopor: Inamorata looking at some of your flickr photos, they look good, see a couple that could be used for video Fred Beckersted: complete with music from siletn films Fred Beckersted: which is now in the Public Domain Inamorata Alphabeta: rizz: thanks :-) Fred Beckersted: incidentally, this was the only film remix we could get up tonight Fred Beckersted: we'll try to get some other ones together soon Inamorata Alphabeta: riz: i;d love to see it when you're done Zenigma Suntzu: I see the film, but I don't hear the music. Monty Marx: minna - stand up and sit down on the bench in front of you then you will see ;) Fred Beckersted: Yah, I'm not hearing it either Minna Childs: zenigma, it's silent. Rizzermon Sopor: Inamorta some of them can easily be made to look like there is action despite them being still photos :) Zenigma Suntzu: lol Minna Childs: or I thought.... Fred Beckersted: Well, its silent in the sense that it doesn't have any dialogue it should have some wacky piano stuff. Minna Childs: there's no music control. Zenigma Suntzu: Probably something in the quicktime encoding. Zenigma Suntzu: There wouldn't be one for seeing movies with sound. Fred Beckersted: Yeah, I have to say that I am not a fan of QuickTime Zenigma Suntzu: Yea, all you gotta do is get the wrong codec. Vinci Calamari: I keep crashing when pressing play Zenigma Suntzu smiles. Zenigma Suntzu: Very nice. Fred Beckersted: So Fred Beckersted: I have to say Fred Beckersted: I am talked out Fred Beckersted: or rather, typed out. Inamorata Alphabeta: lol Zenigma Suntzu: Great job Fred. Fau Ferdinand: yeah Minna Childs: Thanks for the speech. Zenigma Suntzu: Thank you so much. Inamorata Alphabeta: yeah, well done Fred Beckersted: Thanks for coming everyone, this has been a wonderful experience. Scope Cleaver: Thanks Fred, and good luck. Monty Marx: thanks that was great keep up the good work