the [open debate] plot thickens
i posted a thing the other day about both mccain and obama advocating open debates, and lo and behold, it seems to have potentially backfired for the one that’s not “that one.”
yeah, i know it’s something of a low blow, and that mccain wasn’t intending any racial overtones with his comment, but awesomely enough, mccain had gone on record encouraging just this sort of (presumably unexpected) use of the debate content. i’ll be interested to see if there’s any response from the mccain camp to this youtube clip (or any of the others) since it seems to be making the blog rounds.
Preparing for the Conference!
before i get too far ahead of myself with this whole blogging-the-conference thing, i wanna give a hige shout out to sarah roberts, who was supposed to be coming here with me, but due to a convoluted series of events, wasn’t able to come. sarah did a ton of work on the asm travel grant, and it’s without reservation that i say that i wouldn’t be here in berkeley without the exceptional and professional work that she did on this project.
after pulling an all nighter for reasons that seemed appropriate last night (though in hind-sight appear to be suspect), i left madison and arrived at san francisco without any trouble. i wandered around a little bit after arriving, dining on the finest philly cheese steak i have had the pleasure to encounter, and took a bunch of pictures, some of which will find their way on here later tonight or tomorrow, once i get them uploaded to flickr.
below, if you haven’t checked out it out already, is the schedule of events all cut & pasted from the SFC Conference site:
Day 1
- 10:00am, Registration, Meet, and Greet
- 11:00am, Welcome and Introduction
- 11:05am, Remix Culture: Anthony Falzone (Stanford Fair Use Project), Larisa Mann (DJ Ripley, Berkeley Law), Marc Perlman (Professor of Musicology, Brown), David Evan Harris (Global Lives Project)
- 12:00pm, Open Knowledge and the Public Interest
- 12:30pm, Open Museum
- 1:00pm, Lunch
- 1:45pm, Keynote: Lawrence Lessig (Professor, Stanford Law, Founder, Creative Commons)
- 2:15pm, Politics and Transparency: Noel Hidalgo (noneck.org), Justine Lam (Ron Paul Campaign), Josh Tauberer (govtrack.us)
- 3:15pm, Break + Snacktivity in Free Space
- 3:30pm, Keynote: John Lilly (CEO, Mozilla) interviewed by David Weekly (CEO, PB Wiki)
- 4:00pm, Copyright and Technology: Molly Van Houweling (Professor, Berkeley Law), Derek Slater (Google Policy), Jason Schultz (Samuelson Clinic, EFF), Brian Carver (Professor, Berkeley i School)
- 5:00pm, Keynote: Pam Samuelson (Professor, Berkeley Law)
- 5:30pm, Break + Snacktivity in Free Space
- 5:45pm, Access to Knowledge and Medicine: Michael Eisen (Founder, PLoS, Professor, UC Berkeley), Ethan Guillen (ED, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines), Eddan Katz (EFF, Access to Knowledge), Amy Kapczynski (Professor, Boalt)
- 6:45pm, Conclusions and Closing Remarks
- 7:00pm, Birds of a Feather Dinners
- 8:00pm-2:00am, Party! Feeling So Free at Blake’s on Telegraph, featuring DJ Ripley, Kid Kameleon, Refusenik, Lone Wolf
On-going
- Photo, Video Booth
- Free Data Drop Zone
- Free Culture Time Line
- Social networking game
- Affinity Groups
- Constructing Unconference schedule
Day 2
These blocks will remain unprogrammed until the conference arrives. This is so that we will have ample time and space to discuss the topics of greatest interest to the people who are actually at the conference! Help prepare for these activities on the conference wiki.
- 10:00am, Gathering
- 11:00am, Welcoming Remarks, Presentation of Schedule
- 11:30am, Block 1
- 12:00am, Block 2
- 1:00pm, Lunch Break
- 2:00pm, Block 3
- 3:00pm, Block 4
- 4:00pm, Block 5
- 4:30pm, Organizing Takeaways
- 5:00pm, Presenting Takeaways
- 6:00pm, Closing Remarks from Organizers
- 6:30pm, Clean up, fun good-bye activity
Last minute reg for unconference, schedule tweaks
On-going
- Photo, Video Booth
- Free Data Drop Zone
- Free Culture Time Line
- Social networking game
- Goal-oriented Jams (code, design, writing, organizing, etc.)
- Affinity Groups
here’s a much more in depth pdf of the prospective proceedings of the weekend. if you read the fourth page carefully, you’ll see that the national free culture site is going to be webcasting the conference live so you can follow along at home (mind the 2 hour time change), though right now the link is curiously not very useful. i assume it’ll get sorted out by tomorrow morning.
also, the national free culture blog lists a bunch of other blogs that are going to be covering the conference, so head over there and check it out if you wanna keep super-close tabs on this thing-a-ling.
i’m going to be taking notes & pictures, asking questions, mingling, generally grabbing as much swag i can get my grubby little hands on as possible, and reporting back as often as the (very tight looking) schedule allows.
if you’re wondering which “birds of a feather” dinner i’m planning on going to, as of right now, the “From Common to Creative Commons: Hip-hop and Free Culture” one has me the most stoked, though the list of options will balloon a bit over the course of tomorrow i would imagine.
Steal These Posters!
i’ve printed out a bunch of promotional posters for our screening of steal this film II next week (october 15th, 4070 vilas @ 5 PM, y’all). i’m gonna post a bunch (that i added the date, time and location to) up around the memorial union/library area, but that’s not gonna be enough. leave a comment or hit me up via the facebook group (i’m the so-called “creator”) if you can take a few to post up where you work, at a library, in the department you school yourself in, on your bathroom wall… anyplace where it will get seen by a ton of people (hopefully your bathroom wall isn’t exactly grand central station, for your sake).
i wish i could credit a particular artist for the images above, but there’s not one listed on the site as far as i can see (correct me if i’m wrong).
Rolling out the Blog Carpet…
i apologize in advance for the really weak pun up there…
i’m updating the blogroll up in here, so leave any blogs that might be of interest in the comments section and i’ll add them as soon as i can. sound good? good.
Both Obama and McCain Support Open Debates!
i just saw over on lessig’s blog that both candidates are on board for open debates, and you should be too!
sign up and show your support, as well as get some more info over at the lessig post i linked to above!
here’s some more information about the Open Debate Coalition from an article that ran a week or so ago in the huffington post.
“I think information, art and ideas should be shared.”
thinking about steal this film (both one, as well as two), as well as reading this blurb of an interview, has gotten me thinking about films that have been widely distributed via bittorrent. there are only a few other examples i can think of, the most recent of which being michael moore’s “slacker uprising.”
i seem to remember the john kerry and moveon.org swift boat veterans for truth rebuttal film (called something, something… upstream?) being distributed via bittorent, as well as “good copy, bad copy” which we showed last spring… are there any others?
does LEGITEMATELY distributing a film FOR FREE via bittorrent trackers mean that someone could screen it freely? not legally probably, but does that line of thinking hold up as far as the big picture goes? if something’s freely available (slacker uprising for instance) what’s the difference between putting it on a big screen and showing it to a ton of people for free, and telling them to all go home and download it for themselves?
steal this film II
we’ve been in talks with the fine folks over at the cinematheque, trying to get a place to screen a film or two, and it’s looking like we finally might have it! we’re shooting for next wednesday, october 15th at 5:00 pm. i know the time’s not the best, but it’s what we have to work with, and (having spent a hundred bucks last spring to screen a film at the play circle) i for one am pretty grateful for even that.
the film we’re looking to screen is steal this film II.
“what about the first steal this film” you might ask, well, i’ll tell you:
steal this film (the first) is more specifically about the pirate bay and all the hubub that they have gone through as high profile torrent aggregators, while steal this film (the second) is more generally aimed at addressing copyright and peer to peer issues. hence, the second film is a bit of a better introduction to the ideas of free culture, as well as the fact that it has interviews with some of the biggest names (siva vaidhyanathan, bram cohen, fred von lohmann, many others)
it’s also nice that both films are freely available on the internet and the filmakers explicitly encourage you to exhibit their work, which means that we don’t have to pay any licensing fees or what-have-you (always a plus).
keep your eyes peeled here for more info!
FIRST!
this is the first post on the university of wisconsin students for free culture blog! huzzah! there’s not much going on here right now, but there will be soon enough. this coming weekend is the national conference for students for free culture, and i’ve managed to convince ASM to bankroll the journey out there to represent the organization. i’ll use this space to post the many magical things i stumble across during my journey.
if anyone wants to jump on here and post stuff, please be my guest. the only criteria i have is that you be a student at the university of wisconsin (holler at the facebook group “UW Madison Students for Free Culture” to validate school status)
