USA Doctorow at boingboing on Yale A2k Conference

boingboing
We invite remote participation in the A2K2 conference on the accompanying A2K2 Wiki. There is room on the wiki to questions of the panelists and to include background resources for each panels.

Tectonic shifts and tipping points

Tipping points: Freedom v safety, participation v safety, broadcast v user content, signal v noise, popular v authoritative, folksonomy v taxonomy. Some people are discussing safe digital space. Some have freedom of speech concerns, including for 'lawyers what blog'.

Blogging about law and governance is a fantastic opportunity for public information and education. The CPTech WIPO blogs are fantastic; public role of information, ability for developing nations to participate as equals in the information and knowledge economy, not as subscribers to groups which are fencing our cultural and scientific conceptual spaces into tollways, but as members of our community.

Teachers are aiming to provide participative and constructivist learning opportunities (ones where students get to wrangle stuff and make things for themselves) in a context where education internet policy frequently deems that readwrite internet is unsafe.

TALO member Alexander Hayes can trace his digital life with a tag.

Some folks aim for continuity with their digital real estate/name space, some folks shift and change, some use both. It is easier to use a single name for a single line of thought or perspective to give that theme a useful thread. For other ideas and more adventurous or political thoughts discussions experiments people might like to be a distinct self. Avatars are studying law in Second Life.

Secondlife is slicing into separate sectors for safe teen surfing, teens themselves are lobbying to be able to participate in the wider SL economy not just in the teen SL economy. Danah maps the void.

Open source communities are built around the opportunity to participate and share, to have open dialogue and to find our own niches of common interest and signal in amongst the flow of information. Balancing context with expression, finding the best ways to share ideas effectively. Building community value and individual opportunity. This contrasts with more 'broadcast model' projects which aim to broker access to technologies and to technologists.

web2 and the 'year of us' meets DMCA and the terror of toothpaste.
It cant be a war, it isn't disruptive technology, it is a very traditional open flow of conversations in a new context, the only difference is we can hear further now.
We can be heard further now. Less shouting, some listening, learning how to mesh folksonomies and taxonomies, where they each are powerful. We can customise our own input channels, make our own safe, choose our own voice and context, and explore our freedoms and understand them better as individuals and as communities.

This video captures the feeling for me.

Discussions are brewing Jimmy Wales comes to town, and I am saving to go. I think this will be a ripper, panel debate, participation and access in education and knowledge. We live in interesting times. =)

AU Jimmy Wales and Garry Putland interview

Transparency, openness, freedom and access to information
Deanne Bullen's blog has the links.

Mark Shuttleworth on DRM

link via Peter Ruwoldt.

There are some ideas that are broken, but attractive enough to some people that they are doomed to be tried again and again. DRM is one of them.

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/96

USA User Generated Content: The Copyright Conundrum

via A2K

AU folks might find the webcast interesting.

User Generated Content: The Copyright Conundrum
April 10th | 4:00 pm — 6:00 pm
Reception to Follow
Washington College of Law | Room 603

4801 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington D.C.

Registration: www.wcl.american.edu/secle/cle_form.cfm

The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the American University Washington College of Law and the Center for Social Media at the American University School of Communications, in collaboration with the DC Chapter of the Copyright Society of the USA, present a lively discussion on the implications of copyright law for makers of participatory media and the platforms on which it is
displayed. The discussion will emphasize strategies to avoid or minimize risk of copyright liability. Panelists will include:

Sarah B. Deutsch
Vice President & Assoc. General Counsel, Verizon

Alec French
Senior Counsel, Gov’t Relations, NBC Universal, Inc.

Fred von Lohmann
Sr. Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Steve Tapia
Sr. Attorney, Law & Corp. Affairs, Microsoft

Mike Remington
Partner, Drinker Biddle & Reath, LLP

This event is open to the public. Your registration is appreciated to help our planning of the public reception following the panel.
Registration, however, is not required to attend.

Registration
www.wcl.american.edu/secle/cle_form.cfm

Webcast
www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/webcast.cfm

FR: Cheap FLOSS computer

Neuf Cegetel, has taken inspiration from the Minitel to develop a computer based on a similar low-cost model, aimed at people who are unable or unwilling to buy a computer. In a gesture to high-technology enthusiasts, however, the system uses the open-source software beloved by many engineers and programmers.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/02/technology/neuf.php?page=1

Here is the link to the neuf site.(FR)
Thanks Mr Rumble =).

USA Korea, FTA IP provisions

via A2K list

http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/documents/ustrfactsheet.pdf?rd=1
Office of the United States Trade Representative
www.ustr.gov April 2007

Free Trade with Korea Summary of the KORUS FTA

The United States concluded an historic agreement with the Republic of Korea on April 1, 2007. This comprehensive trade agreement will eliminate tariffs and other barriers to trade in goods and services, promote economic growth, and strengthen economic ties between the United States and Korea.

[snip]

State-of-the-Art Protection for U.S. Trademarks

• Provides trademark protection for sound and scent marks, as well as certification marks.

• Requires a system to resolve disputes about trademarks used in Internet domain names, which is important to prevent "cyber-squatting" with respect to high-value domain names.

• Applies principle of "first-in-time, first-in-right" to trademarks and geographical indications, so that the first person who acquires a right to a trademark or geographical indication is the person who has the right to use it.

• Provides for an on-line system for the registration and maintenance of trademarks, as well as a searchable database and requires transparent procedures for the registration of trademarks, including geographical indications.

• Prevents requirements for license recordation in order to establish the validity of that license.

Protection for Copyrighted Works in a Digital Economy

• Protects music, videos, software, and text from widespread unauthorized sharing via the Internet by giving copyright owners to ability to maintain rights over temporary copies of their works.

• Provides extended terms of protection (e.g., life of the author plus seventy years) for copyrighted works, including phonograms, consistent with emerging international standards.

• Establishes strong anti-circumvention provisions to prohibit tampering with technologies (like embedded codes on discs) that are designed to prevent piracy and unauthorized distribution over the Internet.

• Requires that government agencies use only legitimate computer software, setting a positive example for private users.

• Requires rules to prohibit the unauthorized receipt or distribution of encrypted satellite signals, to prevent piracy of satellite television programming.

• Provides rules for the liability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for copyright infringement, reflecting the balance struck in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act between legitimate ISP activity and the infringement of copyright.

Patents & Regulated products

• Provides for the extension of patent terms to compensate for delays in granting the original patent.

• Permits inventors to publish their inventions in journals and still have 12-months before their own publication will prevent patenting that invention.

• Protects against arbitrary revocation of patents and assures protection for newly developed plant varieties and animals.

• Clarifies that test data submitted to a government for the purpose of product approval will be protected against unfair commercial use for a period of five years for pharmaceuticals and 10 years for agricultural chemicals.

• Requires measures to prevent the marketing of pharmaceutical products that infringe patents, and to provide notice when the validity of a pharmaceutical patent is to be challenged.

Tough Penalties for Piracy and Counterfeiting

• Criminalizes end-user piracy, providing strong deterrence against copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting.

• Requires parties to authorize the seizure, forfeiture, and destruction of counterfeit and pirated goods and the equipment used to produce them.

• Provides for customs enforcement against goods-in-transit, to deter violators from using ports or free trade zones to traffic in pirated products.

• Streamlines customs procedures to increase efficiency of enforcement.

• Permits customs officials and prosecutors to bring an IPR enforcement action without having to wait for a formal complaint from the right holders, providing for more effective enforcement.

Cory Doctorow Profiled in The Chronicle of Higher Ed

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/004093.html

... Mr. Doctorow has little taste for what he calls the "maximalist" view of intellectual property — the notion that copyright is something to be enforced strictly rather than something that should strive to be as invisible and as flexible as possible — and the subtitle of his course is meant as a bit of a provocation. "Is everyone on campus a copyright criminal?" the syllabus asks, alluding to the overwhelming majority of college students who have swapped music, movies, and software on peer-to-peer networks. If the answer is yes, he suggests, then something has clearly gone wrong.

Course wiki: The Cultural Commons II: Copyright in Cyberspace

Harvard technology and society course wiki on copyright.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ptc/The_Cultural_Commons_II:_Copyright_in_Cyberspace