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Keep questioning copyright: All Creative Work Is Derivative

Mar 9

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in the good fight | 1 Comment

All Creative Work Is Derivative


This is the second “minute meme” from Nina Paley for Question Copyright. Be sure to check out her walkthrough of her “Free Culture Lunch” process.

I’ve been using Nina Paley as the standard bearer for the modern notion of copyright in my classes. Some students have readily embraced the concept and others have pushed back (hard) that the corporatist copyright ethos will never die. But every single person admits that the system is broken. It has been a fascinating conversation and one that would have been much less lively without Nina’s example. Most important, though, is the fact that all of the students are questioning copyright. That is a victory in and of itself.

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March 4: two campuses, two experiences

Mar 6

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in our police state, student activism | No Comments

I received the following update and photo gallery from my cousin, Kat Williams, who is a doctoral candidate at UCLA:

We had fun yesterday [Ed. March 4]. I made the banners. Actions were fairly decentralized. My department lost the big march early on as we were carrying large drums. We had a nice slow-motion procession through Royce Quad carrying the banners in a line. Lots of people taking pictures, though I haven’t seen any yet. Then we met up with other protesters for the sit-in at the Chancellor’s office, bringing a dance party to that hot hallway. You can find video of it on Facebook. [Ed. I haven't found this yet video at The Daily Bruin.] While there, we also did a couple of rounds of Guerilla Yoga Drill to bring some meditative mindfulness to the sit-in. Though asked not to leave, we took our dance party/march to south campus and the court of sciences. About 8 bike cops were following us until we did more Guerilla Yoga Drills, then they took off. We headed back to our recently-renovated million dollar lawn (Dickson Plaza) for a picnic. We spotted Peter McLaren on the way and brought him along for a sandwich. Good times in the fight for public education. We took this quote as our guide:

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.” -Emma GoldmanKat Williams
UCLA doctoral candidate, folklorist

Video: AggieTV

Excellent student journalism from UC Davis' AggieTV. Watch as UC Davis students peacefully march and protest in support of public education. Eventually, they encounter police in riot gear who beat the students with batons, shoot them with pepper balls and use TASERs on the students (only one TASER is visible in the video, though the sickening sound of the TASER is quite audible in the background). Uploaded to bring this video out from behind the walls of Facebook.

And then, there was UC Davis. Another case study in how a police force can commit acts of violence and terror against a student population, release a statement saying that “no one was injured”, get it reported by the mainstream media to the entire world and everyone can just switch back to watching The Bachelor. Take a look at the on-the-scene reporting from UC Davis’ AggieTV with reporters Ericka So and Nicki Sun. They did an excellent job of bringing the story to the world. Ms. So and Ms. Sun did a far better job than the pap I saw on CNN anchored by Ali Velshi on March 4 and continue to find on cnn.com right now.

Really CNN? The lead point in the headline is that traffic is snarled? Not that police beat a female student unconscious (see video) with a baton at UC Davis? Oh yeah, you COMPLETELY LEFT THAT OUT OF YOUR REPORTING. Why CNN refuses to report on police brutality against American students continues to elude me. Honestly, if there is an explanation other than that they implicitly support a fascist police state, please leave it in the comments because I am all eyes and ears!

The key phrase to listen for in the video is “You guys ready to augment?” That is when the shit is about to hit the fan. I guess any of you potential protesters out there should memorize that phrase and know to cover your soft bits if you hear it.

When confronted with these two divergent experiences within the same University system, it is important to remember that March 4 wasn’t just about these two campuses. It was a nationwide Day of Action.

There have been clashes with police. Most notable was the takeover of a freeway in Oakland which ended, one officer estimated, in 150 arrests. One student was injured in that incident, though reports differ as to the severity of his injuries. Students were also arrested or detained in New York, in Michigan, and elsewhere, though rarely in large numbers…[but] today’s protesters rarely articulated immediate demands, and administrators rarely engaged with them. Today was more about activists talking to each other, working with each other, than it was about talking to or working with — or working to overthrow — university power structures. That part comes later. That part starts March 5.Angus Johnston
Historian, Blogger

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Facebook censors dissent among users

Mar 5

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in call to action, head on a swivel, new media | No Comments

facebook screenshot

Facebook won't allow users to post messages critical of their privacy options, or so I discovered this afternoon.


In the midst of trying to warn my friends, family, colleagues and cohorts on Facebook about a major hole in their privacy and security, I discovered that the problem is far worse than even what I initially was complaining about. I attempted to post the following text as a status update:

Just discovered that facebook implements their security settings haphazardly. So, for instance, if you have a list of people set up so that they don’t have access to your wall, that does not mean that they will, in fact, not have access to your wall. Yet another reason why you should not trust this privacy abomination.

I was subsequently confronted with this error message:

Facebook’s systems block chain letters — like this one — that contain false and misleading information. Please be careful when deciding whether to pass along messages like this. To learn more please read this blog post.

See the screenshot above for evidence. Needless to say, I’m disgusted. This isn’t the first time that Facebook has unjustly censored individuals. Good thing I have my very own trusty news machine, already set on “BLAST”, to fire off this alert to the interwebs.

So what to do now? Quit Facebook? Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. Once you join, they’ve got you. Literally, forever. Well, that’s a bit dramatic. They have you until such time that a non-human citizen of the United States of America (a “corporation”) such as Facebook, one that exists solely to mine data of consumers such as you and me for profit, would freely destroy that data that they are serving to their clients on their far away servers and protected from your prying eyes by byzantine EULAs (ex. 1, 2, 3), swarms of attorneys and spanking-new patents, hot off the printing press. Wait, I guess I wasn’t being dramatic.

Here’s what I recommend: don’t put any information, be it picture, video, thought, phrase, anything you care about, on Facebook, starting today. It isn’t a safe place and anything you put in there, you are likely forfeiting your rights to it. Worse, you may be accepting the onerous task of a prolonged legal battle should you ever want to claim rights to whatever content you are sharing again.

I am not an attorney and this should not be construed as legal advice.

There are plenty of good alternatives out there. Use Twitter and Flickr, or start a blog of your own. It really isn’t difficult, I swear, and with these options you have much more control over your data. You still have to be wary of EULAs, but so far, these organizations haven’t shown the menace that Facebook is brandishing.

I’m now going to try to post this article on Facebook. We shall see what happens. I’ll keep you updated with any developments. Who knows, I may get myself scoble-ized momentarily!

[Update: It posted! Their logic eludes me.]

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Public education deserves your attention…TODAY!

Mar 4

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in call to action, student activism | No Comments

View March 4 Day of Action in a larger map

A map of campus organizing around the March 4 Day of Action to Defend Education, compiled by Angus Johnston of the Student Activism blog (http://studentactivism.net). As of March 4, shows 122 events in 33 states.

March 4 is upon us. For those just joining the conversation:
…the March 4 Day of Action to Defend Education is a grass-roots event in which students, faculty, and others are coming together around the country to speak and act. The Day of Action was originally conceived in California as a response to the current crisis in higher education in that state, but it has since grown to encompass students and others at educational institutions at all levels in all parts of the country — from Berkeley and San Diego to Portland, Maine and Montgomery, Alabama.Angus Johnston
Historian, Blogger



My classes were slated to be about copyright law from the start of the semester. I’ll be “teaching in” on the issues facing public education and blending that in with copyright and the Creative Commons. It should be a wonderful day of radicalization! Don’t you just wish you could be there?

Unfortunately, if past is prologue, today is not going to consist entirely of polite discussions of issues. You can follow all the latest news of the protests in the #march4 twitter feed right here, brought to you live streamed via HootSuite.

As a purveyor of higher education, there is one particularly sickening question that I always come back to when discussing the hash that I sling for a living, so I’ll leave you with that. What does it say about our society that we are willing to allow our children to indenture themselves just for the opportunity at an education?

Now, with that said, go out and read about the issues (and read that last link!) and then get involved in the process of defending a strong, vibrant, cheap (preferably free) public education in your area, wherever you may be. In the oft quoted words of Zach de la Rocha, “It has to start somewhere; it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”

Educators and non-educators alike, endorse the movement here.

Follow the March 4 movement on Facebook.

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Quotable: Tommy Bobo

Jan 28

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in Kansas news, quotable | 3 Comments

This is what Kansas Day is all about! Via Facebook.

Happy Kansas Day Eve! Sleep tight and just maybe if you have been a good Kansan, Amelia Earhart will bring you Russell-Stover chocolates. And if you have been a bad Missourian, John Brown will shoot you and your family while you slumber.Tommy Bobo
Raconteur

Kansas Day is January 29th. This will be the 149th anniversary of Kansas’ statehood.

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You can’t afford to be neutral on a moving train. Howard Zinn: 1922-2010

Jan 27

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in My friends | No Comments

From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.Howard Zinn
Historian, Activist

I, too, teach this way, in large part because of role models like Howard Zinn. I can only hope to have a modicum of the influence this great man imparted on his students. RIP, Dr. Zinn.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove

[Ed. 1/29/2010 Added a tribute to Dr. Zinn from Democracy Now!]

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Tempus fugit!

Jan 25

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in contemplations | 2 Comments

Protect Your Education by Nick Bygon

Protect Your Education by Nick Bygon

I cannot believe this is my first post of 2010! Sorry for the prolonged absence, but my life has been undergoing some drastic changes. I accepted a full time position as an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media at Johnson County Community College just after the new year and have been rushing around trying to get ready for the start of the semester. That fateful day finally came and went last week and I’m happy to say that the students and I both found the new position suited us just fine.

I have a very crappy blog up right now at the school. Nothing to see there now, but note the address and I assure you it will improve as the semester progresses. I’m still hammering out some HR and IT bugs. It is still veeeeeery new.

That’s enough chit-chat: what the hell has happened in this country since I last wrote? Health care is falling out of vogue because democrats are too tired to keep working? Corporations had their imaginary inalienable rights reaffirmed by what can only be described as an activist decision from the Robert’s court? I’ll have more to say about that in a post to follow, but in the meantime, just go to your windows, open them and keep screaming mantra #2 at the top of your lungs. Repeat as necessary. Goldman Sachs is ONLY paying out $16 billion in bonuses, or a $498,000 average per employee. I doubt the janitor is getting 500 large. Finally, a nude model was elected to the United States Senate. I’ve got no problem with nude models in public service, but I am leery of our politics getting any closer to our friends in Italy. In short, its alot like 2009.

Yet, for some reason, I feel strangely hopeful. I don’t know if it is because I’m back in a classroom again, but I’ve got a feeling that we can get something done this year. Case in point: the poster that you see here from the talented Nick Bygon. It is a rally poster (released under a Creative Commons Attribution license) for the upcoming day of strike for the California tuition hikes on March 4, 2010. Stay tuned for more on that. It was passed on to me by my cousin and fellow educational activist Kat Williams. Thanks to Kat and Nick, this beauty now adorns the wall of my office and serves as a reminder to all of my students and co-workers of just why we are there. For 3+ weeks into the new year, that feels like an acceptable start. Now, about those goddamn, non-human corporations…

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Ten most important albums of the decade

Dec 31

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in music, top five | 10 Comments

These lists are always so subjective and this is no exception. Not only does this one include some of the very best music that was made over the course of the 00ughts, it happens to be the music that most impacted my life over the last ten years. Leave your list in the comments! And now, as always, in no particular order:

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Purging the 2009 story hopper

Dec 31

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in sundry | No Comments

For various reasons, these stories and videos never made their way into posts this year, though they were all worthy. This is in no way intended as your typical PR, tactical news dump. These are important stories that I actually want you to read. I just needed to clean out the hopper for the new year. So, please take your time and dig through these links and videos. There’s even some “feel good” links mixed in for good measure! Happy New Year!

Monsanto: Farmer suicides in India

The World According To Monsanto, Part 1

Elizabeth Warren on the Economy

Bill to “ban” organic farming

Monsanto’s dream bill

Buy “The World According To Monsanto”

Making the TransAfghanistan pipeline safe for democracy

Stop making sense by digby

In search of morale: are Americans too broken for the truth to set us free?

Who should resist and who will become serfs?

Why is America apathetic? Aww, screw it. Who cares?

From EFF’s secret files: Anatomy of a bogus subpoena

What do ISPs charge the law to spy on you?

Vienna students march on US embassy (in solidarity with UC students)

Waterboarding the rule of law

Spain investigates what America should

Amy Goodman and Canada’s Olympic Paranoia

Time Warner and Embarq can’t compete with city-owned ISP, trying to outlaw it

Cablevision power play: 101 Mbps Internet, no caps, $99

Parkinson’s Dirty Deal, Part 1

Student hoaxes world’s media on Wikipedia

Buggy ’smart meters’ open door to power-grid botnet

Time Warner cable cannot possibly compete with the small city of Wilson, North Carolina

Literary Lessons: Authors, Poet write the news

FCC to examine mobile phone exclusives

Comics artist Mark Sable detained for Unthinkable acts

Should linking be illegal?

Bush’s secret NSA spying may have tainted prosecutions, report warns

Free the patents and laws, activist tells the Feds

Birth of new species witnessed by scientists [evolution in action]

Clinic with two doors, a symbol of two-tier care

Corporations rule (II): Walmart can close stores in Canada to block unions

Democracy Now! covers Olympic security

US forgoes billions in tax on Citi

Feds ‘pinged’ Sprint GPS data 8 million times over a year

American’s consume 34 Gb of content per day

Millions of missing Bush administration emails found

Scott Demuth’ statement on facing terrorism charges [graduate student charged as terrorist for not revealing his research sources]

The credit card’s newest trick: 79.9 percent interest

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Please forgive the temporary look

Dec 24

Posted by Patrick T. Lafferty in sundry | 4 Comments

I upgraded Wordpress to 2.9 and there was a delayed reaction to my old theme that I’m sure you noticed if you tried to access the site over the last couple days. It was virtually unusable. Since I’m going to be away from the site for the next couple days, this is the temporary look that may grow into something more permanent. Leave your thoughts on it here. Obviously, there will be bugs here and there, so please excuse the dust. Thanks for your patience!

[Ed: New year's eve...I'm settling into the new look and growing to like it now. Still some bugs, but those will get ironed out shortly. Good riddance 2009! Onward and upward to 2010!]

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