Despite the resistance, American Senate is about to grant immunity to telcos that are currently breaking the law by helping the NSA to spy on citizens, all in favour of the ‘war on terrorism’. As a response the Electronic Frontier Foundation for digital citizen rights initiated the Stop the Spying! campaign, asking the American people to visually claim their right to privacy. The results can be found on Flickr.

Source: Boing Boing

Verscheen in het Nederlands op cut-up.blog.

The day before yesterday the Danish record label Urlyd claimed to have been the first to release a physical album under a Creative Commons license. The album Small Arm of Sea (2008) by singer/producer Tone will simultaneously be available as a deluxe CD/DVD or old-fashioned vinyl and as a free and legal download. The physical editions of the album also have the words “Copy this album for your friends, please!” printed on them. This all has been made possible by using a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license and the support of KODA. This Danish music copyright collecting society will take care of the commercial exploitation of the music.

A great example of how free distribution of music can be combined with commercial exploitation! It also shows how online rhetoric is influencing the offline world and our society and culture in general.

For the Dutch readers, I would however like to refer to some controversy about Urlyd claiming the first physical release under a Creative Commons license.

Verscheen ook op Simuze Nieuws.

Today piracy and modern youth culture are explicitly linked. In his book The Pirate’s Dilemma (2008) Matt Mason describes this current situation in a historical perspective. And he rightfully does so, because piracy has played a major role in the becoming of our modern society. Mason argues that piracy is more than the one-dimensional ‘threat’ that the media industry is calling it. It is – and always has been – an important catalyst for innovation. From all this he concludes that today’s occurrences of piracy are a sign of a change in the way we interact with information and cultural goods. The book deals with many examples of these changes and its implications, which makes it an obligatory reading.

Verscheen in het Nederlands op cut-up.blog.

It almost seems that even the – normally utterly ignorant – Big Four understand the ‘problem’ of media piracy better than the European Union. While as we speak all major record labels have decided to give up on DRM, EU commissioner Viviane Reding has announced the plan to create a single European-wide market for online media content protected by a “truly interoperable, consumer friendly DRM system”. I think most people who know something about DRM will agree this plan is outdated, unfriendly to EU citizens and simply deemed to fail. DRM is defective by design!

To help remind the EU that DRM died in 2007, please sign this open letter!

For the Dutch readers who don’t know what DRM is all about, please read the article Wat is (er mis) met DRM? I wrote for Netcultuur.