"Marxist-Lessigism"

Dan Hunter, Legal Affairs

Computer users of the world have united behind Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig — and what they're doing is much more important than his critics realize.

At Swarthmore College, the crowd is mostly students, and maybe a few professors and interested outsiders. It's a typical turnout for a public lecture by a well-known law professor.

But there is something different and a little odd about this group. Swarthmore doesn't have a law school, so the audience includes no young men in suits that still have the label attached, and no young women with high-heeled shoes so new the soles aren't scuffed. And there is something else, something funny about the T-shirts. Everywhere you look, there are T-shirts with slogans, not logos. No "Tommy Hilfiger" and "Ralph Lauren" here. Just shirts with references too obscure to parse. What is "Downhill Battle"? Or "Grey Tuesday"? One kid has a shirt with the picture of a skull and crossbones on it, and written boldly across it are the words "Home Taping is Killing the Music Industry." Look closer, and you'll see, in tiny type, "(And it's fun)."

Gabriel writes:

"Angels Disrupt Nanotech Conference and Present 'Can of Worms' Award to Former Monsanto Man"

Buckinghamshire, UK, 9th Dec 2004 — A host of heavenly angels from THRONG (The Heavenly Righteous Opposed to Nanotech Greed) appeared today unto a nanotechnology business conference in order to bestow a "Can of Worms" Award on a representative of the Nanotechnology Industry. Chosen to receive the award was Mr Harry Swan, formerly of Monsanto, who is Nanotechnology manager of Britain's leading producer of carbon nanotubes, Thomas Swan & Co.

hydrarchist writes: "This text was originally published in Green Pepper's 'Information Issue', December 2003. You can find the other articles online at their web-site."

"Pirate Practice, Information Insurgency and Its Limits"

Alan Toner

Autonomous communications systems require three
functional elements: the means of production, transmission
facilities and informational raw materials. The
spread of the commodity PC has taken care of the
first. The second has been confronted through innovative
digital techniques — peer to peer [p2p] networks
to pool bandwidth and streaming technologies — and
through the illegal occupation of the airwaves by
pirate radios and more recently street televisions
[Telestreet], and in some countries through public
cable access and even independent satellite broadcasting
initiatives [DeepDish TV, NoWarTV, Global
Radio].

The last element has proven the most challenging
as access to the audio-visual lexicon that can
engage a wider public is constrained by a system of
property rights — copyrights and trademarks — that
denies the possibility of recycling the works of others
— whether to convey our argument or contest that of
another.

"World Wide Web Inventor Warns Of Patent Licensing Royalty Threat"

Steven Burke, CRN

Speaking at the Emerging Technologies Conference at M.I.T. on
Wednesday, World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee said that
royalty-free standards are key to advancing the online world.

Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),
told several hundred attendees at the MIT conference that it's
"very important" that everyone involved makes sure the Web is not
"tripped up by software patents."

hydrarchist writes:

"Reluctant Revolutionaries:
The False Modesty of Reformist Critics of Copyright"
Johan Söderberg, Journal of Hyper(+)drome.Manifestation

Any estimation of the long-term viability of the intellectual property regime rests on one fundamental assumption. Whether or not immaterial use values (non-rival goods) are believed to be qualitatively different from material use values (tangible, rival goods).[1] Which position is taken at this point is decisive. Hackers, activists, and scholars campaigning against copyright stress the discrepancy between endless informational resources and limited material resources. Those neo-classical economists that have paid attention to knowledge as a factor in economic growth generally agrees:

“If a public or social good is defined as one that can be used by additional persons without causing any additional cost, then knowledge is such a good of the purest type.”[2]

Spectropolis: Mobile Media, Art, and the City

October 1–3 from 12–4 PM, New York City, City Hall Park

Spectropolis is a three-day event (October 1-3, 2004) in Lower Manhattan that highlights the diverse ways artists, technical innovators and activists are using communication technologies to generate urban experiences and public voice. The increasing presence of mobile communication technologies is transforming the ways we live, construct and move through our built environment. The participants of Spectropolis make obvious or play with this shift, creating new urban perceptions and social interactions with cell phones, laptops, wireless internet, PDAs and radio. Don't forget to bring your Wi-Fi enabled laptop or PDA  for an added encounter!

"The Latest Protest Tool: 'Texting'

Protesters Use the Technology To Find, or Avoid, Hotspots"

Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — "Multiple reports of provocateurs setting trash fires in midtown," read one text message sent to 400-plus mobile phones this week through a service called Ruckus RNC 2004 Text Alerts.

For protesters navigating Manhattan during the Republican National Convention, text-message broadcasting services like this, sent to their cell phones, provided an up-to-the-minute guide to the action on the streets.

"Depleted Uranium:

Dirty Bombs, Dirty Missiles, Dirty Bullets"

Leuren Moret, SF BayView.com

“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” — Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam”

Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.

hydrarchist writes: this article is really about p2p power and bit torrent. Jo ta ke!

Must-Download TV:
The Latest Developments in TV-Show-Trading Technology Mean You Don't Need
TiVo To Watch What You Want, When You Want

Farhad Manjoo

When the Federal Communications
Commission gave its blessing on Aug. 4 to a new TiVo service that Hollywood has opposed, the
decision was widely hailed as a triumph for techies. The news was both
unexpected and unlikely -- these days, government officials rarely move
against the wishes of giant media companies.

hydrarchist writes.... This is an article written for the e-zine http://suburbia.sindominio.net
by Nomada and Montserrat Boix about hacklabs.


translated by cain, and then edited and revised by hydrarchist


AcD
~ MeSk

Hacklabs, from Digital to Analogue

Wednesday 10 September 2003

Translated 06 June 2004
revised August 13, 2004

The history of the hacklabs began in 1999, year of the second italian hackmeeting in Milan, where the need to take a great leap forward in digital
communication and create physical links between people interested in the use of new technologies and having a social background was discussed. But let´s proceed step by step... What is a hackmeeting?... The hackmeeting emerged in Italy in 1998. The manifesto of the italian hackmeeting in 2003 underlines that it´s a "meeting of the alternative digital community", setting out a "vision of hacking as an attitude not exclusively related to computers". Our "hacker" being -- states the manifesto -- is manifested in everyday life, even when we don´t use computers. It´s shown when we fight to change everything that we don´t like, such as false and prefabricated news, the commodification and restrictions imposed on the division of knowledge and know-how, and generally the use
of technology to defend dignity and freedom. The hackmeeting meets annually, usually for a duration of 3 days, during which are organized talks and conferences related to the world of liberated data networks, free software, cyber-rights, cryptography, hacking in general and, most of all, it proposes strong links with social collectives that use the net as a space of communication, sharing and struggle for their different causes.