The Freedom Bit

Copyright law in the US is a circus. And like any circus, there are some great sideshows.

Take, for example, one man’s crusade to re-assert his ownership of the Electric Slide.

Is this a joke?

Yes, in that it’s funny. But the story is for real. Richard Silver, who claims to have invented the dance in the late 70s, has been actively pursuing copyright claims against people who publish videos of the dance.

Things got pretty ugly, with Silver using the DMCA to demand/force YouTube to take down videos of people performing the dance. (He claimed that part of the reason for the demands was that people were doing the dance wrong.)

The EFF has been working on behalf of Kyle Machulis, a videographer who posted a video that included a 10-second clip of people trying to do the Electric Slide. Because of the EFF’s effort, Silver has agreed to license his copyright under a Creative Commons license that allows anyone to use the dance for noncommercial purposes.

I hate line dances. That being said, simply shooting a video of me stumbling through the Boot Scootin’ Boogie should not require permission from anyone.
What public interest is there in assigning this kind of broad protection to dance? Does it encourage innovation in dance to allow someone to restrict the rest of the country from moving their body in a certain way? If the dancer is a good dancer, it won’t be possible to truly copy them. And a dancer’s own video is already protected by copyright law.

For almost all of human history, dance has been an unregulated, unrestricted activity. While I’m glad that Silver is allowing noncommercial use of his dance, the victory is bittersweet at best. It shouldn’t even be a question. As artists, videographers, photographers, painters and DJs should not be penalized for including references to the culture we all live in.

A Fair(y) Use Tale, embedded below, is a little intro to copyright law and fair use, made entirely with clips from Disney animated movies.

Warning: It’s hard to watch.

For a much better explanation of copyright, see below.

A transcript is available here.
Lawrence Lessig explains, better then anyone, the history and importance of sane copyright law. Put on some headphones: the movie is engaging and well worth your time.
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Pride in work encourages one to make a better product. Pride gives motivation to do better at everything we do, and encourages us to try to bring the rest of the world’s perceptions in line with our own.

A perverted sort of pride also prevents people from admitting to mistakes and faults. While it’s bad for our psychological being to excessively dwell on mistakes, pride becomes a problem when we refuse to rectify them.

When those in power have pride have this kind of pride, the ramifications can be tragic.

Witness this unfortunate case. A man called the police to complain about nuisance phone calls. When the police arrived, they saw the silhouette of a gunman in the living room of the house.

The closed off the street, called the SWAT team, and, when no one answered a knock to the front door, they broke in via the back door.

They were then confronted with the following terrifying image:

It seems the hapless homeowner had a model of Tomb Rader heroine Laura Croft in his living room.

At this point, the police had two choices. They could either:

a) burst out laughing, and mention to the poor chap who just had his house broken into that the bedroom closet might be a better location to store the cardboard cutout with the plastic toy gun.

Or

b) Arrest the poor chap on trumped up firearms charges

Guess which one they chose?

This sort of thing happens all the time, everywhere. A few years ago, a Seattle police officer, not on an emergency call, made an illegal right turn just a few feet in front of me, forcing me to slam on my breaks to avoid a collision. The cop then pulled me over and gave me a ticket for running a red light. (MY light was green, HIS light was red.)

I took the case before a magistrate, who informed me that because the officer said I ran a red light, I must have run a red light, and I was to pay the fine. The officer was too proud to admit his mistake.

According to this episode of This American Life, much the same thing is happening to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. We gathered up hundreds of people though all sorts of questionable methods, most of whom have no connection to any terrorist organizations. We know this now. But we won’t release them, because to do so would be embarrassing.

The story, when explaining why the writ of habeas corpus exists, says: “The king shouldn’t just have the right to just detain somebody because it’d be an embarrassment to have the guy free.” But this is exactly what we are doing.

The government, the presidency, has too much pride to rectify a horrendous, ongoing mistake, and in refusing to get over its pride, only makes the situation worse. Freedom requires humility in public servants. –>

We talk about freedoms that relate to the digital world. We complain when DRM makes download music less valuable then music from a CD. We don’t want to have to face interrogation and harassment when we board a flight.

…But we really don’t want to be tortured.

Despite never delivering an applause-generating one-liner, McCain delivered the only sensible answer to Fox News’ ridiculous question. A government that suffers torture, let alone one that practices it, is a government that has lost all moral authority. All of our freedoms are rendered meaningless if we can be whisked away and held indefinitely without trial.

Of course, the Supreme Court could put an end to this tomorrow if they wanted to. Currently, the US Government’s Constitution doesn’t apply on land that is rented. By that same logic, I could make crystal meth if I rented a house in Mexico. US law applies to US citizens everywhere in the world. The same should be true of the US government.

The fact that we’re even debating torture is a giant step backwards. Anyone who suggests that we should expand the shameful and criminal program at Guantanamo Bay should be shunned as a fascist.

The freedom award this week goes to KOOPA, who are the first band (that I’ve heard about) to break into the singles chart…without signing to a label.

(To listen to their music, click here. For some strange reason, they decided to make it so you can’t listen to a whole track in their “music” section, but they put their whole music video up on YouTube. Go figure.)

They are pretty rockin’ too. I’m not usually the pop-punk kind of guy, but I’d listen to this.

Keep slugging through it, fellow do-it-yourselfers. Freedom is owning your future. –>

We’ve all been presented with long legal agreements when we install software. Most of us don’t read these things: they are very long, hard to understand and the software won’t install without agreeing anyway. What’s a freedom-loving citizen to do?
Well, if you happen to have children running around your house, just have them install the software. Legal agreements aren’t binding on them. Agreements they enter into aren’t binding on you. Problem solved.
Of course, the real solution is for judges/the legislature to recognize that these are adhesion contracts and that they should not be legally enforceable. –>

In North Korea, you need an internal passport in order to travel between cities. If you are stopped away from home without an internal passport, even on foot, you will be arrested.

This is a typical element of a modern fascist state. The U.S.S.R. had the same system, and remnants of another system remain in modern China. Travel restrictions are a natural outgrowth of the expansive state control of the citizens of these former communist states. South Africa also had an internal passport system to help enforce apartheid.

The right to travel is a basic freedom. In a democracy with respect for freedom, the state should only be able to require identification papers in very specific cases. One situation typically considered valid is during a legal traffic stop, where the police can request to see proof of your permit to drive. Another case is during the crossing of international borders.

Yesterday, the supreme court of the United States made a decision that has serious implications for our right to travel freely.

In the case Gilmore v. Gonzales, (more info about the case at this site) the Supreme Court was asked to reveal the secret law that requires airlines to obtain ID from everyone who flies in the US commercial air system, so the law could be challenged in court. From news.com:

‘The Bush administration … claims that the ID requirement is necessary for security but has refused to identify any actual regulation requiring it. … The Justice Department has said it could identify the secret law under seal, which would be available to the 9th Circuit but not necessarily Gilmore’s lawyers. But any public description would not be permitted, the department said.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court, by refusing to hear the case, decided that not only is it ok to require ID from every air traveler in the US, but it’s ok to have a secret law. We’ll leave the “secret law” part to another post: the case is too complicated to cover in full here.

Don’t ID requirements keep us safer? No, not at all. You may ask: “But what if terrorists want to fly?” Well, that’s a good point. Maybe we should do something about that. You know…like metal detectors and searches. And armor on the cabin doors. If someone was going to go through the trouble of plotting a bombing, they would also go through the trouble of obtaining ID. All of the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID.

An ID check does not make us safer at all. It does, however, make our lives more difficult. It’s more lines at the airport, and heaven forbid if you happen to share a name with a suspected terrorist, or happen to have the name of “Mohammad.” And yet, when we mention this, they ridicule our interests as insignificant. The threaten us. “Papers, Please,” they demand — and we lower our eyes and obey.

ID checks contribute to the culture of fear. It makes it easier to control us. They do not make us any safer. So why do we submit? Why do we tolerate those who force us to submit?

Is your freedom bit set? –>

Computers speak in a string of 1s and 0s. We call each one of these 1s and 0s a “bit.”

The digital world is incredibly simple: everything is either true (1) or false (0). Ever try to fast-forward in a DVD and had a message that says “operation not permitted” come up? That’s because that section of the disk has a bit that tells the player to not allow you to skip that section. Deny track skip = 1.

The people in power — big media companies, many governments, maybe even your boss — are trying to trade our freedom away so they can make more money. They use many tactics for this: they keep us afraid, they threaten us, they ridicule our interests as insignificant.

They lie to us, as if giving up our freedom and wasting our time could possibly make our lives better.

Those who want more control are busy setting bits that tell us what not to do. Broadcasters are trying to set a bit to make it impossible to fast-forward through commercials with your TIVO. They’ve even said that they should be able to set a bit to tell your TIVO not to record a show…and make a law telling your TIVO it has to respect that bit.

We suggest setting your own bit. We call it the “freedom bit”.

When your freedom bit is set, that means that you refuse to indulge those who would restrict your freedom for their profit and gain.

New versions of Photoshop require “product activation”, so if you upgrade your computer, you have to waste your time to call Adobe and beg them to let you run the software that you paid them $650 (US) of your own money. When you’re asked to do that, just tell them “Sorry, operation not permitted.”

When you’re told that you have to sign a two-year contract in order to use your cell phone, make sure that it’s a good deal for you. If it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it to be stuck with one company for that long, just say “operation not permitted.”

Show my ID or give out my address for a cash transaction? Sorry, operation not permitted. My freedom bit is set.

Come into work on Christmas? Is it really worth the money? Is public health on the line? No? Sorry, operation not permitted.

When you buy something, should you have the right to use it? If you bring a DVD home and find out you can’t fast forward or copy it to your iPod, what do you do? Do you have the same problem when you download the movie? Which choice is better for you?

Sony decided to put a computer virus on some music CDs that would stop you from copying your songs, that you paid for, to your iPod. Are you going to keep giving them your money?

Is your freedom bit set?

-Daniel –>

This is the offical blog of OwnYourPhone. Run by Daniel Hornal and Adam Eivy out of Seattle, this blog attempts to log and discuss modern issues of freedom, security, copyright law and other interesting evolutions within the digital age. –>