Simon sez, "We did a free Summer of Love mashup compilation/album to tribute the first (1968) and the second (1988) Summer of Love revolutions in one. So we mashed Flower Power hits with acid house and rave stuff. As a bonus each artist created a custum vintage VW Bus paper model and we give them away in a handy print ready pdf file. The Summer of Love 2008 is a featured torrent in the Mininova so its ultra fast. There is a wacky alternate download as well, plus straming and track by track download too. Fans can find an empty VW bus sablon in the pdf so they can design their own bus and send it to us, we will post them in a gallery at the WHA!? site." Link (Thanks, Simon!)

Mary sez, "Jim C. Hines, author of Goblin Quest, has just written lyrics to go with the Gilbert and Sullivan perennial 'Modern Major General' AND he's released them under a Creative Commons license. They are ripe with video potential."

I am the Very Model of a Modern SF Novelist

I am the very model of a modern SF novelist,
I've manuscripts space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I know the kings of fandom and the best flamewars historical
From Andrew Burt to LiveJournal, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted too, with matters editorial,
I keep my cover letters brief and never too suctorial,
About rejection etiquette I'm teeming with propriety,
With many cheerful facts about your online notoriety,
I'm very good at worldbuilding and proper use of ansibles;
I know the hyphenated names of beings unpronounceable:
In short, in matters space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I am the very model of a modern SF novelist.

Link (Thanks, Mary!)

Michael Geist sez, "Tens of thousands of Canadians have spoken out against Bill C-61 [Ed: the Canadian DMCA] over the past month. In addition to the letters, MP meetings, and town halls, many have created mashups, videos, comics, posters, photos, and other creative art to express their disappointment and concern with Industry Minister Jim Prentice's plan for copyright in Canada. To build on this creativity, the Fair Copyright for Canada group is launching a new YouTube video competition. C-61 in 61 Seconds invites everyone to post a video - whether rant, mashup, or something new - on the copyright bill." Link (Thanks, Michael!)

MIT's FreeCulture club has started "YouTomb" -- a graveyard for youtubes taken off the Internet due to copyright complaints.

YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation.

More specifically, YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Glyn sez,

The EU Commission will be meeting shortly (possibly as soon as Wednesday) and formally accepting DG Internal Market's proposal to extend the term of Copyright in sound recordings. Once accepted the legislative initiative will proceed through the Council of Ministers and EU parliament. As you would expect the Open Rights Group and EFF are hard at work lobbying against this and they would like your help. Please follow the link and sign the petition.

The EU is doing this despite their own findings, the findings of the UK government's independent analysis and advice of Europe's leading intellectual research centres.

Link (Thanks, Glyn!)

If you're in Silicon Valley this week and want to have some legal-type fun, you could drop in on the Lenz v. Universal hearing (dress nice, behave yourself!) in which EFF will be arguing that Universal should be punished for sending a bogus copyright threat to a mom who posted a 29-second youtube of her adorable toddler dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy."

EFF represents Stephanie Lenz, who uploaded a 29-second clip of her son dancing in the family kitchen to the Prince song, "Let's Go Crazy," which is playing on a stereo in the background. Remarkably, Universal Music Publishing Group claimed that the video infringed its copyrights, and had the video yanked from YouTube. Lenz's lawsuit against Universal seeks to hold the company accountable for misrepresenting that her fair use violated its copyrights.

Link (via Recording Industry Vs. the People)

Matt sez, "Net neutrality is the principle that preserves an open Internet. We need to get the word out in order to help raise awareness about this crucial concept. Thirsty Ear Recordings and Future of Music Coalition have come together to release Rock the Net: Musicians for Net Neutrality, a compilation CD featuring artists who support Net Neutrality (Aimee Mann, Bright Eyes, Guster, The Wrens, They Might Be Giants, Wilco and more). Please, help us Rock the Net by talking about this exciting new release and informing your readers about the effort to preserve our basic freedom and keep the Internet thriving!" Link (Thanks, Matt!)

Indie comics publsher Boom! Studios is putting a bunch of its backlist comics (including the excellent Zombie Tales) online as free downloads:

The titles they’re offering include Ninja Tales, Zombie Tales, Hero Squared, 2 Guns, Shmobots and Cthulhu Tales.

“This is a great way to get the word out about BOOM! titles,” said Chip Mosher in a press release. “When people come to the site for free comics, they’ll be able to take a look at the other quality books we’re putting out. The interface ties all the parts of our website - the store, current titles, free stuff - into one beautiful package. New fans who might be stopping by for cool zombie or Cthulhu content can get turned on to what BOOM!’s doing across the board and check out the print editions in local comic book shops or at Amazon.com and mass market bookstores via our distribution deal with Perseus Books. We expect that people who aren’t BOOM! fans will discover our series and titles and be excited to own print copies.”

Link (Thanks, Dr. Webcomics!)

See also: Zombie Tales: comics anthology

I just spent ten minutes cracking up in a bookstore over a copy of Goodnight Bush, a satirical remix of the classic Goodnight Moon that wishes the Commander-in-Chief a hearty farewell (and don't let the door of history hit you in the ass on the way out). I couldn't take a copy home because all the store's copies were spoken for -- apparently they can't keep it on the shelf. Link

Canadian copyfighter Howard Knopf has suggested (presumably with tongue firmly planted in cheek) that recording artists whose music is played by torturers in Gitmo are owed performance royalties:

Leaving aside the legal niceties about whose law if any applies in that dreadful place, one can only wonder if ASCAP might not want a piece of the action. After all, it went after the Girl Guides not so long ago. And if it could try to make a buck off Girl Guides, who are nice people, why not alleged terrorists? Why should terrorists enjoy free music?

Link (Thanks, Howard!)

Neil Gaiman and his publisher have published the results of their free online release of his novel American Gods earlier this year -- the conclusion? Giving away ebooks for free sold books:

The Indies [ie. independent booksellers -- Neil] are the only sales channel where we have confidence that incremental sales were driven by this promotion. In the Bookscan data reported for Independents we see a marked increase in weekly sales across all of Neil’s books, not just American Gods during the time of the contest and promotion. Following the promotion, sales returned to pre-promotion levels.

Link (Thanks, Neil!)

See also: Free download of Neil Gaiman's American Gods

The Ontario Privacy Commissioner is urging Google to fight a ruling that will force it to turn over the logs of YouTube downloads to Viacom, stating that copyright enforcement should not be a used as the rationale for surveillance:

In an open letter to Google, the Ontario Privacy Commissioner encourages Google to challenge the ruling and states, “business should not, in my opinion, rely on the surveillance of consumers to protect their copyright interests. It is not acceptable to allow copyright enforcement to come at the expense of users’ privacy.”

Link, PDF Link to letter (Thanks, Chad!)

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: remixing every movie as a Christmas flick. Link

Alex sez, "I am public lead of Creative Commons in Poland (and a sociologist of new media). I'm running a study on CC license use at Flickr, and part of it involves a survey of Flickr users. The survey is really short and will only take several minutes to take part in. I don't know if you publish such information, but getting Boing Boing readers to participate would significantly increase the chances of understanding what it means that Flickr has offered CC licensing several years ago as an option." Link (Thanks, Alex!)

Matt sez, "On Sunday, July 13, 2008, every hour on the hour for eight hours beginning at 10:00 AM Eastern / 7:00 AM Pacific time, 'Brave Men Run' author Matthew Wayne Selznick will be reading a brand new, original short story set in the first year of his 'Sovereign Era' universe. These stories — official Sovereign Era canon — are from some of the most respected authors of podcast fiction, including J.C. Hutchins, Mur Lafferty, Nathan Lowell, Matt Wallace, J.R. Blackwell, P.G. Holyfield, Jared Axelrod. This will be in celebration of the paperback release of Matthew's novel 'Brave Men Run.'" Link (Thanks, Matt!)

Simon from Bloggasm interviewed some of Tor's authors who've given away their books for free online while they were available in stores and asked them if they believed the giveaways had sold more print books, and what made them think so:

“‘Scientifically’?” he [Scalzi] wrote to me in an email. “Probably not, unless you somehow managed to control (or at least account for and factor in) every incident of someone discussing your work and or going down a decision path to acquire the work, which is probably more work than it’s worth. But I don’t think that ’scientifically’ is the standard required here; I think ‘heuristically’ is probably better. If you consistently see a rise in sales of an author’s work after the release of a free e-book, then heuristically you have a good idea it’s beneficial.”

In his case, Scalzi watched sales of his book shoot up by 20 percent. But what’s even more interesting is that the sequel to Old Man’s War saw an increase of over 30 percent. Both he and Buckell benefited more from sales of books later in their series.

Link

Shardcore sez, "I think I've just painted the geekiest picture ever. It's a portrait of my friend Richard, he's a sysadmin. I've painted him in a server room, with Marvin the Paranoid Android. Holding a ZX Spectrum. I think you'll agree it ticks all the boxes of English geeks of a certain age..." Link (Thanks, Shardcore!)

I just got word from IDW, the publishers of my graphic novel Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now (which collects six of my short stories, adapted for comics by a team of talented writers and artists), that Barnes and Noble and Books-a-Million have both taken very large orders of the hardcover, every copy of which is signed and numbered (yes, I signed thousands and thousands of tip-in sheets, by hand, until I thought my arm would fall off). They're available online, of course, but practically every BN and BAM store nationwide is bound to have them. The book has also seen great orders from independents across the nation -- and, of course, it's available as a free, Creative Commons licensed download. Futuristic Tales on BN.com, Futuristic Tales at Books-a-Million, Futuristic Tales at independent booksellers near you, Download Futuristic Tales for free!

American University's Center for Social Media has just concluded a long, in-depth project to establish a set of "Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video." They worked with video makers, legal scholars, eminent sociologists, fans and others to create something that reflects the law, practice and future of fair use for video remixing and sharing online.

Fair use is a legally challenging area: it consists of four factors that judges can weigh when evaluating a claim of copyright infringement (judges can even disregard them or tweak them, based on common sense, as the Supreme Court did when they legalized VCRs in 1984). It's very hard to know beforehand whether a use of a copyrighted work will be found fair or not -- it requires careful analysis of previous caselaw and the direction in which the federal circuits are moving.

In constructing these principles, the Center for Social Media has done an enormous public service: they've created a plain-language document that is aimed at helping people who aren't legal experts to navigate the muddy waters of fair use, to make use of the rights they have under the law and make better videos without getting into legal trouble.

Video is increasingly becoming a central part of our everyday landscape of communication, and it is becoming more visible as people share it on digital platforms. People make and share videos to tell stories about their personal lives, remixing home videos with popular music and images. Video remix has become a core component of political discourse, as the video “George Bush Don’t Like Black People” and the “Yes We Can” parodies demonstrated. Both amateur and professional editors are creating new forms of viral popular culture, as the “Dramatic Chipmunk” meme and the “Brokeback to the Future” mashup illustrate. The circulation of these videos is an emerging part of the business landscape, as the sale of YouTube to Google demonstrated.

More and more, video creation and sharing depend on the ability to use and circulate existing copyrighted work. Until now, that fact has been almost irrelevant in business and law, because broad distribution of nonprofessional video was relatively rare. Often people circulated their work within a small group of family and friends. But digital platforms make work far more public than it has ever been, and cultural habits and business models are developing. As practices spread and financial stakes are raised, the legal status of inserting copyrighted work into new work will become important for everyone.

It is important for video makers, online service providers, and content providers to understand the legal rights of makers of new culture, as policies and practices evolve. Only then will efforts to fight copyright “piracy” in the online environment be able to make necessary space for lawful, value-added uses.

Link

Toronto's Edward Day Gallery has a wonderful response to Canada's proposed new copyright law, Bill C-61, which mirrors (and exceeds) the American DMCA. They've hung a show called Appropos featuring art that the new bill criminalises.

The locks will prevent artistic, legitimate and legal uses of media. The Appropriation Art Coalition, a coalition of art professionals across Canada oppose Bill C-61, advocating that if the new legislation is passed, it will make it "illegal to access existing material, modify it, comment on it and/or publicly display it. Criticism, parody and satire, under Bill C-61 become criminal acts." A National Post comments reader, GeofG, suggests that since the Bill prohibits circumventing digital locks, "taking a clip from DVD for purposes of parody or political criticism is outlawed; unlocking your cell phone is banned…as is watching overseas DVD’s". Another response to the Bill from Dala concludes that "A future with digital locks is one where works go into the Disney vault and never come out again".

The Appropos group exhibition is based on the work of artists whose use of imagery integrates existing popular culture products/icons. One of the purposes of the exhibition is to emphasize the crucial relevance of appropriation to contemporary visual artists and their studio practice. As revisions to Copyright Act legislation, known as the Act to Amend the Copyright Act, are currently underway by the Canadian government, there are valid concerns that the elements of contemporary artistic practice such as appropriation and "quoting" could potentially be outlawed by draconian legislation.

Link (via Geist)

Back-room dealings in the European Parliament have resulted in a "three strikes" rule being included in a new telecoms bill -- the rule would force ISPs to kick people who've been thrice accused of copyright infringement off the Internet.

If this bill passes, then Europeans' access to the network that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, access to medicine, family, civic engagement, banking, government services, and the whole sweep of human online endeavor would last only so long as they avoided three unsubstantiated accusations of downloading music or video or software without permission.

Worse still, the bill is set to be voted upon on July 7 -- that's this Monday.

The Open Rights Group has instructions for contacting your MEP. If you live in the EU and you care about your future as a citizen of the information society, call right away and make sure your MEP knows that this matters to you.

“One week before a key vote in the reform of European law on electronic communications (”Telecom Package”), La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) denounces a series of amendments aimed at closing the open architecture of the Internet for more control and surveillance of users..

…this set of amendments creates the unprecedented mechanism known as graduated response in European law; judicial authority and law courts are vacated in favour of private actors and “technical measures” of surveillance and filtering. According to rules set forth by administrative authorities and rights holders, intermediaries will be forced to cooperate in monitoring and filtering their subscribers, or they will be exposed to administrative sanctions”

Link

See also: Three false copyright accusations and we'll cut off your Internet access

Adam Reimer secured an interview with Charlie Angus, the ex-punk-musician turned Canadian Member of Parliament who'se leading the charge against the Canadian DMCA. Adam solicited interview questions from the web and got a great interview with a thoughtful, intelligent, and honorable politician. Link, Link to mirror (Thanks, Adam!)

Paul sez, "'Choices', from Randall Munroe's xkcd comic has been turned into a short audio drama (under four minutes) available under a Creative Commons license from Brokensea Audio Productions." Link (Thanks, Paul!)

Pedro sez, "Brazil is about to pass possibly the strictest legislation ever regulating the internet. The bill will be voted in the next few days by the Brazilian Senate. Please see below the translation of the article published today by Folha de Sao Paulo, the largest newspaper in the country:"

According to Ronaldo Lemos, by referring to "computer networks", "communication devices" and "information systems", the draft law covers not only computers, but also MP3 players, cell phones, DVD players, software systems and even digital TV set-top boxes, not to mention websites. Following this line of reasoning, the bill would cover even the act of unblocking a cell phone.

The professors claim that no country criminalizes access to information on the Internet in such broad fashion. "The closest legislation to what is being proposed here is the one passed in the USA, which criminalizes the act of circumventing technological protection measures. But no law has criminalized access itself," mentions the brief.

Article 285-B qualifies as a crime – also punished with 1 to 3 years of imprisonment and a fine – "to obtain or transfer data or information" without prior authorization of the legitimate owner.

The professors propose the exclusion or amendment of the text of two articles of the draft law. They suggest that the access and transference of information on the Internet be considered a crime only if fraud or "unlawful advantages" are involved.

Link (Thanks, Pedro!)

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "Our public.resource.org gift to all the makers out there this 4th of July is the full text of the California building, electric, mechanical, plumbing, energy, and fire codes, known technically as 'California Code of Regulations Title 24' and perhaps better known in the real world as '$890 MSRP.' It's not just a good idea to copy this data, it's the law." Link (Thanks, Carl!)

Simply Audiobooks -- an excellent audiobook retailer in Toronto -- has launched an online store selling all of Random House's DRM-free downloadable titles. Random House is one of the many audiobook publishers that wants to give up on DRM, but they've been thwarted by Audible (the exclusive supplier of audiobook downloads to Amazon and the iTunes Store) because the company won't sell DRM-free titles even when the publisher and author wish to make their work available without technological restrictions. The good news is that DRM-free formats are much easier to sell and support, which is clearing the way for new entrants into the marketplace like Simply Audiobooks and Zipidee, to compete with Audible.

Simply Audiobooks has announced plans to make a full range of Random House audiobook titles available for purchase and download in a DRM-free format. The deal makes the Toronto audiobook retailer the first to offer Random House audiobooks DRM-free, and covers more than 5,000 RH audio titles. Downloads will initially be limited to Simply Audiobooks Download Club members, but a la carte download sales will be available later in the summer.

Link (Thanks, Down With Bill C-61!)

The Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group is planning a major event for Industry Minister Jim Prentice's appearance at the Calgary Stampede. Prentice is the man responsible for the Canadian DMCA, a bill produced without any consultation that will criminalise Canadians for unlocking their phones and media, even if they do so for entirely legal reasons. Organiser Kempton Lam sez,

We have created a few slogans and info sheets. And may be people attending them can print out a slogan (or make a t-shirt) of one they are most passionate about. The slogans PDF files can be found under their respective directories here.

With much help from Michael Geist, I have created a concise info sheet so when people ask us questions or talk to us, we can hand these sheets out. The PDF file is called Fair Copyright info sheets.pdf.

Link, Non-Facebook Link (Thanks, Kempton!)

See also: Ask Canadian Industry Minister questions about the DMCA at the Calgary Stampede this Saturday

Uncle Wilco sez, "We have some wonderful sheds on readersheds.co.uk, but the most quirky ones are the Tardis sheds, full size replicas of the Doctor Who's famous time machine, but most are used to store garden tools and not travel through space and time. Now is the time to vote for your favorite shed, be it a Tardis or a normal garden shed you have until Friday the 4th July to Vote." Link (Thanks, Uncle Wilco!)

Jesse Willis went to see the new Disney/Pixar movie Wall-E and discovered that the lovable little robot is actually a dire criminal -- because he undertakes a variety of copying activities (bypassing DRM, file-sharing) that will be illegal under Canada's DMCA. Click through to read the unredacted version (warning -- minor spoiler if you do):

1. WALL-E records audio from his favorite movie, XXXXXXXXXXX, putting in onto his own digital recorder (bypassing the macrovision DRM on the tape). A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61

2. WALL-E archives the audio, he doesn’t merely time-shift it. He listens repeatedly! A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61

3. WALL-E shares his DRM-broken music with his friend, another robot named XXXXX. A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61

Link