I’ll be speaking at Johns Hopkins this Thursday, Nov 17th, at 5pm, tell your friends at JHU! My wiki-obsessed buddy Asheesh Laroia is kind of running the ACM chapter there, and we stayed up late last night writing a good blurb for my talk. Now I just hope I can measure up to it! Here’s the ad he e-mailed out to the student body:
ACM meeting: Thursday 5PM 11/17/2005 in Shaffer 300. Free food.
“Next time you hear, ‘Don’t touch that dial,’ YOU MAY NOT HAVE A CHOICE”
In 1985, the chief movie industry spokesperson said, “The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”
Today, as the Internet and other advances give you the freedom to create music and movies and edit others’ work, the same corporations are trying to pass laws to build a “hands-off” world of passive consumption. Media companies have threatened to outlaw fast-forwarding through commercials and launched lawsuits against important works of art. Their laws limit civil liberties and public discourse. Copyright can be an important tool for encouraging creativity, but the industry’s abuse threatens the spirit of exploration and discovery that makes us human.
Nelson Pavlosky will explain the issues at stake in this crisis of law and creativity over FREE MILK AND CEREAL. http://www.acm.jhu.edu/ for more info.
About Nelson Pavlosky:
Pavlosky rose to fame in the digital rights scene by successfully suing Diebold in OPG v. Diebold. In this case, Pavlosky and fellow student Luke Smith fought for the rights to distribute Diebold corporate memos that showed the company defrauded states with its electronic voting machines and botched various elections. The publication of these memos, along with JHU’s Avi Rubin’s report on the insecurity of the voting machines, prompted states like California to file criminal action against the copmany in addition to the general national discussion.
Most recently, Nelson Pavlosky founded the student organization FreeCulture.org to help students fight for their disappearing online rights. He has helped lead several of its campaigns, including Barbie-in-a-Blender Day, Undead Art, and Save The iPod. Together with youth around the world, he fights for copyright reform and freedom of expression, taking advantage of the democratizing power of the Internet and digital technology to help build a more participatory culture.