My office, Noyce 3829, is on the Eighth Avenue side of the Science Building, on the top floor, at the east end of the long corridor.
Office hours for this semester are
My telephone number, on campus, is 3181. My e-mail address is stone@cs.grinnell.edu.
• Lethem, Jonathan. ``The ecstasy of influence: a plagiarism.'' Harper's magazine, February 2007, pages 59-71.
• Lessig, Lawrence. Free culture: how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. ISBN 1-59420-006-8. PDF version.
• Bollier, David. Viral spiral: how the commoners built a digital republic of their own. New York: The New Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-59558-396-3. PDF version.
• Abelson, Hal, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis. Blown to bits: your life, liberty, and happiness after the digital explosion. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Addison-Wesley, 2008. ISBN 0-13-713559-9. PDF version.
• Bechler, Rosemary. Unbounded freedom: a guide to Creative Commons for cultural organizations. Counterpoint, 2006. ISBN 0863555772. PDF version.
• Benkler, Yochai. The wealth of networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-300-11056-1. PDF version.
• Bollier, David. ``Governing the digital commons.'' Berkman Center for Internet and Society, May 12, 2009.
• Bowman, Shayne, and Chris Willis. ``We media: how audiences are shaping the future of news and information.'' Media Center, American Press Institute, July 2003. PDF version.
• Boyle, James. The public domain: enclosing the commons of the mind. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-13740-8. PDF version.
• Chan, Leslie, et al. ``Budapest open access initiative.'' Budapest: Open Society Institute, February 14, 2002.
• Creative Commons. ``Creative Commons Brasil.'' 2006.
• Doctorow, Cory. Content: selected essays on technology, creativity, copyright, and the future of the future. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2008. ISBN 9781892391810. PDF version.
• Doctorow, Cory. Little brother. Tor Teen, 2008. ISBN 0765319853. PDF version.
• Friends of Frontiers. ``Welcome to Friends of Frontiers.'' 2009.
• Gruss, Peter, et al. ``Berlin declaration on open access to knowledge in the sciences and humanities.''. Berlin: Open Access Conference, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, October 22, 2003.
• Hirtle, Peter B. ``Copyright term and the public domain in the United States.'' Cornell Copyright Information Center, January 6, 2006.
• ``johns.'' ``Welcome to GPLv3.'' Free Software Foundation, August 24, 2006.
• Kelty, Christopher M. Two bits: the cultural significance of free software. Duke University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8223-4264-9. PDF version.
• Lehman, Bruce A. Intellectual property and the National Information Infrastructure: the report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights. Information Infrastructure Task Force, September 1995.
• Lessig, Lawrence. Code: version 2.0. New York: Basic Books, 2006. ISBN 978-0-465-03914-2. PDF version.
• Lessig, Lawrence. The future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world. New York: Random House, 2001. ISBN 0-375-50578-4. PDF version.
• Lessig, Lawrence. ``The read-write society.'' Wizards of OS Conference, September 15, 2006.
• Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. Boston: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008. ISBN 9781408113479. PDF version.
• Levine, Rick, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger. The cluetrain manifesto: the end of business as usual. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Books, 2000. ISBN 0-7382-0244-4.
• Lydon, Christopher, Jonathan Lethem, and Siva Vaidyanathan. ``The ecstasy of influence''. Open source with Christopher Lydon, July 2, 2007.
• Mason, Matt. The pirate's dilemma: how youth culture is reinventing capitalism. Free Press, 2009. ISBN 9781416532200.
• McLeod, Kembrew. Freedom of expression: resistance and repression in the age of intellectual property. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ISBN 9780816650316. The earlier (2005) edition of this book is available for free download here.
• Moglen, Eben. ``The future of the digital commons.'' Wizards of OS Conference, June 12, 2004.
• Moody, Glyn. Rebel code: the inside story of Linux and the open source revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing, 2001. ISBN 0-7382-0333-5.
• Möller, Erik, et al. ``Definition of free cultural works.'' December 1, 2008.
• Newitz, Annalee. ``Dangerous terms: a user's guide to EULAs.'' Electronic Frontier Foundation, August 22, 2006.
• Siefkes, Christian. From exchange to contributions: generalizing peer production into the physical world. Berlin: Edition C. Siefkes, 2007. ISBN 978-3-940736-00-0. PDF version.
• Stallman, Richard M. Free software, free society: selected essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press, 2002. ISBN 1-882114-98-1. PDF version.
• Von Hippel, Eric. Democratizing innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2005. ISBN 0-262-00274-4. PDF version.
• Wayner, Peter M. Free for all: how Linux and the Free Software movement undercut the high-tech titans. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0-06-662050-3. PDF version.
• Williams, Sam. Free as in freedom: Richard Stallman's crusade for free software. O'Reilly Media, 2004. ISBN 0-596-00287-4.
• YouTube, Inc. ``Terms of service.'' 2009.
• Zittrain, Jonathan. The future of the internet: and how to stop it. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-12487-3. PDF version.
Drafts for writing assignment 5 can be submitted at any time between now and Tuesday, December 8. The finished paper is due at the last meeting of the class -- Thursday, December 10.
We'll hear oral presentations from members of the class on Tuesday, December 1; Thursday, December 3; and Tuesday, December 8. Each member of the class should have received an e-mail giving the date for which his or her presentation has been scheduled.
Free Culture Forum, ``Charter for innovation, creativity, and access to knowledg.e November 1, 2009.
Bennett Haselton et al., ``Your rights online: An inbox is not a glove compartment.'' Slashdot, November 2, 2009.
Robert McMillan, ``How to DoS a federal wiretap.'', TechWorld November 17, 2009.
John Perry Barlow, ``A declaration of the independence of cyberspace.'' February 8, 1996.
Lee C. Van Orsdel and Kathleen Born, ``Reality bites: periodicals price survey 2009.'' Library journal, April 15, 2009.
Andrea Brandolini and Timothy M. Smeeding, ``Inequality patterns in Western-type democracies: Country differences and time changes.'' Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics, April 17, 2007.
Eben Moglen, ``Software and community in the early 21st century.'' (text transcription)
Eben Moglen, ``Die Gedanke sind frei: Free software and the struggle for free thought.'' (text transcription)
``RIP: a remix manifesto'' -- recommended by J.N. from our class. The filmmakers invite donations; contribute whatever you think appropriate. Ogg Theora version
Relating to the Bilski patent case:
Steven Arntson, ``The absent second: an explanation.''
Bruce Lehman's ``White Paper'' and a contemporary commentary on it by Pamela Samuelson.
Sections 4D and 4E of the College's copyright policy deal with the use of works created by students to fulfill assignments in their courses. Here's the general statement and the one important qualification:
Intellectual works eligible for copyright protection created by students of the College in the course of their academic pursuits (including works of art, original musical compositions, scientific posters, creative and scholarly writing, and like works) are owned by their creator(s) and any revenue derived from these works likewise belongs to the creator(s).
However, unless otherwise agreed in writing, such work may be reproduced by the College and its officers for distribution within the College community without fee for instructional or administrative purposes.
In effect (if I'm reading this correctly -- I am not a lawyer), the College sees students as licensing copying and distribution of their work, but only within the College and only to advance the educational mission of the College.
In chapter seven, Lessig mentions that someone who is charged with copyright infringement can sometimes assert a "fair use" privilege, but he doesn't explain exactly what this is or how it would work as a legal defense. The legal basis for an assertion of fair use is a section of the federal copyright law, United States Code title 17, chapter 1, section 107, which says that
the fair use of a copyrighted work ... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
What distinguishes a "fair" use from an unfair and illegal one? The law gives guidelines rather than exact criteria:
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Since these are only "factors to be considered" rather than definitive specifications, it's pretty much left up to the courts to determine what counts as a fair use in practice, and the record so far is somewhat inconsistent and leaves many important questions unsettled. If you don't want to hire a lawyer, the best general advice I know of is the article Fair use produced by the Copyright and Fair Use Center at Stanford University.
Do works of popular culture belong to the artists and writers who create them, to the corporations that market and distribute them, or to the communities that take them to heart and sustain them? Who may read them or listen to them or watch them? Who may make copies of them to share with others? Who may adapt, remix, and repurpose them?
The last two decades of radical improvements in technologies for creating, storing, copying, and sharing works of popular culture in digital formats have undermined the legal and moral foundations for the previously accepted answers to these questions, forcing us to reconsider the underlying issues and raising the possibility that we might reach different conclusions.
We'll consider the views and interests of various parties in the debate and assess some well-grounded efforts to reconcile them, beginning with techniques originally contrived to protect the free development and exchange of software, including some programs that are well known and widely used (such as Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and Linux). Finally, we'll consider connections between the debate over popular culture and the traditional concepts of academic freedom and open exchange of ideas, reasoning, and evidence.
I am indebted to Daniel Blees and Paden Roder for pointing out typographical errors in earlier versions of this page.
This document is available on the World Wide Web as
http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~stone/courses/free-software/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
created August 10, 2006
last revised November 19, 2009