...a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture.
the world of music nowadays is a complicated one. the internet has made it possible to access any digital information almost everywhere on the planet. in chase of the question if intellectual property can be protected in a world that is gloabaly connected but where laws still change at borders, good copy bad copy shows the different angles and frontiers of the problem.
and... the documentary is free for download

enjoy!

links:
official site
credits
torrent file

Yesterday Wikileaks puplished a leaked document entitled "Discussion Paper on a Possible Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement". Its quite a scary read and obviously aims to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of copyrighted information exchange on the internet, by pushing for a generalized Intellectual Property Right(IPR) law enforcement worldwide.
If adopted, a treaty of this form would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime imposing new cooperation requirements upon internet service providers, including perfunctory disclosure of customer information, as well as measures restricting the use of online privacy tools. The source states that trade representatives intend to formalize the agreement at the G-8 summit in July 2008. (text passages taken from wikileaks)

Links:
paper (pdf)
story on wikileaks

was attacked by the Austrian FPÖ right wing party, to be a project, that only wants to show the nice side of live, from the slum, that they are censoring material which contains violence, and as an not named expert says, "this is like in a communist dictatorship". now also the City of Vienna, and the Austrian Development Agency, were accused that they finance such a "again communist notion" propagandist project and such FAKE ART! (text taken from email of slum-tv)

watch the video of the discussion at city council, listen to the definition of the project by dr. andreas mailath-pokorny and the ridiculous questions of mag. harald stefan (FPÖ), his definition of the word "censorship" and his opinion about the austrian government supporting a project with "no!!!" direct reference to austria and vienna.  (although it is the "following project" to an exhibition in nairobi last year, called economy class and an austrian-kenian project organized by austrian and kenian artists.) make yourself a picture and keep it in mind for the next elections. (sorry, the video is in german only, but slum-tv is workin on a translation for all you english speaking people out there).

(image by Theodore Watson)

Since the gewista stated that they will remove any Posters in viennas public space that R not put up by the gewista, i think it´s time for different tactics. (press1, press2 & petition)

Laser tagger is a processing based software that allows U to paint on urban infrastructure using a projector & a laserpointer.

it´s available 4free @ the graffiti research lab vienna(GRLv) site and there is another different software by Theodore Watson

links:

soup.graffitiresearchlab.at

muonics.net/site_docs/work.php

Brian de Palma (Scarface, Carlitos way, ...) made a new movie. It´s called "redacted" and it is the most provocativ anti-war propaganda out there so far.

A fictional documentary that shows nothing but the true face of war nowadays. De Palma has said that essentially everything he has put into "Redacted" can be found on the Internet: The director trawled the Web, examining pictures, videos and journal entries made by soldiers, looking at Islamic fundamentalist web sites and, perhaps most significantly, locating numerous photographs of Iraq war victims that would never show up in the mainstream press.

The film won the silver lion at the 2007 Biennale. Despite international honors the film caused a wave of protests in the us, where conservatis push for a ban of the movie.
 
links:

official site
podcast-interview with the director

the scientific information service in colgne has been engaged by the german magazine "stern" to test the two leading online-encyclopedias "wikipedia" and "brockhaus" (which you have to pay for) on correctness, actuality, completeness and comprehensibility. 50 articles have been selected randomly! marks from 1 - 5 were given. wikipedia won! 1,7 vs 2,7

These guys are pretty forward and courageous.

The Yes Men impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.

links: www.theyesmen.org

just found this article about the uk site tv-links.co.uk. the owner of the site was arrested on thursday for hosting links to copyrighted material on servers like youtube, google... just links! wtf?

this sounds pretty serious...

IPRED2 passed the eu parliament.

its a petiton that deals with copy crimes.

If IPRED2 is implemented without clear limits, "aiding, abetting, or inciting" copyright infringement on a "commercial scale" in the EU will become a crime. (copycrime.eu)

more info: here & here

protect yourself: win, osx, linux

sign petition: here