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So, my name is Fred Benenson.

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Can you hear me alright?

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No?

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Louder?

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Closer?

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Closer?

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Is that closer?

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Hello?

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Hello?

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Okay.

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Sorry.

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So, my name is Fred Benenson.

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I just graduated NYU in May, where I started a free culture club.

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We'll be talking about free culture, the organization, in a bit.

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But I'm working for Creative Commons over the summer, and I'm going to be heading back to New York in a bit.

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But I've been interested in kind of open source, free software, everything in terms from hacking to, I don't know, graphic design since high school when I was reading 2600 and stuff, and that kind of what got me into it.

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But, I don't know.

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Here's Elizabeth.

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Hey, everybody.

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My name's Elizabeth Stark.

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Firstly, I'm kind of losing my voice, so please forgive me, or if you can't hear me, let me know.

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I am a current law student at Harvard Law School, who apparently needs to check up on their SSL connections.

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But I'm also extremely interested in the issues surrounding law, culture, and technology.

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I'm kind of a culture junkie myself.

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I went to Brown University, and I'm helping out FreeCulture.org.

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I am looking to start a chapter at my school next year, but currently doing a lot of work with the organization, and representing them here.

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All right.

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So, we came up with this idea to give a speech here because we wanted to kind of bring FreeCulture to another community, and we see DEF CON as a kind of great community of like-minded technology folk.

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So, let's get started about what FreeCulture actually means.

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First of all, this is not in particular order, but it's a book written by Lawrence Lessig, famous law professor from Harvard.

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I'm sorry, he taught at Yale.

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He went to Yale, taught at Harvard, now he teaches at Stanford.

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He also runs Creative Commons.

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So, he's written a couple books.

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He's working on another one called Code, but his most famous one is called FreeCulture.

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FreeCulture also means the student movement that we're participating in, and it all started from a lawsuit at Swarthmore.

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But at first we'd like to clarify, though, we do not claim to be the entire quote-unquote FreeCulture movement.

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We are one student organization within the movement that is composed of professors, academics, artists, technologists, all different types of people that are interested in the issues relating, say, to copyleft, to FreeCulture, not as in free beer, but more like free trade.

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And we are a part of that movement.

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Sometimes we are accused of claiming that we created the movement.

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No, that's not really the case.

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We're here representing FreeCulture.org, which you can see up on the site.

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If you want more information, kind of dig through there.

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But hopefully we'll give you some here.

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I'm going to describe how it kind of came about, what college students were first involved in it, because it's actually kind of an interesting story.

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I'm going to quote from an article on motherjones.com about two students at Swarthmore College named Luke and Nelson.

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Here, I'll read from the article.

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The adventure began in spring 2003 when a hacker broke into dbold's computer system and under 15,000 internal emails.

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In them, dbold employees fret over the voting machine's vulnerability to hackers and their alarming habit of going on the fritz.

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I need some answers, one employee wrote from Florida, regarding the 2000 recount.

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Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022 votes when it was uploaded.

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Will somebody please explain this to me so I have the information to give to the auditor instead of standing there looking dumb?

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That's the text in the memos that were published online.

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So it was a big deal, because these memos kind of exposed a glaring flaw in our voting process.

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For all the insanity that went on during the Bush vs.

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Gore election in 2000, it was a really big deal to kind of think that the voting machines were broken.

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I mean, who knows what could have happened if anybody established anything.

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So dbold was responsible for these voting machines that went on the fritz.

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The memos got left open for the technically minded in an open FTP directory with no password.

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Enough people downloaded it and started passing it around that it became kind of like buzz on the internet.

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Luke and Nelson at Swarthmore picked up on it because they were familiar with the movement and that kind of thing.

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They put it on their website.

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So did Derek.

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Yeah, so did Derek.

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And everyone who was posting on their website, obviously dbold freaks out and starts sending cease and desist letters.

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And the cease and desist letters were really interesting because they weren't trade secrets cease and desist letters.

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They were copyright infringement cease and desist letters, which is pretty much claiming that the internal memos from dbold had original art that they were trying to claim copyright on.

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And by posting it on a website, you're infringing on the copyright.

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It's kind of a big difference between copying CDs and publishing memos.

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But as we know, large content companies, they basically would send cease and desist letters to people even if they don't have a valid copyright argument because they want to scare people away.

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And this is pretty much the argument in this situation.

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These were college kids, other ISPs.

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When they first sent the letter to Swarthmore, they immediately took it down.

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Swarthmore freaked out, as any university or college would probably freak out.

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They contacted the students and took it down.

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Luke and Nelson kind of bit their lip and played by their game for a bit but then realized that they should stand up for it.

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So then they posted the memos up on another site.

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I'm not sure where, but it was a big deal because they were kind of standing up to this big, evil Republican corporation.

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We're a non-partisan group, by the way.

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Yeah, we're a non-partisan group.

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It was these two kids from a liberal arts university getting threatened by a Republican corporation.

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It was a fascinating point.

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Anyway, so instead of getting sued by Diebold, what happens is that they actually sue Diebold under a provision called 512F, which Elizabeth will talk about.

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So as we all know, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, otherwise known as the DMCA, has a lot of provisions that we don't like.

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There is something written into it called 512F that this was the first case to actually test the provision where if you are accusing copyright infringement, where it is so basically obvious that this is not a case of infringement, as if you're bullying someone,

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which I think Diebold in this case clearly...

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Definitely qualified as bullying.

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I think a lot of other content companies are doing that as well, but you can sue under this provision.

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The EFF stepped in as well, and David over here testified for the EFF in the case.

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So we have a lot of supporters here.

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And they won the case.

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The court basically said this is an obvious fair use, and it was so obvious that they could not have thought that it was an actual copyright infringement.

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One of the big deals was that the information that was released was actually in the public interest.

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It wasn't just some trade secret like Apple's new design for the shuffle, which is questionably in the public interest.

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It was something that actually had to do with voting and the next president and that kind of thing.

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So it definitely qualified as fair use.

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The good news is...

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They got back attorney's fees and also...

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Right, they won the lawsuit, got back attorney's fees, and won some money for themselves, I think.

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So that kind of started a...

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It was a sensation at Swarthmore.

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It was such a small college in that these kids were in magazines, New York Times magazine, it was a huge deal.

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And they realized that there was really a demand for students who are interested in the future of copyright, online, internet technologies and everything, that there was really a demand for a political movement.

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During the Diebold trial, Nelson and Luke had started a group called the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons.

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Not so easy to say.

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Yeah, not so easy to say.

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But after garnering so much public and national attention, they decided to just rename themselves to FreeCulture.org and start a national organization.

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So that's kind of how the beginning of the organization worked.

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Nelson and Luke kind of worked hard to get it going at Swarthmore and then started up an email list and got stuff posted on Slashdot and that's how I found out about it.

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I'd been kind of interested.

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Lessig's blog as well.

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Yeah, Lessig's blog posted about it.

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Although, one thing I'd like to clarify is, as much as we definitely admire the work of Professor Lessig and we have read his books and whatnot, he is not the head of our organization.

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Some people have accused him of basically rounding up students to be his quote-unquote chief.

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That is not what we are.

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This is pretty far from the truth.

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And he consistently denies that he has anything to do with kind of our big decision-making and that kind of thing.

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I mean, we named our club after his book.

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It's an important document as far as we're concerned, but there is a lot of difference between Lawrence Lessig and Free Culture.

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So just a minor point.

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But our goal is to try to make it as student-oriented as possible and try to keep our board of directors, when we decide on one, as kind of young and hip and in with the college and university crowd as possible.

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And grad school.

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And grad school.

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Well, university.

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So basically this email list starts going around in the, I guess it's the summer of 2004 and I get on it and I was interested in doing stuff at NYU because I pulled an April Fool's prank.

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It was a poster from the RIAA saying, trade in your MP3s and we'll give you iTunes credits.

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It was this really elaborate prank and we put up posters everywhere and people really responded to it and I kind of realized then that students are interested in this.

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This is a topic that people are talking about and arguing about.

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And it was actually at the top of all the lawsuits going against college students for file sharing.

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So I coordinated, I got something started at NYU and kind of went from there.

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We're now a club at NYU.

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There's an umbrella organization called FreeCulture.org which kind of helps manage everything.

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And Elizabeth and I are in the core committee and we kind of work from there.

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And then we also have a main discuss list that people kind of post links and argue on and that kind of thing.

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And I highly encourage you to join it because it's a very interesting list with a lot of kind of up-to-date stuff on it.

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And we currently have 13 chapters across the country and firstly we have countless students from other schools who are interested, who are trying to start up chapters, who participate in the discussions and the meetings that we have.

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And we also have a lot of international interest, especially from, for example, the UK.

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I think somebody just started FreeCulture.org.uk and they're working on a project out of, I think, where is it?

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I'm not sure.

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And we also have people in South America.

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As some of you may know, South America is extremely interested in, for example, in Brazil and Argentina, the free software movement and free culture movement.

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So we have a bunch of people interested from there.

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So as opposed to explaining kind of our origins, let's get a little bit more specific.

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We see ourselves as do-it-yourself politics.

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I mean, that's really the nature of a grassroots organization is that you kind of identify a problem you have with society or policy or law and you kind of go from there.

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And our main goal is to reform copyright law and kind of pave the way for sensible technology.

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And to educate people about the alternative and how we can work toward a greater public domain and freedom of information.

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And as students, we're a concerned party.

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We're worried that governments, corporations, and even individuals are making bad choices about how this stuff is happening.

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And these choices threaten to stagnate future progress and innovation in ways that we haven't really known before or we won't even ever know.

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So basically, we came to DEF CON because we think hackers should care about free culture.

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And we see kind of our goals as an organization very similar to a lot of the sentiments in the hacker community.

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And one of the biggest things that hackers tout is their right to be curious and explore the technology that we're using or that they're using.

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And we feel that as a main tenet of culture and technology.

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So where hackers mainly explore code and systems and that kind of thing, we like to encourage the idea of exploring culture and taking and using culture in similar ways as a hacker.

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And code.

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And code .

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So from that point on, I guess we're going to talk about some examples of what we consider culture hacking.

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People taking bits of culture and remixing them and reusing them in ways that they were originally unintended.

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And to that end, we have a lot of media that we're going to show and entertaining stuff from the history of what we like to call culture hacking.

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First, I'm going to...

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Bear with me if you guys feel like this is too close to an art history presentation.

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But hey, I don't think a lot of other people are talking about art history at DEF CON.

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Here we go.

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Get ready.

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Fade in.

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Oh, yeah.

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Okay, so some of you may be familiar with this image.

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Some of you may not be.

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As far as I know, this is one of the first blatant uses of a remix in Western art.

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And this is by an artist named Marcel Duchamp.

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This is actually a... Oops.

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I'm sorry.

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Picasso's getting feisty.

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Okay, so Marcel Duchamp did this in the early 1900s.

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He was a prolific artist dabbling in a lot of different genres.

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But this was a postcard remake of the Mona Lisa.

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And it looks huge now, but it's actually incredibly tiny.

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And he basically drew a mustache on her and wrote L-H-O-O-Q at the bottom.

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And when pronounced phonetically in French, that means she's got a...

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There you go.

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And when pronounced phonetically, that means she's got a hot ass, right?

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A nice ass.

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A nice ass.

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So this is one of my favorite pieces of work, art, because it ties in so many ideas that were just coming of age in the early 1900s.

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The idea that art is getting whittled down to postcard size.

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And this would be something you'd send one of your friends from the Louvre, and that kind of thing.

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But it was Duchamp kind of mocking this, and kind of coming up and saying that, well, maybe this is art too.

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And so, you know, even though he just drew a mustache on her, it became a famous piece of art.

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And he was widely recognized as being brilliant for this.

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And let's clarify something.

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When you said this is one of the first remixes in modern art, I think we take the position that almost all art and all culture is derivative in some way or another.

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I guess I meant it in a literal remix sense, is that this is exactly, this is a sample, in its most literal sense.

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And before this, my personal opinion is that most music remixes itself on a metaphorical level.

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You're always referencing what Beethoven did, or Mozart did, and that kind of thing.

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So anyway, Duchamp did some more cool stuff.

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This is pushing it a little bit farther.

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This is a urinal he took from a public metro station, I think, in Paris, and basically wrote Armut on it, which was one of his pseudonyms that he released art under, and put it on display.

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And he got it into a museum or gallery, I think, and it was a sensation.

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It blew people's minds in Paris.

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People were so angry and excited.

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How could a urinal be art?

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Yeah, yeah, it was just on the tip of everyone's tongue in the art scene in the early 1900s.

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And I think recently, I can't remember who said it, but this was voted the most influential piece of modern art in the 20th century.

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And, you know, it's a urinal, but it's the idea of appropriating something that's already been created.

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And Duchamp was one of the first artists to do this.

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And our position is, what if copyright laws were as strict as they are now, back then?

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I mean, would Duchamp really have gotten away with this?

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I mean, obviously the Mona Lisa's in the public domain, but who knows about the manufacturer of the urinal?

210
00:17:24,120 --> 00:17:25,520
They probably could have sued him.

211
00:17:26,280 --> 00:17:28,780
Next up, I'm not sure...

212
00:17:28,780 --> 00:17:30,520
I think the original design of the art...

213
00:17:30,520 --> 00:17:32,380
Well, that's for another one to debate.

214
00:17:33,900 --> 00:17:35,060
So this is a shovel.

215
00:17:35,060 --> 00:17:37,040
This is another Duchamp piece.

216
00:17:37,300 --> 00:17:38,560
It's a snow shovel.

217
00:17:38,800 --> 00:17:40,260
He got it at a museum.

218
00:17:40,940 --> 00:17:42,100
I think it's pretty cool.

219
00:17:42,720 --> 00:17:45,300
And this is one of the most famous pieces of modern art.

220
00:17:45,300 --> 00:17:46,580
I'm sure you all recognize.

221
00:17:46,880 --> 00:17:47,880
This is Andy Warhol.

222
00:17:47,880 --> 00:17:50,280
I think he did this in the middle of the 60s.

223
00:17:50,280 --> 00:18:01,840
He pretty much just took a picture of a Campbell's soup can, got it into a silkscreen format, and made a ton of silkscreen canvases with the Campbell's soup can logo on it.

224
00:18:01,840 --> 00:18:08,060
This was a huge deal because people just loved the idea that he was representing

225
00:18:11,120 --> 00:18:13,140
consumer products as art.

226
00:18:13,140 --> 00:18:16,980
And it was extraordinarily controversial, just like Duchamp was.

227
00:18:16,980 --> 00:18:22,780
And people couldn't understand why somebody would put up a soup can and call it art.

228
00:18:23,080 --> 00:18:30,300
But it's lasted over time, and everyone kind of accepts it as an important part of art.

229
00:18:30,300 --> 00:18:32,040
Campbell's, at the time, didn't object.

230
00:18:32,040 --> 00:18:33,460
They were like, this is great.

231
00:18:33,460 --> 00:18:35,720
Somebody's found a novel way to use our soup can.

232
00:18:35,720 --> 00:18:36,920
Yeah, they didn't sue.

233
00:18:36,920 --> 00:18:39,400
Instead, they found it as promotion for their product.

234
00:18:39,400 --> 00:18:40,500
It's like free advertising.

235
00:18:40,500 --> 00:18:42,440
They thought it was great marketing.

236
00:18:42,700 --> 00:18:46,960
I kind of have a funny story to tell about this, but I'll save it for the end.

237
00:18:47,620 --> 00:18:49,480
This is another example of Warhol's art.

238
00:18:49,480 --> 00:18:50,380
It's a Brillo.

239
00:18:50,540 --> 00:18:52,240
I think these are larger than life.

240
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:58,460
Yeah, he scaled these up, so it's just the idea of turning a small soap pad into a large kind of box.

241
00:18:58,460 --> 00:19:00,700
Just more appropriation art.

242
00:19:01,320 --> 00:19:02,640
More of Warhol's stuff.

243
00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:05,400
I mean, these are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars now.

244
00:19:05,940 --> 00:19:08,740
I mean, not to say that money is a good value.

245
00:19:09,140 --> 00:19:10,820
Here's Warhol himself.

246
00:19:10,820 --> 00:19:12,740
I'm sorry about the JPEG compression on that.

247
00:19:12,740 --> 00:19:13,540
It's ugly.

248
00:19:14,580 --> 00:19:16,160
More Campbell's soup can.

249
00:19:16,160 --> 00:19:18,120
He's just kind of going crazy with this stuff.

250
00:19:18,120 --> 00:19:19,620
Everyone loves it at the time.

251
00:19:20,360 --> 00:19:22,300
Another famous Warhol painting.

252
00:19:22,300 --> 00:19:28,500
This is actually interesting because he's using a celebrity's image, and there's a whole debate going on right now.

253
00:19:28,500 --> 00:19:30,620
It's kind of like cutting-edge copyright.

254
00:19:31,040 --> 00:19:39,080
I'm sorry, not copyright, but a law debate about publicity images and whether or not celebrities can kind of claim ownership of what they look like and that kind of thing.

255
00:19:39,080 --> 00:19:42,900
And I don't think he got permission from Marilyn Monroe from this at all.

256
00:19:42,900 --> 00:19:45,000
And who knows if she would have objected.

257
00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:49,360
I mean, blue eyeliner is kind of hard to deal with, or whatever it is.

258
00:19:49,620 --> 00:19:51,980
I don't think he got permission for this one either.

259
00:19:52,360 --> 00:19:53,540
I'm thinking no.

260
00:19:54,800 --> 00:19:57,320
Alright, on to Jean-Michel Basquiat.

261
00:19:57,580 --> 00:20:02,360
He's another influential painter of the 20th century in America.

262
00:20:02,360 --> 00:20:04,200
He was actually good friends with Andy Warhol.

263
00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:06,980
There's some great books and information about Jean-Michel.

264
00:20:06,980 --> 00:20:10,900
He lived in the East Village, and so I kind of picked up on his stuff.

265
00:20:11,200 --> 00:20:18,820
If you look in the bottom right-hand corner of this image, I'm sorry, the Picasso stuff, the overlay is kind of taking over, but there's a little copyright down here.

266
00:20:20,180 --> 00:20:20,740
Yeah.

267
00:20:21,640 --> 00:20:31,620
Jean-Michel was obsessed with copyright and kind of like the idea that images were copyrighted and that he could use them and kind of claim domain over them in his own paintings.

268
00:20:31,620 --> 00:20:42,260
So, over and over and over again, you see his use of words and mass consumer ideas put into his art as kind of an appropriation.

269
00:20:42,260 --> 00:20:46,460
And people at the time saw this as kind of similar to what hip-hop was doing.

270
00:20:46,460 --> 00:20:50,240
We were using these samples from current life and we're putting them into our art.

271
00:20:50,240 --> 00:20:51,100
What time was this?

272
00:20:51,100 --> 00:20:53,020
This was like mid-80s.

273
00:20:53,060 --> 00:20:57,500
Jean-Michel died in 87 at the early age of 27 from a heroin overdose.

274
00:20:58,220 --> 00:20:59,660
He was a real rock star.

275
00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:01,560
This is some more of his work.

276
00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:06,320
He just basically opened up books and picked out words and put them in there.

277
00:21:06,320 --> 00:21:07,560
He also used images.

278
00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:12,360
He was a prolific graffiti artist in New York City at the time.

279
00:21:13,080 --> 00:21:14,700
Here's a picture of him with Warhol.

280
00:21:14,700 --> 00:21:15,700
They were really good friends.

281
00:21:15,700 --> 00:21:18,880
They both kind of dug on the idea of appropriation.

282
00:21:19,680 --> 00:21:20,800
Some more Basquiat.

283
00:21:22,360 --> 00:21:23,340
Universal up there.

284
00:21:23,340 --> 00:21:25,140
This is one of my favorites of his.

285
00:21:25,260 --> 00:21:27,180
I guess he really loved movies.

286
00:21:27,220 --> 00:21:31,120
So, I think Universal probably didn't sue him on this or didn't even bother.

287
00:21:31,120 --> 00:21:32,400
He even put the trademark notice.

288
00:21:32,400 --> 00:21:33,120
Yeah, yeah.

289
00:21:33,120 --> 00:21:37,640
I mean, his infatuation with trademark and copyright is throughout all of his stuff.

290
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:41,820
Who knows if he would have gotten away with this now.

291
00:21:41,980 --> 00:21:43,940
Alright, so that's the end of my slideshow.

292
00:21:45,680 --> 00:21:46,560
Okay.

293
00:21:46,580 --> 00:21:55,500
Before I kind of get off the art kick, I'm going to talk about a contemporary artist that's doing similar stuff in New York City named Cory Archangel.

294
00:21:56,380 --> 00:22:01,260
Cory does some really cool stuff with Nintendo ROMs.

295
00:22:01,260 --> 00:22:05,920
He pretty much reprograms Nintendo ROMs to be art.

296
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:10,580
He got one of his pieces was called the Nintendo Clouds.

297
00:22:10,580 --> 00:22:14,400
He got it into the Whitney Biennial in 2002, I believe.

298
00:22:14,640 --> 00:22:19,880
It was pretty much Mario without Mario or anything except for the clouds.

299
00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:21,440
I had a picture of it.

300
00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:22,880
Let me see if I can get it.

301
00:22:24,620 --> 00:22:30,940
Anyway, it was just like a Nintendo cartridge playing the clouds over and over and over again.

302
00:22:30,940 --> 00:22:34,500
The music was playing and it was kind of a sensation .

303
00:22:34,500 --> 00:22:37,360
That was all you really saw, but it was running from a real Nintendo.

304
00:22:37,360 --> 00:22:42,360
They had this whole set up in the Whitney where there's just a Nintendo thing sitting there.

305
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:46,800
This is just a great example of contemporary appropriation art.

306
00:22:47,400 --> 00:22:51,120
This pretty much took the New York art scene by storm.

307
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:54,940
Cory got pretty famous pretty quickly.

308
00:22:55,520 --> 00:23:01,060
Recently in February, he just showed this new piece of art.

309
00:23:01,060 --> 00:23:04,580
It's a 15-minute Mario movie where Mario goes to a rave.

310
00:23:04,900 --> 00:23:15,220
It's a little bit too long to play here, but he pretty much disassembled the entire Mario cartridge, reprogrammed it to himself, used all the sprites however he wanted, wrote new music.

311
00:23:15,220 --> 00:23:17,060
It's an incredible use of appropriation art.

312
00:23:17,060 --> 00:23:21,600
I'm going to show it now and hope the music's not too obnoxious for you guys.

313
00:23:24,940 --> 00:23:26,240
Oh, that doesn't look good.

314
00:23:26,440 --> 00:23:27,240
Okay.

315
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:30,160
So this is the intro.

316
00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:31,760
I'm going to fast-forward a little bit.

317
00:23:36,650 --> 00:23:45,710
So a lot of the themes in this piece of art is that Mario and his images are kind of functions of our collective memory right now.

318
00:23:45,730 --> 00:23:47,650
And they're all deteriorating.

319
00:23:47,650 --> 00:23:50,930
So Cory's idea is to kind of rejuvenate them.

320
00:23:50,930 --> 00:23:57,750
So a lot of themes are kind of like this deterioration and that these memories are getting lost.

321
00:23:57,750 --> 00:24:01,430
So he uses a lot of kind of corruption of the actual image.

322
00:24:01,430 --> 00:24:05,950
And it's not that he's not a good programmer or didn't do it properly.

323
00:24:05,950 --> 00:24:12,610
It's that he wants to kind of reinforce the idea that we're losing the idea of Mario to nostalgia and that kind of thing.

324
00:24:12,950 --> 00:24:14,910
So I'm going to fast-forward a little bit.

325
00:24:16,630 --> 00:24:18,070
This is Mario falling.

326
00:24:18,070 --> 00:24:20,210
He's just done some really neat stuff.

327
00:24:20,210 --> 00:24:23,670
I mean, this is like pushing the Nintendo to its limits.

328
00:24:24,930 --> 00:24:29,590
And there's a whole narrative going on here.

329
00:24:29,590 --> 00:24:31,830
This is like Mario looking around for stuff.

330
00:24:33,070 --> 00:24:35,710
You know, this is kind of a bad part for him.

331
00:24:36,730 --> 00:24:38,450
Is this like a bad trip or something?

332
00:24:38,450 --> 00:24:39,050
Yeah, yeah.

333
00:24:39,050 --> 00:24:40,390
I mean, you'll see.

334
00:24:40,690 --> 00:24:43,230
He's about to take a mushroom, I think.

335
00:24:45,110 --> 00:24:49,790
So he's going to this rave and he's on his way there.

336
00:24:50,110 --> 00:24:51,390
Eventually he gets there.

337
00:24:51,390 --> 00:25:00,710
He's got to go through a lot of castles and there's a lot of jokes about the princess because as anyone who's played Mario knows, the princess is always the objective.

338
00:25:02,470 --> 00:25:03,990
So it gets pretty intense.

339
00:25:03,990 --> 00:25:11,530
And this is all just with 8602 assembly, which looks like the most nasty assembly you've ever seen.

340
00:25:11,530 --> 00:25:13,270
We included the code.

341
00:25:13,290 --> 00:25:18,870
Yeah, if you get the CD that Defcon hands out, you can download the ROM and do whatever you want with it.

342
00:25:20,890 --> 00:25:22,690
So this is pretty intense.

343
00:25:24,550 --> 00:25:27,130
Basically when he gets to the rave, it's just Pong.

344
00:25:33,910 --> 00:25:37,130
So it's kind of a meta video game.

345
00:25:37,570 --> 00:25:38,210
Right , right.

346
00:25:38,210 --> 00:25:39,710
It's kind of a rave scene.

347
00:25:39,770 --> 00:25:41,630
The original video game, right?

348
00:25:42,470 --> 00:25:46,990
So, Cory kind of operates in a copyright vacuum.

349
00:25:46,990 --> 00:25:48,950
I mean, I've talked to him a lot about this stuff.

350
00:25:49,110 --> 00:25:53,530
I mean, he just kind of wants to make art using Mario and that kind of thing.

351
00:25:53,530 --> 00:25:55,990
And it's questionable whether or not Nintendo cares.

352
00:25:55,990 --> 00:25:59,550
I mean, as far as I know, there's no official comment from Nintendo.

353
00:25:59,550 --> 00:26:00,970
He has not gotten any letters.

354
00:26:00,990 --> 00:26:02,870
There are no cease and desist letters yet.

355
00:26:02,870 --> 00:26:06,730
I mean, in theory, it could be the Walmart as key in promoting Super Mario Bros.

356
00:26:06,810 --> 00:26:07,510
Right.

357
00:26:07,510 --> 00:26:11,150
But the real question is whether or not Cory's work falls under fair use.

358
00:26:11,470 --> 00:26:13,430
And I believe it does.

359
00:26:13,430 --> 00:26:14,570
I mean, this is transformation.

360
00:26:14,570 --> 00:26:16,390
Fair use is a whole other big debate.

361
00:26:17,030 --> 00:26:18,870
I think they could have a decent case.

362
00:26:18,870 --> 00:26:20,070
Yeah, I think Cory could have it.

363
00:26:20,150 --> 00:26:21,610
Nintendo might have it.

364
00:26:21,790 --> 00:26:27,890
The fact that he's using Mario's image so blatantly is really a big deal.

365
00:26:27,890 --> 00:26:28,850
Especially the clouds.

366
00:26:28,850 --> 00:26:31,270
I think the clouds are now one of the fair use.

367
00:26:31,370 --> 00:26:35,990
So, Cory's done a lot of other really neat hacks with video game cartridges.

368
00:26:35,990 --> 00:26:48,090
One of his more abstract ones is hacking a Tetris cartridge so that the timer, the internal timer of the Nintendo slows it down so it's like super slow Tetris.

369
00:26:48,090 --> 00:26:50,690
And it takes like 10 minutes to do one line.

370
00:26:50,690 --> 00:26:52,050
So you can always win.

371
00:26:52,050 --> 00:26:54,090
So you can always win, yeah.

372
00:26:54,610 --> 00:26:55,770
So check him out.

373
00:26:55,770 --> 00:26:58,930
We'll have some links up that we can send you guys.

374
00:26:59,490 --> 00:27:04,650
But just a kind of contemporary example of appropriation art.

375
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:18,180
Okay, so next we have a video from Matt Bosch who Elizabeth will talk about.

376
00:27:18,660 --> 00:27:20,900
It's very similar kind of video game art.

377
00:27:20,900 --> 00:27:24,100
Right, we're not solely advocating for video game art.

378
00:27:24,100 --> 00:27:34,260
I think these are two examples of combining technology and culture which is something that we very much support at our organization.

379
00:27:34,260 --> 00:27:42,540
I mean, we are talking about art and culture but I must say the main focus of a lot of the issues that we discuss is surrounding technology.

380
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:48,580
So this is entitled Persistent Artifacts by Matt Bosch.

381
00:27:48,580 --> 00:27:50,480
It's currently in the New York Video Festival.

382
00:27:50,980 --> 00:27:57,180
And here he's mixing a childhood video with his first video game called Adventure on the Atari 2600.

383
00:27:57,180 --> 00:27:59,440
I don't know if any of you played it.

384
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:00,220
Woohoo!

385
00:28:01,700 --> 00:28:07,960
He identifies that it's the shell of his past identity as an adolescent computer geek.

386
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:10,680
He's actually probably now a 20-something geek.

387
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:19,820
And he portrays his experience and interaction like when he was a child playing the video and this is his interpretation.

388
00:28:19,820 --> 00:28:22,060
Sorry, playing the game of it.

389
00:28:22,060 --> 00:28:27,300
And you can probably see now his image coming through from a family home video.

390
00:28:28,500 --> 00:28:39,680
This is an homage to the early lone Atari developers, as he put it, who created the game that shaped many of our childhoods, but many of whom remain unknown as a result.

391
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:51,160
Apparently the author of Adventure, named Warren Robinett, refused to be forgotten and he actually implemented one of the first Easter eggs in this game.

392
00:28:51,500 --> 00:28:59,860
Because Atari would not credit the developers for the game, he hid his name in a secret room in the game, creating the first Easter egg.

393
00:28:59,900 --> 00:29:03,620
You can find the hidden signature by using a certain item in a specific room.

394
00:29:03,620 --> 00:29:05,420
Unfortunately, I don't have the details.

395
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:06,940
I can try to find out.

396
00:29:07,740 --> 00:29:13,700
And subsequently he did leave Atari, but I guess his legacy still remains in the game.

397
00:29:13,980 --> 00:29:35,820
And I think this is also in a way Matt's reaction to how corporations were not giving the developers credit for their work and they were kind of taking the hands out of the creators and he wanted to kind of memorialize that as well in this work and reflect upon his experiences in doing so.

398
00:29:35,820 --> 00:29:40,500
So, you know, we're kind of showing all these examples of art and that kind of thing.

399
00:29:40,500 --> 00:29:46,220
I mean, there are entire genres of music that rely on appropriation and sampling.

400
00:29:46,220 --> 00:29:48,680
I mean, hip-hop is one great example.

401
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:58,460
Electronic music, I mean, there's kind of this great brotherhood going on with electronic music where you can remix anything and get away with it and nobody's going to sue you for copyright infringement.

402
00:29:58,720 --> 00:29:59,020
And it's...

403
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:03,120
It depends which fringes you get to.

404
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:07,600
I mean, if you get more poppy, it's probably more likely that you'll get sued for copyright infringement.

405
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:15,600
But there's a great wealth of electronic music that can be remixed and nobody will kind of think twice about it.

406
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:25,300
First, the genre of hip-hop would probably not exist today if people were not allowed to sample and there were such perhaps... Right.

407
00:30:25,300 --> 00:30:31,160
There's a great book called Copyrights and Copywrongs by Stephen Vitahanathan.

408
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:32,540
Who's a huge fan of hip-hop, by the way.

409
00:30:32,540 --> 00:30:32,800
Right.

410
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:42,580
He's a huge fan of hip-hop and he writes this kind of history of copyright in the context of how it kind of gives birth to hip-hop or lack thereof.

411
00:30:44,260 --> 00:30:46,400
How it might have prevented the birth of hip-hop.

412
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:49,940
I mean, hip-hop is predicated upon sampling others' work, right?

413
00:30:49,940 --> 00:30:50,540
Right.

414
00:30:50,720 --> 00:31:03,020
So, basically, what does culture and what does free culture have to say to the hacker community and why have we showed you all this art and that kind of thing?

415
00:31:03,460 --> 00:31:13,860
The big thing that we see, the big important part is that we see culture as technology.

416
00:31:13,860 --> 00:31:25,060
We see technology as an important part of our world, but one that hackers are fighting to kind of keep open and...

417
00:31:26,500 --> 00:31:28,120
Oh, I'm sorry.

418
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:30,160
We're gonna get music up.

419
00:31:32,140 --> 00:31:39,640
Okay, so we're gonna play some music that's kind of indicative of remix culture and that kind of stuff in the background so you guys don't get too bored.

420
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:40,360
I'm sorry.

421
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:52,040
So, hackers fight to kind of keep technology open and investigable and they can go look and poke around and that kind of thing.

422
00:31:53,700 --> 00:32:04,500
our fear is that maybe people don't really think about how culture works that way and you need to have culture open and kind of you can play around with and that kind of thing.

423
00:32:06,220 --> 00:32:07,800
This is an example.

424
00:32:07,800 --> 00:32:10,140
This music in the background is the Avalanches.

425
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:13,500
They've sampled over a thousand samples to make this record.

426
00:32:13,500 --> 00:32:15,460
It's a great record called Since I Left You.

427
00:32:16,500 --> 00:32:17,320
You should pick it up.

428
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:20,640
Essentially, it is a collage of samples.

429
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:27,320
In fact, they did clear, from what I understand, even a Madonna sample, which is really hard to find.

430
00:32:28,500 --> 00:32:30,760
Madonna cannot let you clear a sample.

431
00:32:30,940 --> 00:32:34,220
Part of the problem is the way the current system works.

432
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:36,820
It was extremely difficult to clear all the samples.

433
00:32:36,820 --> 00:32:47,480
I know a lot of releases that are delayed or maybe they'll have to take out tracks because it is just not possible to do so and we feel that we really enjoy this kind of music.

434
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:49,400
No, it may never be on the top 40.

435
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:50,240
That's fine.

436
00:32:50,580 --> 00:32:54,200
We're not advocating that it should be on MTV 24-7.

437
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:54,920
Right.

438
00:32:55,320 --> 00:33:03,920
A lot of people kind of think that well, why don't you go make music and just do whatever you want and kind of not worry about copyright.

439
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:05,980
What if you just did that?

440
00:33:08,140 --> 00:33:10,800
Why does copyright have to be such a big deal?

441
00:33:11,340 --> 00:33:21,780
Our fear as an organization is that it's really going to sway a lot of people who don't really want to be illegal rebels and don't really want to break the law to make music.

442
00:33:21,780 --> 00:33:39,720
Some people are not as radical as you might be or we might be at Defcon and that kind of thing and really just want to play by the rules but if everything's kind of locked down and there's this increasing threat of copyright lawsuits then they're going to be much less encouraged to make new art.

443
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:57,560
And the hacker community really thrives on the underground and it's really kind of a big part of the idea is to remain kind of under the surface but to the extent that you can do that in culture, it's not as rewarding because culture is meant to be seen and heard.

444
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:03,660
You can post a mix anonymously online and people can listen to it but there's always an issue of identification.

445
00:34:03,700 --> 00:34:16,320
Right, there's always going to be this problem of how do you disseminate culture properly and with the really good hacks and that kind of thing they're under the surface and you might not even ever know about them and that's why they're good.

446
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:17,740
That's not how culture works.

447
00:34:17,740 --> 00:34:32,580
So the worry is that if you just want to keep kind of working in the underground and we totally like underground and obscure music and that kind of thing but if you want to keep avoiding the spotlight because you're afraid of a lawsuit that kind of thing,

448
00:34:32,580 --> 00:34:53,780
it's going to really kind of short change your mission as an artist and our goal as an organization is to really encourage and foster the environment in college campuses and hopefully on a larger scale in the American public where remixing and hacking are video games and that kind of thing is looked upon as just the next step.

449
00:34:53,780 --> 00:34:59,720
It's just another tool in the artist's kind of briefcase of being in that kind of thing.

450
00:35:00,580 --> 00:35:10,460
So, I guess I wanted to kind of pimp or talk about CCMixter which is a kind of site that Creative Commons is running.

451
00:35:10,460 --> 00:35:25,940
If any of you are musicians or artists or anybody who just likes to tinker with music CCMixter is kind of a cool site where you can go and set up an account and download samples that are all CC-licensed and you can do whatever you want with them and put them back up and it's kind of like a social networking.

452
00:35:25,940 --> 00:35:28,820
It's like the Flickr but for music, I mean, hopefully.

453
00:35:29,420 --> 00:35:32,280
The music I'm playing now Let's Take It Back by Ashwan.

454
00:35:32,340 --> 00:35:33,640
Ashwan's a great artist on there.

455
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:35,100
He's done like tons of tracks.

456
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:36,840
His stuff's always awesome.

457
00:35:37,160 --> 00:35:42,820
He made a track about the London bombings maybe two or three hours after they happened and uploaded it onto Mixter.

458
00:35:42,820 --> 00:35:51,960
It's just a really great little environment where people can kind of remix and not worry about the copyright stuff.

459
00:35:52,180 --> 00:35:55,520
That's one of the possible alternatives.

460
00:35:56,160 --> 00:35:58,320
Do you know what license he's using?

461
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:04,340
I think he primarily uses non-commercial attribution which means you can remix his stuff.

462
00:36:04,820 --> 00:36:13,000
But in this case, if you're planning on selling his music, since you were here for the last presentation, you're probably not okay to sell it.

463
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:14,780
So it's definitely a compromise.

464
00:36:15,400 --> 00:36:42,480
It's a better way because he gets to make awesome music, put it online, thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands of people download it every week and it's kind of the ideal that we want to see happen on college campuses is that people kind of sidestep these problems with copyright for the sake of creating a pool or participating in a pool of culture that's much more valuable and important because it's less regulated.

465
00:36:42,540 --> 00:36:47,200
And a lot of people have said, well, more culture is not necessarily better culture.

466
00:36:47,720 --> 00:37:02,720
And of course we would advocate for everybody to create their own works, but it's true, not everything out there, I mean there have been some internet phenomena where you have some Bulgarian guys singing, has anybody seen this video?

467
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:19,380
Oh yeah, it's this kid singing, I guess it's a traditional Bulgarian song or something, but it's been remixed into techno , and it's just kind of funny and sad and weird at the same time.

468
00:37:19,380 --> 00:37:22,380
It just became an internet phenomenon somehow , not that we're judging it.

469
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:28,160
It's up there with all your base as far as I'm concerned, but the question is whether or not that could happen.

470
00:37:28,160 --> 00:37:34,220
I mean, imagine the poor kid got sued for making that video when he was singing the techno remix of a traditional song.

471
00:37:34,260 --> 00:37:35,280
It's crazy.

472
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:47,880
Our feeling is that even though there might be more culture out there with more Creative Commons licensing and that kind of thing, the kind of general way social networks work and the internet works is that the best stuff will kind of come to the top,

473
00:37:47,880 --> 00:38:02,380
and CCMixter among other software packages is really designed to encourage people to participate and comment and rate stuff, and it's not just like this kind of mass stuff that's kind of unrated and unjustified.

474
00:38:02,420 --> 00:38:05,640
You can trust your friends to recommend that kind of thing.

475
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:08,200
This is Accufun who...

476
00:38:08,760 --> 00:38:13,560
I think they also use about 100 samples per song.

477
00:38:13,560 --> 00:38:20,500
Essentially what they do is they take really small snippets of music and then I'll make it louder...

478
00:38:20,500 --> 00:38:26,580
mix it together such to create an entire song like this.

479
00:38:26,580 --> 00:38:37,060
I do not know the copyright status, but they did clear the samples, but I'm thinking because they're almost non-recognizable they probably did not.

480
00:38:42,240 --> 00:38:44,660
We also have CC73

481
00:38:47,720 --> 00:38:59,200
another artist using a lot of samples, and I'd like to say these are not mainstream artists, I mean I don't know if you've heard of a lot of these people, but they definitely are getting attention in artistic circles.

482
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:05,200
And again, some people have said, well, what if you want all this culture to be mainstream?

483
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:07,560
I mean, isn't the point to be underground?

484
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:11,180
And if you're going to be underground, you can still do things illegally.

485
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:15,800
But we feel that there's a general chilling effect in society that...

486
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:27,840
Like I was saying before, the idea that the kind of bedroom rocker is going to be suppressed into not making music could be the next John Lennon or something.

487
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:29,880
I mean, who knows what could happen.

488
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:39,100
I mean, there's such there's such propaganda coming out of the content industry right now that downloading music is illegal.

489
00:39:39,100 --> 00:39:44,200
I mean, that's really the exact text of their you know, their losses.

490
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:46,960
And if you go to CC Mixer, you can download a lot of legal music.

491
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:48,560
As much legal music as you want.

492
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:51,360
I mean, it's endless, the amount of legal music that you can download.

493
00:39:51,360 --> 00:40:07,360
So, our fear as an organization is that there's going to be this kind of atmosphere of actual fear that you can't listen to music that other people make and that you can't remix it and you can't reuse it.

494
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:23,240
Just because a corporation kind of has enough money to send out these propaganda campaigns doesn't mean that people shouldn't be kind of doing what their artistic, you know, sentiments would lead them to, you know.

495
00:40:23,240 --> 00:40:29,260
And plus, there's a large distinction between what was possible, say, 20, 30 years ago and what's going on now.

496
00:40:29,260 --> 00:40:32,440
I mean, you know, a lot of you, I'm sure, made mixtapes when you were younger.

497
00:40:32,820 --> 00:40:34,340
Those are physical copies.

498
00:40:34,340 --> 00:40:38,460
You can only distribute them to however many people you make that copy for.

499
00:40:38,460 --> 00:40:44,880
64 is the number of generations that you can make a copy of an audio tape with before it will be totally unlistenable.

500
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:50,500
But, it's totally different on the internet as a copy is the exact same thing as the original.

501
00:40:51,020 --> 00:40:59,720
And some people may only intend to put something up on their site for their friends and family, but as we've seen with this Bulgarian techno guy, I highly doubt he wanted, like, the whole internet to see it.

502
00:40:59,860 --> 00:41:02,000
Things can be disseminated very widely.

503
00:41:02,860 --> 00:41:05,960
So, this kind of leads us to the end of our presentation.

504
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,400
What do we want from you guys?

505
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:11,800
And, like, what are we kind of talking about?

506
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:13,080
What can you do to help out?

507
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:14,040
That kind of thing.

508
00:41:14,140 --> 00:41:19,240
I guess the number one thing is to check out our website, join our email list, start talking to your friends.

509
00:41:19,240 --> 00:41:21,400
If you go to college, hey, start a chapter.

510
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:22,220
It's really not that hard.

511
00:41:22,220 --> 00:41:23,260
I did it this year.

512
00:41:23,300 --> 00:41:25,160
Talk to some administration folk.

513
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:29,020
The people at your school want to see you doing activities and that kind of thing.

514
00:41:29,020 --> 00:41:32,720
They really don't think that hard about the politics of your organization.

515
00:41:32,720 --> 00:41:44,320
I mean, it depends what university you go to, but more often than not, you could be talking about really radical stuff and just still be calling yourself some organization.

516
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:45,840
They'll give you money.

517
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:49,340
It's actually a really fun way to meet people and start talking.

518
00:41:49,580 --> 00:42:01,320
The only way we're really going to make a change is if we kind of get enough momentum as an organization ourselves and kind of start doing things, and that's with the help of you guys and your ideas.

519
00:42:01,660 --> 00:42:04,460
I think you did organize several events.

520
00:42:04,540 --> 00:42:06,420
Yeah, I mean, I did a couple events.

521
00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:09,840
We downloaded movies from thearchives.org and had movie screening sessions.

522
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:11,040
That's just one idea.

523
00:42:11,340 --> 00:42:16,360
I know the guys at Swarthmore did a whole remix of The Night of the Living Dead, where it was kind of a film festival.

524
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:18,160
They did some really neat stuff with that.

525
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:26,000
I'm planning in the fall to bug my non-graduated friends at NYU to start a Creative Commons kind of art show.

526
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:29,240
I mean, there's lots of stuff you can kind of come up with and ideas.

527
00:42:29,240 --> 00:42:30,400
Did you bring rock star speakers as well?

528
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:31,940
No , we didn't get a chance to.

529
00:42:31,940 --> 00:42:36,280
Some other chapters have also brought in speakers on topics such as... Just get panels to your school.

530
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:37,340
Get people talking.

531
00:42:37,340 --> 00:42:44,160
I mean, there's kind of a whole great opportunity in college to get political and active.

532
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:51,920
And the movement, the copy left movement, and the free culture movement has yet to really totally solidify.

533
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:59,460
So there's a lot of opportunity for people who might not otherwise be involved with progressive ideas and that kind of thing to get involved.

534
00:42:59,460 --> 00:43:02,340
And they don't have to say that they wouldn't vote for Bush.

535
00:43:02,340 --> 00:43:04,560
I mean, they don't have to say that they'll vote for Kerry.

536
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:08,520
Right now, it's just like we want more sensible copyright laws.

537
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:11,700
And I think people across all party lines can agree on that issue.

538
00:43:11,700 --> 00:43:15,560
I mean, I don't think it's solely restricted to one side or another of the political spectrum.

539
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:23,480
One of the really big things that Lawrence Lessig stresses in his book, Free Culture, is that he advocates a common sense approach to copyright.

540
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:32,720
And more often than not, when there's a lawsuit involving a teenager or a college student in copyright, common sense is really kind of thrown to the wayside.

541
00:43:32,720 --> 00:43:42,580
And it doesn't really take a political affiliation to realize that a lot of things that are going on with copyright lawsuits are destructive and cruel.

542
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:48,200
So, yeah, one more thing before we close.

543
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:52,600
I'm selling this t-shirt at the EFF booth, so if you'd like one...

544
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:53,220
Come support us.

545
00:43:53,220 --> 00:43:54,120
Support EFF.

546
00:43:54,140 --> 00:43:56,560
Support EFF and support Free Culture.

547
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:57,820
Go purchase one.

548
00:43:57,820 --> 00:43:59,720
We have mediums and larges.

549
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:05,640
So, after that, I guess we can take questions or we'll talk to anybody who's interested in helping out.

550
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:06,440
Yes?

551
00:44:35,700 --> 00:44:39,840
Well, I think we did make the point that we do believe I mean, what...

552
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:41,840
What is the question?

553
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:42,600
I'm sorry.

554
00:44:43,620 --> 00:44:45,020
It was a comment.

555
00:44:45,140 --> 00:44:45,840
Okay.

556
00:44:48,340 --> 00:44:49,340
Right.

557
00:44:54,830 --> 00:44:56,990
Well, I think Western music...

558
00:44:56,990 --> 00:44:59,190
The comment's talking about how...

559
00:44:59,190 --> 00:45:02,230
I'm repeating the comment.

560
00:45:02,230 --> 00:45:13,190
The idea is that music that we've been listening to the last 50 years is really just a synthesis of a couple kind of big... small paradigms that started off.

561
00:45:13,230 --> 00:45:17,150
And not even paradigms, but exact notes and pieces of music.

562
00:45:17,150 --> 00:45:24,970
I mean, how many rock songs from the Strokes to the Rolling Stones have the 12-bar blues or some variation thereof inside?

563
00:45:27,850 --> 00:45:28,790
Right.

564
00:45:28,790 --> 00:45:31,950
And it seems now that we have this great kind of opportunity to...

565
00:45:31,950 --> 00:45:34,130
He said it was triggered by electronics and technology.

566
00:45:34,130 --> 00:45:34,610
Oh, I'm sorry.

567
00:45:34,610 --> 00:45:35,870
I totally...

568
00:45:35,870 --> 00:45:47,130
Anyway, we have this great opportunity now to push that even farther and take the technology and make remixes to really extravagant lengths.

569
00:45:47,430 --> 00:46:01,550
And the fear... you know, we're afraid that that's going to kind of get clamped down on by a lot of people who kind of are living with the idea that records and CD sales are it to the bottom line of culture.

570
00:46:01,870 --> 00:46:04,430
And we don't feel that's the case.

571
00:46:04,430 --> 00:46:05,450
Actually, could I ask a question?

572
00:46:05,450 --> 00:46:07,930
Were you saying that we were under-emphasizing this point?

573
00:46:07,930 --> 00:46:09,570
Was that the issue?

574
00:46:22,220 --> 00:46:23,220
Well, yeah.

575
00:46:24,340 --> 00:46:26,440
You're saying, yeah, it's starting to happen with movies.

576
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:28,260
You'll have digital video cameras.

577
00:46:35,020 --> 00:46:39,480
The comment was, what is happening with music in the last 50 years is now happening with video.

578
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:43,160
And I think we acknowledge that.

579
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:51,780
And frankly, I don't think our organization would exist or would have existed 20 or 30 years ago because it is the technology here that has enabled all this production.

580
00:46:51,780 --> 00:46:55,540
And now somebody can buy a digital video camera for a couple hundred dollars.

581
00:46:55,540 --> 00:47:01,200
It's not going to be the best one, but it is enabling creation on a grassroots level.

582
00:47:02,060 --> 00:47:03,960
That is definitely something we are supporting.

583
00:47:03,960 --> 00:47:07,040
We're kind of running out of time, so if anybody has any other quick comments...

584
00:47:07,040 --> 00:47:08,440
Yeah, back there.

585
00:47:10,500 --> 00:47:14,060
Yeah, we're big fans of Downhill Battle, or at least I am.

586
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:15,800
They've been doing some really great stuff.

587
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:24,980
They're coming out with some really kind of cutting-edge software that's going to let people share media and push the limits of remix culture.

588
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,220
And I'm very excited to see what they kind of come out with.

589
00:47:28,220 --> 00:47:31,120
So, yeah, check out our website, then check out Downhill Battle.

590
00:47:31,180 --> 00:47:32,200
They're friends of ours.

591
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:34,160
We actually have some shirts for sale.

592
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:38,920
Yeah, contact us if you want some... Downhill Battle shirts that look kind of like the DEF CON logo, as you can see.

593
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:40,040
She'll model it.

594
00:47:41,180 --> 00:47:44,700
Home taping is killing the music industry.

595
00:47:44,700 --> 00:47:45,820
Not the case.

596
00:47:46,240 --> 00:47:47,860
It's ironic, yes.

597
00:47:47,860 --> 00:47:59,280
Right, that was a real serious campaign back in the 80s from what I understand, and I think we've seen that it back then did not kill the music industry.

598
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:06,360
In fact, people heard songs on mixtapes and then went out and bought things and found out about new artists that their friends were telling them about.

599
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:12,080
So, if you guys go to college or want to get involved, please contact us, talk to us right afterwards.

600
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:12,680
We'd love to hear from you.

601
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:13,860
Or just about the general issues.

602
00:48:13,860 --> 00:48:15,400
We'd always love to hear your comments.

603
00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:19,680
It kind of starts from you guys and us, so we've got to start somewhere.

604
00:48:20,140 --> 00:48:20,960
So, thanks.

605
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:22,800
Thank you so much for coming to hear us.

606
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:23,260
Yeah.