The Politics of Digital Piracy

Introduction

This is the online version of the class concurrently being taught as a DeCal at UC Berkeley by student facilitators Angelica Tavella and Rodrigo Ochigame . The online portion will be used by both enrolled students coming to the classroom (W 5-6:30), as well as students taking it only on P2PU .

Contact Angelica Tavella- angelicatavella@gmail.com Rodrigo Ochigame- ro@riseup.net

Course info

Thanks to the personal computer, copying is easier than ever—and consequently, the sphere of copyright is bigger than ever. College students are routinely sued into bankruptcy for petty downloading. An FBI warning precedes every feature film on DVD, reminding viewers that duplication is a federal crime for which violators are subject to imprisonment or fines up to $150,000. And thanks to statutorily protected Digital Rights Management schemes, copyright holders can limit legitimate uses of copyrighted works as they see fit.

What is piracy? How does it affect the economy? Is there such a thing as "good" piracy? Over 57 million Americans have shared files on P2P networks—that’s more than the population of California and New York combined. Are all of these people pirates? Is it time to rethink our definition of piracy? How has the political environment in America contributed to stringent intellectual property protections?

Students will be familiarized with the historical rationales and legal origins of copyright, the current debates surrounding it, and the implications of an old body of law adapting to a digital era. Should we look at the growing sphere of copyright as a public interest problem, or celebrate the expansion of creators’ rights? We’ll be doing some light reading, a lot of discussion, and some film viewings that relate to our discussions. We’ll also have some guest speakers come in to provide us with different perspectives.

If taken at UCB: Must be taken on a passed/not passed basis. Units: 2, Prerequisites: None

Syllabus

Syllabus

Week 0: Introduction

Week 1: Law

Assignments:

• Lawrence Lessig. Aaron's Laws - Law and Justice in a Digital Age (at Harvard Law School)

• Richard Stallman. Misinterpreting Copyright - A Series of Errors

• Copyright Overview (Stanford University Libraries)

Week 2: Privacy and Surveillance

Assignments:

• Laura Poitras. Surveillance Teach-In (at Whitney Biennial)

Suggested:

• Glenn Greenwald. XKeyscore (The Guardian)

• The Tor Project

• Transcript of secret meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt (WikiLeaks)

Week 3: Hacking

Assignments:

• Brian Harvey. What is a Hacker?

Suggested:

• TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard

• Bruce Sterling. The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

• Gabriella Coleman. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

Week 4: P2P

Assignments:

• Adrian Johns. Pop music pirate hunters

Suggested:

• Defining P2P as the relational dynamic of distributed networks (P2P Foundation)

Week 5: Copyleft and Open Licensing

Assignments:

• What is Copyleft? (Free Software Foundation)

• Guide to Open Licensing (Open Knowledge Foundation)

Suggested:

• Richard Stallman. The GNU Manifesto

• Creative Commons

Week 6: Midterm Presentations

No Assignments

Week 7: Art and Remix

Assignments:

• RiP: A Remix Manifesto

Suggested:

• Walter Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Week 8: Science and DIY

Assignments:

• Michael Eisen. The Past, Present and Future of Scholarly Publishing

• Ritchie King. When Breakthroughs Begin at Home (The New York Times)

Suggested:

• Notes on FASTR (Harvard Open Access Project)

• Aaron Swartz. Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

Week 9: Code and Collaboration

Assignments:

• Try to explore GitHub (it's ok to be lost)

Suggested:

• Christopher Kelty. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software

Week 10: Cool Stuff Show n Tell

Assignments:

• Give an outline/summary of Project 1

Week 11: Democracy

Assignments:

• Clay Shirky. How the Internet will (one day) transform government (at TED)

Suggested:

• Yochai Benkler. Wealth of Networks (Chapter 3)

Week 12: Implications of Recent Law and Policy Makers

Week 13: Future and Wrap-Up

Assignments:

• Peer-to-Peer Politics: Moving Beyond Left and Right (at MIT Media Lab)

Week 14: Final Presentations