free culture

MEETUP/WEBCAST SATURDAY – Wikipedia Day NYC 2016

Posted on by joly

Wikiday NYC 2016On Saturday January 16, 2016 Wikimedia NYC will celebrate Wikipedia’s 15th Birthday with a miniconference, hosted by NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts,  supported by the Free Culture Alliance NYC (including ISOC-NY). Topics include Wikidata, Education & Editathons, Lightning Talks, and many inconference sessions. From 4pm-5pm there wil be a live link up with some of the many other similar events taking place worldwide. Attendance is free. Food will be provided. Please register at http://bit.ly/wikiday15 if you plan to attend in person. There will also be a livestream via the Internet Society Livestream Channel.

What: Wikipedia Day 15th Birthday Bash NYC
Where: NYU ITP, 721 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10003
When: Saturday, January 16, 2016 10:00 am – 7:00 pm EST (UTC-5)
Register: http://bit.ly/wikiday15
Webcast: https://livestream.com/internetsociety/wikidaynyc2016/
Twitter: #Wikipedia15

ISOC-NY EVENT 3pm WEDNESDAY: LibTechNYC 2014

Posted on by joly

libtech nycOn Wednesday May 21 2014 at 3pm the Internet Society’s New York Chapter (ISOC-NY) and RECLAIM.CC, as part of Internet Week NY, will present Libtech NYC 2014 – a half-day conference to “envision, learn, share and build robust, decentralized networks through participatory systems.” There is a voluntary fee of $12+ to attend in person, and a free webcast via the Internet Society Chapters YouTube channel.

What: Libtech NYC 2014
Where: Courant Institute, Warren Weaver Hall, 251 Mercer St, NYC
When: Wednesday May 21 2014 3pm-9pm EDT | 1900-0100 UTC
Tickets: http://www.gofundme.com/957o5s
Webcast: http://bit.ly/libtechvideo
Twitter: #libtechnyc
Agenda:
• Save the internet: net neutrality protestors camp out against FCC ruling
• Create the people’s intelligence agency with Robert David Steele, author of Open Source Everything manifesto
• Learn from veteran attorney Stanley Cohen on criminalization of dissent
• Explore how a new Internet Bill Of Rights might function
• Reclaim: where communities of practice connect around projects
• Build and transform social capital, diy liberation technology + you
Participants:
Groucho Fractal and Scott Beibin; Beyond The Grid with video artist Paul Garrin with Nicole Brydson of Misfit Media; Veteran attorney activist Stanley Cohen; Cyber-reformer and intelligence professional Robert David Steele on intelligence in the public interest; Nate Heasley with goodnik; Sandra Ordonez with Open Internet Tools Projects (openitp); Nick Farr – hackers on planet earth; Reactor (Josephine Dorado and Jeremy Pesner); David Solomonoff with the Internet Society of New York; Bruce Lincoln & Clayton Banks envisioning the technological future with Silicon Harlem; Thomas Lowenhaupt of connectingnyc.org; Ted Schulman and the open source imperative; Ted Hall and seedball; culture change campaigns with Fred Sullivan and the man-up campaign and communities of practice including arc 38 and Brooklyn the Borough.
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Internet Society Joins Opposition to Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

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Policies mandating DNS filtering undermine the open architecture of the Internet and raise human rights and freedom of expression concerns

[Washington, D.C. and Geneva, Switzerland – 12 December 2011] – The Internet Society Board of Trustees has expressed concern with a number of U.S. legislative proposals that would mandate DNS blocking and filtering by ISPs to protect the interests of copyright holders. While the Internet Society agrees that combating illicit online activity is an important public policy objective, these critical issues must be addressed in ways that do not undermine the viability of the Internet as a platform for innovation across all industries by compromising its global architecture. The Internet Society Board of Trustees does not believe that the Protect-IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are consistent with these basic principles.
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David Solomonoff on the perils and pitfalls of Internet Freedom

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David SolomonoffISOC-NY President David Solomonoff writes about the pitfalls of prescriptions for Internet freedom: Hackers Fight For Freedom With Net Tech; Ignore Politics, Psychology At Their Peril

Internet freedom initiatives must be independent of political connotations, run on a decentralized infrastructure, and use technology that is subject to public review by security experts. Most importantly, users must have complete trust in the skills and integrity of the people providing those tools and services.

If they don’t the cure could prove worse than the disease.

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Internet Society statement on Egypt

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The Internet Society has issued a statement on the current situation in Egypt.

“We are following the current events in Egypt with concern as it appears that all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic has been disrupted. The Internet Society believes that the Internet is a global medium that fundamentally supports opportunity, empowerment, knowledge, growth, and freedom and that these values should never be taken away from individuals.

The Internet Society considers this recent action by the Egyptian government to block Internet traffic to be an inappropriate response to a political crisis. It is a very serious decision for a government to block all Internet access in its country, and a serious intrusion into its citizens’ basic rights to communicate. If the blockage continues, it will have a very detrimental impact on Egypt’s economy and society. Ultimately, the Egyptian people and nation are the ones that will suffer, while the rest of the world will be worse off with the loss of Egyptian voices on the net.

However we are most concerned about the safety and security of the Egyptian people. Alongside the rest of the world, we share the hope for a positive and lasting solution to the problems that have risen to the surface there.

In the longer term, we are sure that the world will learn a lesson from this very unfortunate example, and come to understand that cutting off a nation’s access to the Internet only serves to fuel dissent and does not address the underlying causes of dissatisfaction.”
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Internet Society issues statement on Wikileaks

Posted on by joly

ISOC logoThe Internet Society has issued a statement criticizing recent technical efforts to suppress the Wikileaks website.

It reads as follows:

Recently, we have witnessed the effective disappearance from the Internet of a website made infamous through international press coverage and political intrigue.

The Internet Society is founded upon key principles of free expression and non discrimination that are essential to preserve the openness and utility of the Internet. We believe that this incident dramatically illustrates that those principles are currently at risk.

Recognizing the content of the wikileaks.org website is the subject of concern to a variety of individuals and nations, we nevertheless believe it must be subject to the same laws and policies of availability as all Internet sites.  Free expression should not be restricted by governmental or private controls over computer hardware or software, telecommunications infrastructure, or other essential components of the Internet.

Resilience and cooperation are built into the Internet as a design principle. The cooperation among several  organizations has ensured that the impact on the Wikileaks organizational website has not prevented all access to Wikileaks material.  This further underscores that removal of a domain is an ineffective tool to suppress communication, merely serving to undermine the integrity of the global Internet and its operation.

Unless and until appropriate laws are brought to bear to take the wikileaks.org domain down legally, technical solutions should be sought to reestablish its proper presence, and appropriate actions taken to pursue and prosecute entities (if any) that acted maliciously to take it off the air.

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ISOC-NY Event: Censorship Circumvention via Kaleidoscope – NYU 3/25

Posted on by joly

On Thurs. Mar 25 ISOC-NY hosted Prof. Jinyang Li in a talk about the use of distributed systems, and particularly the use of the Kaleidoscope Firefox plug-in, in circumventing censorship. This is part of her ongoing research into “exploiting the real world social relationships among users to improve the security and reliability of open distributed systems.” The talk explains how traditional censorship workarounds like proxies and P2P can easily be discovered and defeated, but how Kaleidoscope – which passes encrypted data through trusted relays – defies such efforts.

Video + audio is below. A DVD of this talk is available free ($5 paypal donation optional) from dvd@isoc-ny.org. Ask for DVD1725

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ISOC-NY Film Night – Mar 5: Copyright Criminals

Posted on by joly

What: ISOC-NY Movie Night : Copyright Criminals
Where: Rm. 109, Warren Weaver Hall NYU, 250 Mercer St NYC
When: Friday Mar 5, 7:00pm,
Who: Public Welcome. Admission Free.
Sponsors: ISOC-NY, FreeCulture NYU, NYU ACM, Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic, tech@nyu

Join producer Kembrew McLeod and legendary remixer Steve Steinski Stein, the inspiration for many recent artists including Girl Talk, for a Q&A session after the screening.

We are thankful that Kembrew (yes, the same prankster professor who trademarked “Freedom Of Expression” and went after AT&T for using the term in an ad) is giving ISOC-NY the opportunity to screen this film so shortly after its successful run at the Film Forum.

Trailer below
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Networks and the DMCA process

Posted on by joly

A Huffington Post story details the effects of DMCA notice served on Hurricane Electric by the US Chamber of Commerce to take down a spoof site by the Yes-men – the site suggests that the Chamber has done a u-turn on its controversial position vis-vis climate change. What is notable is that, rather than being the actual host ( May 1/People Link), Hurricane Electric is the upstream provider. In acceding to the request it disconnected every single site on the host. The situation was soon resolved – and the site moved to a mirror – but the incident has given rise to some discussion, not just over the legitimacy of the DMCA claim, but of the responsibilities of network operators in such circumstances. On the latter find below some excerpts from a related NANOG thread.

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Memefactory – NYU – 10-9-09

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MemeFactory WHAT:  Memefactory is a performance for anyone who uses the internet. Whether you are perplexed by pictures of cats with awful spelling or spend over 9000 hours a week surfing image boards, we promise you’ll either learn something or explode from overexposure to lulz.

Three gentlemen with three computers and three projectors take the audience on a fast-paced and whirlwind tour of every major internet meme, famous piece of internet media and more YouTube footage that we care to admit over the course of one and one half of one hour. Biologist Richard Dawkins defines as meme as a unit of cultural transmission – in the general sense a meme can be any piece of information which travels between members of culture – for us, however, memes involve funny pictures of cats and people doing silly dances.


WHEN: October 9 7:30-9:00.

WHERE:  Warren Weaver Hall RM 109, http://cs.nyu.edu/web/Location/directions.html (Free and Open to the Public)

WHO: What We Know So Far http://www.whatweknowsofar.com/

WHY: Because it is not another academic lecture but lively performance filled with nothing but insight and humor for die-hard Internet memeologists and newbies alike. Take the plunge with the memefactory!
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White Space vote nears

Posted on by joly

The NYC Council Tech Committee recently held a public hearing after the Broadway and TV industries lobbied for a resolution urging the FCC to withhold approval of White Space Devices (WSDs) for broadband access – the concern being that they would interfere with wireless microphones and DTV transmissions

http://nycbroadband.blogspot.com/2008/09/white-spaces-hearing-webcast.html

The FCC, as it now stands, will vote on Nov 4
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-286069A1.pdf

Freepress is strongly advocating the public to encourage the FCC to approve WSDs.
https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?alertId=285&pg=makeACall
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2008 Internet Freedom Bash

Posted on by joly

If you believe that every Internet user should have the right to freedom of speech without gatekeepers; if you believe that every person should have access to fast, affordable, open Internet then join hosts Kathryn Tucker, John Johnson and Tim Wu at Free Press’s 1st Annual Internet Freedom Bash.

Eat, drink, dance, and join others like you who care about the future of the Internet and the future of our media.

Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008
Time: 7:00 – 10:30 p.m.
Location: The Cabanas at The Maritime Hotel
88 Ninth Avenue at 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
Hosted By: Free Press

RSVP By Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 5:00 p.m.

Tickets are $50 — to purchase, click here
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