Russia internet freedom: Thousands protest against cyber-security bill BBC News
Thousands of people in Russia have protested against plans to introduce tighter restrictions on the internet. A mass rally in Moscow and similar demonstrations …
You will recall that over the past few years, we have been discussing how Iowa State University essentially did everything wrong concerning an alumni group running a pro-marijuana organization that made use of school symbols and iconography. After initially approving the group’s use of school trademarks, several members of the state’s conservative legislature got involved, leading to the school rescinding that authorization. NORML, the name of the group, sued the school, claiming all of this was a violation of their free speech rights. The courts agreed, eventually to the tune of a $ 600k judgement, meaning that school wasted over half a million dollars of taxpayer money to fail at trademark bullying.
You might have expected that this would serve as a delightful education for the school as to the reasons why they don’t want to be a trademark bully. You would be wrong, of course. Instead, the school’s next step was to immediately rewrite its trademark use policy, making it laughably restrictive and essentially attempting to give the school broad oversight over all uses of its iconography by student groups. This, predictably, has led to a full on revolt both by many of the school’s student organizations and its student government.
To start with the student organizations, they are largely dropping ISU connections from their name and branding like a hot stone.
A year ago, Iowa State University’s student chess club was easily tied to the university through its name. Now, it’s the Ames Collegiate Chess Club. The student aviation group had been the Flying Cyclones. Now, they’re the Ames Flyers. And the student space club, which had had “Iowa State” in its name, is Ames Space Teaching and Recognition Association.
Why the changes? University administrators over the summer tightened Iowa State’s trademark policy by limiting most student organizations’ access to trademarked references to the institution.
As noted elsewhere in the post, ISU has a habit of puffing its chest out over its large roster of student-led organizations and clubs. Yet, because of its heavy-handed new policy, those ties to the university are being severed, taking those bragging rights away. Where ISU once could be seen as having a rich tradition of clubs and organizations reveling in student participation, a separation line has now been drawn. All because the school wants to choose control over culture.
And the students are pissed.
The policy so riled student government members that they unanimously approved a resolution this week requesting the administration, at least temporarily, backpedal from the guidelines that were posted Aug. 1 on ISU’s Trademark Licensing Office website.
“The administration went about this poorly,” Michael Tupper, an ISU student government member, said at this week’s meeting. “They implemented the change in the middle of the summer, when there were no students on campus.”
In addition, Tupper said during the meeting, “We’ve been told multiple times that the change was not in direct result to the lawsuit. … That is not true.”
A school spokesperson states that the school will review the resolution and then meet with the student government, but it’s painfully obvious that it would rather have avoided student interaction altogether through sheer timing. Making such a policy change where the primary effect will be felt by student groups when students weren’t even on campus isn’t particularly subtle. Meeting with the student government now is CYA, not some kind of olive branch. And that’s likely why the student government is not screwing around here.
Some at this week’s student government meeting suggested that if university officials don’t follow through on any requests in the resolution, other actions could be taken, including votes of no confidence or censure.
It’s a problem entirely of ISU’s own making. And, given the culture that is supposed to be fostered on college campuses, this is about as wholly unnecessary as it gets. As entertaining as it is watching an institution like ISU learn absolutely all the wrong lessons from a well-publicized trademark dispute, it has to be just as frustrating for the students on campus.
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The brave new path to a gatekeeper-manned, non-open internet the EU recently cut with its plainly atrocious new copyright directive was, were you to believe the general media coverage, cheered on by EU artists as a blow to Google and a boon to art because… well, nobody can actually explain that last part. And that’s likely because the proposed new legislation, Article 11 and Article 13, essentially forces internet platforms to play total copyright cops or be liable for infringement while gutting the fair use type allowances that had previously been in place. Much of the European legislation that existed on the national level, and which served as the basis for this continental legislation, has done absolutely zero to provide artists or journalists any additional income. Instead, it’s re-entrenched legacy gatekeepers and essentially created a legal prohibition on innovation. As the directive goes through its final stages for adoption by EU member states, the general coverage has repeated the line that artists and creators are cheering this on.
But, despite the media coverage, it isn’t true that all of the artistic world is blind to exactly what was just done to the internet and the wider culture. Destructive Creation — a collection of artists most famous for taking a monument in Europe to Soviet soldiers and painting them all as western superheroes and cultural icons — has made its latest work an addition to a statue of Johannes Gutenberg.
“Let there be light”, reads the cover of the Bible held by the bronze hands of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the modern printing press, on the famous statue in Place Gutenberg in Strasbourg, France. Last weekend, however, the monument received a curious addition. A dazzling red sign reads CENSORED above a caption that reads “Art. 13”.
A member of Bulgarian art collective, Destructive Creation, which was behind the artistic action, defended the stunt.
“Under the proposed regulations, if Gutenberg was doing now what he was doing in the 15th century, he would be sued for using content that does not belong to him – the Bible, which he reprinted – and would have been censored,” the artist told BIRN.
And here is their work upon the statue.
As far as making points goes, slapping the law you believe will censor art on the bible being held by the man that brought mass printing to Europe certainly is on the nose. But the actual important factor in this is that this wasn’t Silicon Valley tech shareholders that defaced the statue in the name of saving art and culture, but a group of artists. These are the exact people who, were you to listen to proponents of the new copyright law, would be on their knees thanking their gracious overlords. Instead, Destructive Creation knows exactly where this is all going to lead and it most certainly isn’t going to be to an EU where artists have more opportunities to make, share, and sell their art. Instead, the law will chill permissive sharing by artists, not to mention individuals and companies that want to build new and innovative platforms to help art reach the public, all under the threat of massive liability that practically mandates platforms disallow user-generated content.
You know, what the internet has essentially always been until this EU bill has decided to kill it.
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