If you're in London on Sunday March 19, there's a public event at my office that I'd like you to come to: we eat brunch, go to Speakers' Corner, and give impromptu speeches about copyright in between the Marxists, god-botherers and loonies.
Since January 2005, I've hosted a series of EFF-sponsored monthly-ish brunches at my office in London's Stanhope Centre. These "London Copyfighters' Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop" events have been semi-open: anyone who showed up was welcome, but I didn't advertise it much because I couldn't afford to feed an army.
But Stanhope Centre's lost its lease, I'm retired from EFF, and spring is upon us, so for the very last of these events hosted at Stanhope, I'm throwing it open to the wide world. If you're interested in issues of copyright, patent, trademark, free information, access — that kinda thing — you're invited to come to Stanhope on March 19th for an 11AM-1PM brunch and then to come and give a speech at Hyde Park's legendary Speaker's Corner, just over the road.
Giving a speech at Speakers' Corner is wild — it's the ultimate soap-boxing experience, and everyone who's done it swears by it. You can check out pictures of previous declaimings, too.
Come April and through the spring and summer, the Open Rights Group will continue to run Copyfighters' Brunches as picnics in Hyde Park, and it's hunting for a nearby indoor home for the autumn and winter of 2006.
March's event is co-sponsored by EFF, Open Rights Group, the Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure and the Open Knowledge Forum Network.
When: Sunday, March 19. Food from 11AM to 1PM; Speakers' Corner excursion 1PM-~2PM.
Where: Stanhope Centre (Stanhope Centre, Stanhope House, Stanhope Place, London W2 2HH)
Directions: The nearest underground station is Marble Arch. If you are at the Marble Arch tube station, walk West on the North side of the street. The Street is Oxford Street as you exit the tube but it immediately becomes Bayswater. Keeping walking due West for 2 blocks (using the pedestrian underpass to cross under Edgeware Road). Hyde Park will be on your left or to the South as you walk. Then, take the first right after you exit the pedestrian underpass is Stanhope Place. (It is about 75 yards from where you exit the pedestrian underpass. Walk north on Stanhope Place approximately 50 feet to the first set of steps on the block. You will see a sign for Stanhope Centre. Walk up the stairs and ring the bottom bell, which is marked Stanhope Centre.
