Today, May 4, is the International Day Against DRM, the day in which the Free Software Foundation's "Defective By Design" campaign urges you to celebrate DRM-free media and boycott DRM. There are plenty of local events, poster templates, and the DefectiveByDesign page has a lot of suggestions for other ways to participate:
Mike from Mother Jones sends us a link to the magazine's coverage of yesterday's May Day protests: "Mother Jones reporter was close at hand, and got disturbing photos and video of Oakland Police officers tackling a girl on a bike who didn't seem to be doing anything provocative. He then got a nice taste of OPD attitude: 'Fuck, I just got teargassed,' he tweeted. The video clips are about halfway down, but lots of good photos and bicoastal coverage, too."
A protester holds a Guy Fawkes masked teddy bear during May Day demonstrations in Los Angeles. Below, more photos from demonstrations around the world today (Canada, Germany, Spain, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, and more) in support of workers' rights and economic justice.
Above, Boing Boing pal Joe Sabia took these iPad snapshots of taxi drivers and workers protesting in NYC's Greenwich Village. "These photos are on the mid to tail-end of the march," Joe tells Boing Boing, "They're on Tenth and Broadway, heading south from Union Square."
Readers of England's The Chap magazine staged an incredibly well-dressed protest outside Number 3 Savile Row, the former Apple Records headquarters, which is to become an Abercrombie and Fitch. Chaps of all description dressed in very nice suits and stood around bearing signs and banners with slogans like "give three piece a chance." The Chief Inspector of Savile Row Constabulary remarked "In all honesty, this is the best dressed demonstration I have ever seen."
Zakkai from Fight for the Future (the folks who brought you the war on SOPA) sez, "Want to fight for Internet privacy with cute cat photos? CISPAcat is a new advice animal that wants nothing more than to spy on your internet activity. He's the child of the privacy-killing cybersecurity bill CISPA and the equally creepy ceiling cat. Check him out and submit your own. Curious why CISPA is so bad? Read about it at the EFF's website."
Zakkai sez, "We have the feeling that even CISPA's sponsors don't understand how ridiculous their bill is. Do government agencies and corporations really need to be able to spy on us all the time for any reason? To draw attention to how unnecessary and inappropriate CISPA is, Fight for the Future is launching the CongressTMI campaign along with a coalition of organizations including the ACLU, EFF and Avaaz. The CongressTMI campaign organizes internet users to flood CISPA sponsors' Twitter accounts with our uninteresting and useless personal data (Too Much Information or TMI) - the kind of information that the government will have access to if CISPA passes. But if it does pass, we won't be able to keep the government away from data we don't think is funny, like our personal email or search history. In fact, we'll barely have any privacy rights at all. Hopefully this deluge of mundane crap will be enough to open some eyes in congress and get some internet citizens excited about fighting for their rights."
A bearded gentleman in Portland, Oregon who was upset about being "harassed by airport security" took off all of his clothes while in the TSA screening lane Tuesday evening. He was arrested, taken to jail, and held on $4,000 bail.
According to Portland police, John E. Brennan took off his clothes while going through airport screening at Portland International Airport just after 5:30 p.m. and stood naked before other passengers, including children.
Two screening lanes were closed as a result. Some passengers covered their eyes as well as their children's and retreated from the sight. But others laughed and began snapping photos.
(...) Said Brennan's father, also John Brennan, when reached by KATU News Tuesday night: "This is quite a shock. He hasn't been under any stress that I know of. He's never really under any stress. He works for a computer company in California. He does something with the Internet, which is just kind of mystical to me. This is quite a surprise."
Interviewed today by a Portland TV news program, Mr. Brennan (who has participated in Portland's Naked Bike Rides before) says he felt it was "the right thing to do." He is a frequent flyer who must travel often for his job (in San Jose, CA, I gather?), and he is tired of the TSA's junk-touching ways.
Here we see the traditional dance of the Missouri riot police, performed for three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly and her friends as they gathered at the Whiteman Air Force Base to protest the escalation of drone warfare. The rhythmic shuffle and banging makes for an impressive display, especially when accompanied by the dancers' ancestral garb and clubs.
PCVS is a venerable high school in Peterborough, Ontario (northeast of Toronto). It's older than Canada, and boasts a roster of eminent alumni. It is fully enrolled, gay-friendly, and a success story from top to bottom. It's also slated for closure. In a bid to redistribute its students to half-full schools on the edge of town, the school board is proposing to close PCVS and bus its kids (70% of whom live within walking distance of PCVS) to these other schools. The students and parents have appealed to the board and the provincial ministry, without success. They're looking for wider support, and they deserve it.
One of the oldest in Canada. Established in 1827. Yes, for those of you keeping score, that’s 40 years before Confederation. And now after 185 years, and not for the first time, the school faces permanent closure as mandated by the board.
There have been protests, meetings, appeals, formal requests to the government of Ontario for a review of the decision which came down last September. The campaign to Save PCVS — Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School rolls on. Last Friday, an independent advisor decided the province shouldn’t perform a review. Students were crestfallen.
And yeah, we get it there are reasons to close old schools: building efficiency, changing population patterns, declining enrolment. But when you’re talking about education and community and history, nearly two centuries worth, well could it be that math, heating bills and geography don’t tell the whole story.
There’s the school’s integrated arts programme — an idea we obviously love. And there’s its distinguished alumni from Juno winner Serena Ryder to RIM founder Jim Balsillie, comedian Sean Cullen, ballerina Evelyn Hart. Not to mention thousands of other students, past and present, scientists, musicians, business people, citizens who identify deeply with their school community. PCVS seems to have a cachet normally enjoyed by private schools but without the perceived elitist baggage.
Last night at Santa Monica College (about 20 blocks from the beach here in Los Angeles, CA), police pepper-sprayed some 30 students in a crowd of about 150 protesters. The students want affordable education. They gathered during a meeting of the college's board of trustees to voice opposition to planned tuition hikes that would raise the cost of bread-and-butter courses during the summer session by as much as 400%. I was close enough to the location last night to hear helicopters and sirens as it happened.
The LA Times reports that Santa Monica police are today "trying to sort out" who used pepper-spray on the peacefully assembled students. Reports I heard last night indicated that the person or persons responsible were campus police, not Santa Monica police, who were called in later to secure the site. Among the injured: a child, who looks to be about 4 or 5 years old from these photos.
One student eyewitness tweeted:
Pepper sprayed a room full of students and two children. A poor lil five year old got it in the face.
A large crowd of protesters, between 2,000 and 5,000 by various estimates, are marching through the streets of New York right now to draw attention to the killing of Trayvon Martin. The Florida teen was shot to death last month, in a case that has generated widespread outrage online.
Here's a quick link to the relevant Twitter hashtag (#millionhoodiemarch), to follow tweets from people who are there. Seems like a lot of youth are present at this one, perhaps more so than at recent Occupy marches in New York. People are wearing hoodies, carrying bottles of iced tea and throwing Skittles in the air: Trayvon was wearing one, and holding that candy and beverage when he was shot. So far, police presence is high, but interactions are peaceful, and the crowd is doing its thing without much NYPD aggression. That could change before the night is through.
The parents of the slain teen are present, and addressed the crowd earlier.
Forbes's Carol Pinchefsky profiles "4 Public Interest Groups Who Are Fighting for Your Digital Freedom" including EFF, Public Knowledge, TechFreedom and the Center for Democracy and Technology. It's a great cross-section of the different approaches that activist groups take to technology and freedom (but I would lobby for the inclusion of some of the newer groups, like AmericanCensorship.org and DemandProgress.org, who were so key to the SOPA/PIPA fight). This is part one, focusing on Public Knowledge and EFF.
Cohn said, “We continue to battle the warrantless wiretapping that was started by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration. The administration has been trying to avoid a court looking at what they’re doing by hiding behind the state’s secrets privilege, so we’ve had to have a lot of fights around that.”
Among other battles, the EFF is fighting copyright trolls, people who “use copyright claims to try to shake down people. The business model is not about the lawsuit, it’s about the strategy of extracting money.” For example, Camelot Distribution Group blanketed the users of a peer-to-peer downloading site with threatening letters, claiming that the users illegally downloaded the “nunsploitation” movie, Nude Nuns with Big Guns.
According to Cohn, Camelot Distribution Group told users, “You can pay us a thousand dollars and this whole thing will go away.” She said, “People feel intimidated by this, whether or not they did it, because even if they fight this and they’re exonerated, they’re going to be forever linked to Nude Nuns with Big Guns.”
Worse, the lawsuits are usually created in locations that are geographically undesirable for the defendants, which makes it hard for them to defend themselves. Cohn said, “We’ve been filing amicus briefs and getting appointed by courts across the country to defend these people and to develop some processes that is more fair than the trolls want to do it.”
If you're feeling alone and vulnerable in a big, troubled world, Amazon has this "Damascus FX1 FlexForce Modular Hard Shell Full Body Crowd Control System," which will provide you with the physical protection and the emotional distance necessary to beat, gas, and detain your fellow human beings. All for a mere $545.95!
The FX-1 FlexForce Modular Hard Shell Crowd Control System is the ultimate high-threat level riot control, domestic disturbance, and cell extraction suit. The FlexForce design provides substantial protection from blunt force trauma without sacrificing the fit or comfort. The suit is lightweight and ranks highest in easy to put on or take off in a moments notice. The front and back hard shell panels have a modular flex design allowing for all shapes and sizes to fit comfortably with out sacrificing much needed mobility. The forearm guard offers a much more comfortable elbow portion of the pad, which allows more flexibility. The knee/shin guard has a non-slip surface, which keeps you planted in position. The FX-1 is a considerably improved fitting system compared to competitor models and is worn by forces worldwide.Upper Body and Shoulder Protection.Hard shell front and back panels feature a unique Damascus 3-panel flex design for optimum movement, fit and comfort.
I love that it's a "system" and not a "Hallowe'en costume for terrified control-freaks and mall-ninjas."
Last month, I wrote about the new patent policy at the University of Washington, which laid claim to patents in all work that the university's staff touched upon. This prompted Open3DP, the world-famous, best-of-breed open 3D printing lab at U Washington, to shut off its public outreach program.
Less than a month later, after many emails to the provost, the policy has been moderated, and Open3DP is once again, well, open.
The UW is supportive of your efforts in founding and leading Open3DP, an open research community around 3D printing. Herein we confirm that:
• with respect to UW policies and practices, you have an ongoing right to administer
Open3DP, and
• UW faculty, staff, and students are free to contribute their work to this open research community under the Creative Commons License model you have chosen.
We also offer you guidance as the open research community grows, to manage related interactions of a more proprietary nature.
Today, May 4, is the International Day Against DRM, the day in which the Free Software Foundation's "Defective By Design" campaign urges you to celebrate DRM-free media and boycott DRM. There are plenty of local events, poster templates, and the DefectiveByDesign page has a lot of suggestions for other ways to participate:
Mike from Mother Jones sends us a link to the magazine's coverage of yesterday's May Day protests: "Mother Jones reporter was close at hand, and got disturbing photos and video of Oakland Police officers tackling a girl on a bike who didn't seem to be doing anything provocative. He then got a nice taste of OPD attitude: 'Fuck, I just got teargassed,' he tweeted. The video clips are about halfway down, but lots of good photos and bicoastal coverage, too."
Hugh sez, "Check out Eric Drooker's latest May Day poster -- he has a bunch that can be 
Readers of England's The Chap magazine staged an incredibly well-dressed protest outside Number 3 Savile Row, the former Apple Records headquarters, which is to become an Abercrombie and Fitch. Chaps of all description dressed in very nice suits and stood around 
Zakkai from Fight for the Future (the folks who brought you the war on SOPA) sez, "Want to fight for Internet privacy with cute cat photos? CISPAcat is a new advice animal that wants nothing more than to spy on your internet activity. He's the child of the privacy-killing cybersecurity bill CISPA and the equally creepy ceiling cat. Check him out and 
