May 26, 2009

Bradley and Karen interview John Sullivan, Manager of Operations at the Free Software Foundation about their various advocacy campaigns.

Running time: 00:35:54.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:32)

• The FSF and Cisco settled their lawsuit, for which SFLC represented FSF. (01:19)
• Karen has participated for the last two years on the “Law of Software Contracts” ALI draft, which was adopted by the ALI this week. (03:20)

Segment 1 (05:51)

• We previously had as a guest Brett Smith of the FSF (on 0x02). (05:59)
• John Sullivan works on the campaigns as the Manager of Operations. (06:11)
• John listed various campaigns that FSF has done since the GPLv3 process:
• Defective by Design. (07:05)
• Play Ogg. (07:14)
• Badvista. (07:30)
• Libre Planet (07:56), which Karen noted was also a conference. (08:55)
• We discussed some of the parodies of the iPod commercials that were part of the Defective by Design Campaign. (12:45)
• The FSF helps support the RIAA expert Witness Fund. (15:20)
• We discussed John's essay, War on Sharing: Why the FSF Cares About RIAA Lawsuits. (16:40)
• We discussed issues where individuals don't understand that copying of some things is permitted. For example, this teacher took away GNU/Linux disks from a student, assuming distribution was prohibited.
• Karen noted a few legal points: works are covered by copyright for a limited period of time, and then fall into the “public domain”. (21:00) There is also a concept of “fair use” of works still under copyright. Further, the DMCA provides for criminal penalties if you circumvent technological anti-copying measures. (22:09)
• FSF filed a brief (PDF) in the SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum case. (25:51)
• The RIAA directly attacked and complained about the FSF brief, which is a rare occurrence. (27:30)
• FSF is hiring a campaigns manager and is looking for applications. (30:04)
• John encouraged people to look at the LibrePlanet Wiki. (30:33)

Segment 2 (31:07)

• Karen does volunteer work to help QuestionCopyright.org. (32:07)
• Karen participated in the EFF's Bootcamp, at which Corynne McSherry gave a speech on fair use. The EFF publishes materials specifically about fair use. (33:40)

Tags: bkuhn, karen, fsf, John Sullivan

Send feedback and comments on the oggcast to <oggcast@softwarefreedom.org> or <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with the SFLC on our IRC channel, #sflc on irc.freenode.net, and by following SFLC on identi.ca.

Other Oggcasts...