[Noisebridge-discuss] dreamworks reply

[Danny O'Brien]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 10:22 PM, Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>
wrote:
> Danny O'Brien writes:
>
>> as per last week's consensus, is here:
>>
>> this week's meeting should agree on whether we should send it or not
>>
>> https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/DreamworksReply
>
> I like this letter, but I'm not sure about the target audience.
> I see that the letter is addressed to a clearance agency, not to the
> producer or director, nor even to the studio.  Making these kinds of
> requests (and maybe others that could be more strongly supported by
> copyright law) is the clearance agency's entire livelihood; they have
> credits for doing it for dozens of feature films.
>

In my original draft I actually had a couple of sentences aimed more at the
clearance agency employees (the end of the first para below, and the PS).

In the end, I took them out because really (as I guess the Wikileaks
twitter account has already indicated), this is more of an open letter than
an actual reply. An actual reply would have just been "No; go ahead." Also
I don't think people actually respond that well to people telling them that
their jobs are silly.

d.



The whole idea you should need to ask us is patently ridiculous and we
refuse
to be part of it. You should use exercise your fair use rights freely,
withouut
fear. We firmly believe that by pursuing all these clearances requests, you
risk watering-down your rights, and may end up losing them. Moreover, the
entire industry of begging and demanding clearances is makework, trapping
otherwise brilliant people in a career that does nothing to improve the
state
of the world, and stopping them from pursuing their real dreams.
So we say tell your friends at DreamWorks to publish and be damned without
our
permission. Tell them we fully support them in their brave stand, and can
say,
with confidence, that the only conditions in which we would sue them and
their
partners to the maximum damages entitled to us by law would be if it turned
out
hackers like us are completely amoral nihilists, out only for our own
egotistical ends. Given that you were so nice as to ask us, we can't imagine
you think that of us, do you?
Lots of love,
Noisebridge
PS We meant it about your job. You sound really nice. Quit your job and do
something amazing instead.






>Although telling the clearance agency how we disapprove of the
> permission culture makes sense, and it might be interesting to know
> whether they have concerns about the legal and cultural aspects of
> their clearance work, I have a sense that they're not exactly the right
> audience.  They're not the ones who will be disappointed if they "can't"
> use the Noisebridge logo in the film.  In fact, they have no creative
> role in the film at all!  Couldn't it make more sense to send the letter
> to someone with a clearer creative role, who might have stronger opinions
> about the film's content?  For example, someone who might actually want
> to have a conversation with the studio about whether they can use the
> logo despite its being "uncleared" from the industry's perspective?
>
> --
> Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>      |  No haiku patents
>      http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/        |  means I've no incentive to
>   FD9A6AA28193A9F03D4BF4ADC11B36DC9C7DD150  |        -- Don Marti
>
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