Julianna Yau’s blog

I attended three sessions today, and am back home temporarily (instead of attending the keynote speech) because I need some down time to collect my thoughts. Tons of information coming at us, and it wasn’t long before I got the hang of sending updates to Twitter and Flickr. I’ll be posting the mostly raw notes I took from the sessions, with some linkage (esp to the Flickr images after they’re tagged and captioned).

It’s been a draining day, and I honestly don’t know whether I’m returning for the networking reception and dinner. Unlike CopyCamp, the TIAC was spread across two buildings and several rooms. The university was not the easiest to navigate (especially for a directionally challenged person like myself), and the construction that was happening didn’t help. Lunch was a bit of a headache for me because I took [myself and some unsuspecting victims] the long way to the university plaza. Even without that, I think I would have felt rushed (despite what another person had mentioned to me)… maybe it’s just because I like to really take my time with meals. At least with CopyCamp, food was provided and lunch was more of a break than an interruption.

I also did notice a big difference with the networking. Part of the issue was the size of the group. It was somewhere between the number of attendees at the Visual Arts Summit and CopyCamp. I found that with the BarCamp model that CopyCamp followed, and the smaller group, I was able to not merely meet but have more real conversations with the other attendees. I suppose that’s why TIAC is having the networking reception I may not attend

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I need to clear out some of the dozens of blog postings and websites to which I’ve been meaning to respond. So here they all are for your reading pleasure and my peace of mind. I dearly miss being able to use Ma.gnolia’s blog posting tool, which no longer works now that my website host upgraded to ModSecurity 2. There should be some other tools I can use to get this to work without disabling ModSecurity, but I don’t really have the time to fiddle with those right now.

Note: some of these links are months old…

Copyright clippings

• Copyright Protection and Appropriation Art
• The death of the “author” in scientific papers
• History suggests copyright crusade is a lost cause
• Design Piracy Prohibition Act: Historical Regression
• Annie Get Your Gun
• Universal: You don’t own those promotional CDs we gave you
• Wal-Mart learns a painful copyright lesson
• New Zealand copyright reform law schools US DMCA on fair use
• Fairuse obliteratus: Rowling to testify in Harry Potter case
• White Knight or Snow Job? (ebay & counterfeits)
• Russell McOrmond’s summary of CopyCamp
• Canadian Copyright Bill Likely in the Next Six Weeks

Orphan Works Bill in the US

• Orphan Works Bills have Arrived
• New Orphaned Works Act would limit copyright liability
• Orphan Works Update

Art clippings

• Huntsman faces Great Salt Lake issues
• Utah’s ‘Jetty’ threatened by oil plan
• Culture.ca Shutting Down

Tech clippings

• Adobe gives Photoshop Express EULA a much-needed revamp
• Canadian (RBC) bank hands out free Eee PCs

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I pulled the information from the proposed sessions from the CopyCamp2008 wiki into the main session list for CopyCamp2008. I also added my notes to the page for the Making a Living as an Artist in the Wired/Wireless World session, which has more questions and things to consider than actual answers. But it feels like we’re getting closer to answers…

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So I didn’t do nearly as much on-the-fly blogging as I planned.

And by “didn’t do nearly as much”, I mean “didn’t do any”.

It was an overwhelming and invinigorating amount of information to be presented in a short period of time, particularly with the initial barrage at the Speed Geek sessions. These were perhaps the most daunting, because I wanted very much to capture the information in text, but because we were standing for a few minutes at each presentation, I couldn’t type any notes. Even if I had the foresight to bring a [paper] notebook with me, I would have been at a bit of a loss because there was no easy way for me to write properly without a stable surface. Neither of these posed to be challenges for some of my colleauges, one of whom had no problems with pen and paper, and another more impressively typed on a half-open laptop held with one hand.

What was surprising is how many people I already knew but had not met in person… and what was more surprising is how many people knew me and read my blog (hi!). The surprise came not because it was a large number, but because I didn’t think I had more than 4 real readers, despite what my traffic logs tell me.

The main thing I wanted was more time. There were many, many persons with whom I wanted to speak (or speak more), but there simply wasn’t enough time for that to happen… particularly because everyone wanted a piece of everyone else. Although Misha told us that the unconference model came from people realizing the real work at conferences came from coffee breaks, I still had the strong feeling that many of the connections and indepth discussions I had were with no more than 2 other people outside of the sessions.

I came away from CopyCamp with a few predominant thoughts:

• the SAC proposal is gaining ground, and we’re generally moving with much more directive toward viable solutions to unmonetized file sharing than we were a few years ago (and even a year ago)
• creators and creator groups are NOT interested in stopping the dissemination of their works, but are interested in being able to receive proper compensation for the activity; how this should happen is still a big unknown, and there is still apprehension about whether open licencing of works will allow creators to earn a living; there are increasing numbers of creators who are willing to test the waters, and everyone is curious about the outcomes
• the focus is still very much on music, with some peripheral mention of film and 2-dimensional visual art; I did meet Ryan Taylor, who is with the Metal Arts Guild of Canada, who is also interested in finding a way to make use of the amazing groundwork being laid by the music industry to stay ahead of the game for 3-dimensional visual art (particularly 3-dimensional visual art which is intended to be unique)

Something which was mentioned briefly (or maybe someone said something else which triggered this thought… or maybe this is a halucination in my own memory) was the need to look at what creators are making now and whether the new models will be able to match that. This is, sadly, not the same as new business models being able to solve for problems that already exist with current infrastructure. Although it would be nice (and ideal) for us not not merely maintain status quo financially, but to push self-sustainability of creators to a more atainable reality, we must decide whether we want to create a new business model to keep status quo or to finally address the larger problem of how creative output can be funded.

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Today was Day 1 of CopyCamp 2008. It was mostly a reception/meet-and-greet for us to get to know each other. Misha did a great job of mixing up the crowd, but many of us (including myself) ended up gravitating to people we knew afterwards. In my defence, there were some people (several from Ottawa, like Russell McOrmond, April Britski and Janice Seline) who I see very rarely, and others (like Sam Trosow and Chris Moore) with whom I’ve had mostly online conversations.

Tomorrow, I will try to post my raw notes during CopyCamp. Wireless Toronto has setup a network for us at OISE, so I should be online as long as I can balance being an unintentional wallflower to get to an outlet and not maxing out my battery.

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I haven’t been blogging much recently because I’ve got too much going on with my art practice. Not only have I recently finished a sculpture and uploaded about a million pictures of it, but I also sold another sculpture, am moving my studio to an artist co-op and am participating in a studio open house.

Tomorrow is Day 1 of CopyCamp, and I will also be attending the Technology In The Arts Conference next week. I’ll be blogging those events, but probably not much else this month. I’ll leave current events to Michael Geist and the folks over at Digital Copyright Canada.

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AN UNCONFERENCE FOR ARTISTS ABOUT THE INTERNET AND THE CHALLENGES TO COPYRIGHT

For Immediate Release

Toronto, April 3rd 2008… COPYCAMP 2008, an “unconference” for artists about the Internet and the challenges to copyright is now open for registration at www.copycamp.ca.

Organized by the Creators’ Rights Alliance and held in Toronto at OISE (The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), CopyCamp will bring 100 artists, geeks, lawmakers, and copyright activists together to explore issues surrounding new models for making art and making a living on the Internet. It continues the discussion initiated at the first CopyCamp held in September 2006.

The “uconconference” format means the event is focused squarely on conversation between participants. And the participant list is being carefully crafted to ensure a wide selection of viewpoints and perspectives.

The event kicks off on Tuesday, April 29th at 5pm with a welcome reception including a structured “World Café” conversation, to get participants talking and meeting each other. On Wednesday, April 30, the event will run all day (9-5). The day will start with a “Speed Geek” session- lightning-fast presentations on a dizzying array of related topics. The rest of the day will be spent in small self-organized sessions. Participants will collectively create the agenda for the day, and talk about the topics they are most passionate about.

Lots of great sessions are already being proposed. Thus far there are sessions proposed on Reaching an Audience (singer, songwriter Andrew Cash), on Indie labels (Tina Siegel of Fading Way music), on Net Neutrality (open source aficionado Russell McOrmond), on the Songwriters Association proposal for monetizing the Internet (Don Quarles and several others from SAC), on What’s Appropriate in Appropriation (Kristian Clarke of CAR/FAC Ontario), on the art market model, CYBER@ARTS, pioneered by the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and the Association québécoise des auteurs dramatiques (AQAD) (Michel Beauchemin of AQAD), and an “Ask a Techie” demo session hosted by Julianna Yau who will help introduce technophobes to online social media. More sessions will be added up to the day of the event, and on the day itself.

Artists will be attending from Quebec and across the country. In addition the CopyCamp Team is delighted to announce that Maori artists Moana Maniapoto and Toby Mills from New Zealand will be at CopyCamp again this year.

CopyCamp will be facilitated by Misha Glouberman, host and producer of the Trampoline Hall Lectures.

Artists or others who want to take part should visit www.copycamp.ca to register. General admission is $200.00, members of the Creators Rights Alliance pay $100.00, and unsalaried artists pay only $50.

– 30 –

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CopyCamp2 registration is now open. If you’re tight for cash, you can request a subsidy (although, the price levels this time are much simpler and lower).

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I’m a bit behind on blogging because I’ve been engrossed in a sculpture, but I wanted to remind people that CopyCamp2 is fast approaching. I attended a planning meeting for it on Friday, and what’s been “planned” is exciting. This year’s CopyCamp is scheduled for April 29th and 30th, starting on Tuesday afternoon, and continuing through the evening and the next day, Wednesday.

Here’s the Facebook event for CopyCamp.

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Another CopyCamp is scheduled for April 29 and 30, 2008 at OISE (University of Toronto). The CopyCamp website doesn’t have much on the upcoming unconference, but still has much information from the first one from 2006. I wasn’t able to make it to the 2006 CopyCamp, so I’m looking forward to attending this year.

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