Fair Use, the Internet Archive and the Public Domain (+ opportunities)
In this email...our latest episode + links to artist opportunities.
Our new episode: Fair Use, The Internet Archive and the Public Domain
Find it on our website. Listen or read the transcript. You can also listen on Apple, Spotify, and elsewhere, or subscribe to our RSS feed.
In this season of the podcast we’re working in collaboration with the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law. In addition to our usual crop of artists and programmers we’re adding in legal scholars to help us unpack some of the thorny issues for those working in art and code as they unleash their work into the world.
When you look for creative work online without any restrictions on what you can do with it, you’re looking for work that is part of what we call the public domain. That’s the term for creative works that are completely unrestricted for re-use.
We can think of the public domain as a common good. There is no copyright, no ownership by an individual or entity. Anyone may use the work without getting any permission or other approval. Works older than a particular time period are automatically in the public domain - we can think of Shakespeare’s work, or greek statues for example. But also works where the artist signed away their rights, or works where the copyright expired, and works where the artist specifically allows reuse or works that are not allowed to be copyrighted for various reasons. For example, a lot of US Government works are in the public domain.
In this episode we speak with Brewster Kahle, the Founder and Chief Librarian of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library in San Francisco, California. In the words of Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive aims to be “the Library of Alexandria for the digital age.” It holds millions of videos, software, books, images, concert recordings, and hundreds of billions of archived websites.
We also speak with Amanda Levendowski, the Founding Director of the Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center, on the doctrine of fair use and its reason for being and how artists can get legal support.
Our audio production is by Max Ludlow. Design by Caleb Stone. Our music on today’s episode are from the public domain and found on the Internet Archive.
You can find more episodes, full transcripts, and links to find out about our guests and topics on our website artistsandhackers.org You can find us on instagram at artistandhackers, twitter at artistshacking (though we're really trying to wind down there!), and mastodon (our fave) at artistsandhackers at post.lurk.org You can always write to us on our website, and please leave us feedback wherever you get your podcast.
Opportunities:
OPEN CALL: BADS_Lab Fellowships - Chicago - 10-20th May 2024
The Fyrthyr Institute for Unsettling Technologies and its sister organization, the Center for Concrete & Abstract Machines (CCAM), will install a pop-up atelier-lab for fugitive planning and wake work at Watershed Art & Ecology and conduct participatory experiments in the Black Arts and Decolonial Science. To this end, the Fyrthyr and CCAM will invite four artists/researchers to join us at Watershed as fellow residents, awarding each fellow resident a $300 honorarium for their participation, providing them with a supplementary materials budget of up to $200, and offering them space, time, community, and camaraderie.
Link to more info
Deadline: 10th April
Recess Arts Open Call
Session provides artists a 1200sf workspace in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn and 6-10 weeks to develop a new inquiry-based project meant to push the boundaries of their practice. They will receive an artist honorarium, planning meeting fees, project expenses, technical support, and mentorship.
Deadline: 1st April
2024 Open Hardware Summit (online and in Montreal at Concordia University) - 3rd-4th May 2024
The Open Hardware Summit is the annual conference organized by the Open Source Hardware Association a 501(c)(3) not for profit charity. It is the world’s first comprehensive conference on open hardware; a venue and community in which we discuss and draw attention to the rapidly growing Open Source Hardware movement.
Have an idea for an episode, or a response to anything we've covered? Want to let us know of artist opportunities that our community may be interested in? Drop us a line.
Thanks for listening.
