Walled Culture

Fred von Lohmann: Copyright Battles, the US DMCA and EU Copyright Directive, Filters, and Interfaces

In this final bonus Walled Culture podcast episode - recorded mid-2022 and kept under wraps as a special 1st anniversary episode, we welcome Fred von Lohmann, former Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Google copyright counsel. Our conversation starts with recalling how he got intrigued by copyright, crediting John Perry Barlow, and explaining how he was at the right juncture to become a tech enthusiast. Fred talks about his role at EFF during what was a unique time from a copyright pe...

Glyn Moody: Walled Culture - A Journey Behind the Copyright Bricks

Glyn Moody has been writing about copyright, digital rights, and the Internet for 30 years. He is the editor of the Walled Culture project and author of Walled Culture - the Book (freely available as ebook). He previously wrote ‘Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution’. He explains how the Walled Culture project is a reflection on digital copyright going wrong, and how copyright and the Internet have shown to be fundamentally incompatible. Glyn highlights how there’s no escaping cop...

Mike Masnick: Techdirt, Supporting Creators, the SOPA/PIPA Battle, and NFTs

Mike Masnick explores the intersection of technology, innovation, policy, law, civil liberties, and economics, being the founder & editor of the popular Techdirt blog, as well as the founder of the Silicon Valley think tank, the Copia Institute. He notably talks about Techdirt’s creation, how copyright puts up barriers to information flows and hinders economic growth, the concepts of abundance and scarcity in a digital world, and how copyright’s original intent got lost to the detriment of ...

James Love: The Copyright Ratchet, International Treaties & Fighting for Access

James ‘Jamie’ Love is Director of Knowledge Ecology International. His training is in economics and finance, and work focuses on the production, management and access to knowledge resources, as well as aspects of competition policy. The current focus is on the financing of research and development, intellectual property rights, prices for and access to new drugs, vaccines and other medical technologies, as well as related topics for other knowledge goods, including data, software, other info...

Jean-Sébastien Caux: Rethinking Academic Publishing, Open Access & SciPost

Jean-Sébastien Caux is Professor in theoretical condensed matter physics at the University of Amsterdam. A Canadian citizen, he obtained his PhD in Oxford, was postdoctoral Fellow in All Souls, and moved to the Netherlands in 2003. Besides his research activities, he is actively involved in the reform of scientific publishing. He is the founder, implementer and current chairman of open access publication portal SciPost. Jean-Sébastien reflects on the current state of play of the scientific p...

Catherine Stihler: Creative Commons, the EU Copyright Directive, and Civil Society’s Role

Catherine Stihler OBE was appointed CEO of Creative Commons, in August 2020, a non-profit organisation that helps overcome legal obstacles to advance better sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges. She has been an international champion for openness as a legislator and practitioner for over 20 years. She was a member of the European Parliament for Scotland representing the Labour Party. At the European Parliament, she became one of Scotland’s longest-se...

Marc Rees: À la Française, de l’Hadopi par la copie privée, jusqu’aux algorithmes de l’Article 17

Marc Rees est journaliste et rédacteur en chef de Next INpact, le site français traitant de tout ce qui est numérique, y compris les commentaires sur les questions actuelles de droit d'auteur. Il se spécialise en droit des nouvelles technologies, dont communication, LCEN, surveillance, données personnelles, et droit d’auteur. Marc est connu comme l’un des meilleurs commentateurs du droit d'auteur, dans le monde francophone. Sur notre podcast, il explique la stratégie de la France de mettre l...

Katharine Trendacosta: The US DMCA, Upload Filters, SOPA-PIPA, Fanfiction, & Platform Competition

Katharine Trendacosta is Associate Director of Policy and Activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Her areas of expertise are competition, broadband access, intellectual property, net neutrality, fair use, free speech online, and intermediary liability. She is the former managing editor of science fiction and science website io9, and spent many years writing about technology policy and pop culture for various publications. Katharine notably talks about the good and the bad of th...

Dr Andres Guadamuz: The EU Copyright Directive, Text & Data Mining, Web3, the Metaverse, & NFTs

Dr Andres Guadamuz is a Reader in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Sussex and the Editor in Chief of the Journal of World Intellectual Property. His main research areas are on artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright, open licensing, cryptocurrencies, and smart contracts. Andres has published two books, the most recent one of which is "Networks, Complexity and Internet Regulation", and he regularly blogs at Technollama.co.uk. He has acted as an international consultant for th...

Jennie Rose Halperin: A Tech-Positive Future for Libraries, Controlled Digital Lending & US CASE Act

Jennie Rose Halperin, is a facilitator, digital strategist, writer, and editor, who currently serves as the Executive Director of Library Futures: a nonprofit organization that champions equitable access to knowledge. Trained as a librarian, she has worked in content, web development, and digital services of all types, including at the Harvard Law Library, Creative Commons, Safari Books Online/O'Reilly Media, and Mozilla. Jennie notably talks about promoting a technology positive future for ...

Katherine Maher: The Monkey Selfie, Public Domain, Freedom of Panorama, the EU Copyright Directive, Remix Culture, & the 20th Century Black Hole

Katherine Maher, advocate for free and open societies, is the former CEO and Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. Her background is in the field of information and communications technology, and she works at non-profits in the international sector, focusing on the use of technology enabling human rights and international developments. She reflects on the ‘monkey selfie’ and its role to help educate people on the public domain, as well as on the complexity to push issues such as fr...

Alex Sayf Cummings: Music Piracy, Alternative Remuneration Models, Blurred Lines, SOPA, and Out of Control Copyright Terms & Penalties

Alex Sayf Cummings is a historian of law, technology, labor, public policy, and American cities. A leading voice on pop culture and public history, she has published on a variety of topics, from music history to the information economy. Her teaching focuses on the history of media industries (such as music, publishing, broadcasting) and American legal and political institutions (such as copyright). She covers the music industry’s role in pushing for IP rights, talks about music piracy and ho...

Salvador Alcántar Morán: Mexican Copyright Unfit-for-purpose in the Digital age, the Public Domain, and the Need for a True Multistakeholder Approach and a Global Perspective on Copyright

Salvador Alcántar Morán is a lawyer, focused on digital copyright, educational technology and digital communications. He is the co-founder of Wikimedia Mexico and of Creative Commons Mexico. He was also manager of the General Direction of Digital Communications of the Mexico City Government. He talks about how the Mexican copyright framework is not adapted to the digital age and shaped mainly by the creative industries, the copyright industry’s scaremongering tactics. He also explains how th...

Brewster Kahle: Libraries’ Role, 3 Internet Battles, Licensing Pains, the National Emergency Library, and the Internet Archive’s Controlled Digital Lending Efforts vs. the Publishers’ Lawsuit

Brewster Kahle is founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, one of the largest libraries in the world. Next to his mission to provide universal access to all knowledge, he is a passionate advocate for public Internet access, as well as a successful entrepreneur (Thinking Machines, Wide Area Information Server and Alexa Internet) and a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The Internet Archive, which he founded in 1996, preserves petabytes ...

Lawrence Lessig: Internet Architecture, Remix Culture, Creative Commons, NFTs, Aaron Swartz and the Internet Archive

Professor Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School and notably a founding board member of Creative Commons. The New Yorker has called him the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era. In this podcast episode, he shares his reflections on the interplay between copyright and Internet’s architecture, remix culture, the Creative Commons movement, the rise and benefits of NFTs, the work of Aaron Swartz and the attack on the Inter...

Evan Greer & Lia Holland - Rethinking Copyright, Fighting Creative Monopolies, and Putting an End to Enforcement Excesses

Fight for the Future’s Director, Evan Greer, and Campaigns and Communications Director, Lia Holland, are both digital rights activists who have been active in the music industry. Based on their experience they talk about the need to rethink how artists can be fairly remunerated and the disconnect between the interest of big corporate entities, claiming to speak on behalf of artists, versus the actual needs of creators, especially those that have been marginalized by the music industry. They ...

Dr. Eoin O‘Dell - The Copyright Creation Myth, a Permission-Based Society, and EU vs US Copyright Law

Dr. Eoin O'Dell, Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin (Dublin University), explains some copyright fundamentals: its origins and basic premises, the creation myth, the shift to a permission-based society, and the differences between the EU and US approaches Key Takeaways: 0:00 Intro 1:39 Eoin explains the basics of copyright and the lasting rights you have as an author after death 4:24 Eoin explains the origins of copyright in the US and UK dating back to the 1700's 8:01 Eoi...

Dr. Eoin O‘Dell - The copyright creation myth, a permission-based society, and EU vs US copyright law

Dr. Eoin O'Dell, Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin (Dublin University), explains some copyright fundamentals: its origins and basic premises, the creation myth, the shift to a permission-based society, and the differences between the EU and US approaches Key Takeaways: 0:00 Intro 1:39 Eoin explains the basics of copyright and the lasting rights you have as an author after death 4:24 Eoin explains the origins of copyright in the US and UK dating back to the 1700's 8:01 Eoi...

Rebecca Giblin - Reversion Rights, Out-Of-Print Books And How To Fix Copyright

ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor within the Melbourne Law School, an expert on e-lending, and co-author of "What if we could reimagine copyright?", Rebecca Giblin talks about the crucial but little-known area of reversion rights, how to rescue out-of-print books, and fixing some of the worst problems of copyright by making sure that creators are treated more fairly than they are currently. Key Takeaways: 0:00 Intro 2:02 Rebecca talks about what made her focus on making copyright wo...

Mirela Roncevic - Open Access, Open Science, Scholarly Monographs, E-Book Lending

Scholar, writer, editor, content developer, and publishing and library consultant, Mirela Roncevic talks about the long journey of open access and open science, how to pay for scholarly monographs, and the complex challenges of e-book lending. Key Takeaways: 0:00 Intro 1:54 Mirela talks about the open science movement, paywalls, and how researchers and their funders are trying to get around it  6:17 Mirela talks about what she feels is special about scholarly monographs and books and busine...

Cory Doctorow - Part 2: New publishing models for creators, Amazon as a frenemy, and the Internet Archive court case

Author, journalist, and activist Cory Doctorow talks about the new publishing models available to creators, the consolidation of the publishing and distribution markets, the emergence of Amazon as a frenemy to publishers and the misunderstandings that led to the Internet Archive court case. Highlights with timestamps: 1:26 Cory talks about the new publishing models for books, the Creative Commons license, and how other people can also make money even after putting their content online for f...

Cory Doctorow – Part 1: Newspapers, Big Tech, Link Tax, DRM and Right to repair

Author, journalist, and activist Cory Doctorow talks about the evolution of newspapers, the role and threats posed by big tech, the collateral damage created by link taxes and the impact of digital rights management systems (DRM) on our daily lives, including on our right to repair Highlights with timestamps: 0:00 Intro 4:05 Cory talks about the link tax, Craigslist, monopolies and how this is impacting the press especially newspapers and also how the internet impacted the press and what ne...

Pilot Episode