I love the poetics of the name. Less obscure to the general public and so much cooler than garden variety "anti-DRM" campaigns. "Defective by design " refers to Digital Rights Management (DRM) protections that limit and restrict even fair use of electronic gadgetry like DVD and MP3 players.

This campaign is organized by the Free Culture Foundation and has over 15,000 registered members. Even Newsweek recently reported on the effectiveness of this campaign at attacking DRM and effectively educating people on the unfair monopoly privileges of these intellectual property rights.

A conference presented by  
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT)
 
Fairmont Château Laurier Hotel
Ottawa - October 27-29, 2006

I meant to post this last month, but didn’t get a chance. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) held a conference in Ottawa this October on the impacts of intellectual property (IP) on the university. I caught one day of the three-day conference and found most interesting the presentations that lay out the complex, over-laying legal jurisdictions and social norms that govern intellectual property.

Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa, and Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-Commerce, is agitating for a national open-source network for all civil servants, including  City workers and academics.

Although Geist is addressing all civil servants he tends to save his harshest criticisms for the university and its industries. He points out in the linked interview that, “At the moment, we’ve got what strikes me as a ridiculous proposition where we fund the research and then spend thousands of dollars to purchase that research within our own institutions, and the public isn’t even granted broad access to it.”

He is among many others in Canada calling for an open-source repository where researchers, after publishing their work in peer-reviewed journals, would make it publicly accessible. John Willinsky, who directs the Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia, is also a strong advocate of open-source, connecting it to a healthier public domain and political culture. Willinksy expands on these ideas in an excellent article where he highlights the convergence of open source, open access, and open science: underpinning these "open" movements is a shared understanding of freedom based on collective knowledge and mutual aid. Willinsky also touches on the relationship between the "information commons" and place-based political struggles, as well as providing a good introduction to "open" movements more generally.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

Dr. Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.

An unconference for artists about the Internet and the challenge to copyright

http://www.copycamp.ca/