Copyright protectionists defend the Bono Act by pointing out that Congress was only adhering to international copyright standards. However, this assertion ignores the fact that U.S.–based corporations such as Disney had a hugely influential role in setting these standards. In 2003 Illegal Art — a label hosted by Steev Hise’s collage-centric Web site detritus.net and run by the pseudonymously named Philo Farnsworth (after the inventor of the television) — fought back. The label began work on its latest project, a compilation CD named Sonny Bono Is Dead. In its press release soliciting the input of artists, Illegal Art stated, “We encourage artists to liberally sample from works that would have fallen into the Public Domain by the year 2004 had the Sonny Bono Act failed,” adding slyly that “artists are also encouraged to create new works by sampling Sonny Bono’s output.”
This essay originally appeared in the author' s book, Freedom of Expression®
About the Authors
Marcus Kesler is the chairman of the Pirate Party of Oklahoma.
Ryan Moffitt is a free speech and civil liberties activist from Plano, Texas. He is the co-founder and current chairman of the Florida Pirate Party, and is presently heavily engaged in a campaign for a state senate seat from Palm Beach County, Florida. The Florida Pirate Party website can be found at http://fl.pirate.is
Howard Denson worked for several newspapers before spending nearly four decades as a teacher of English and humanities at what is now Florida State College at Jacksonville. He has edited or written for such periodicals as The State Street Review, Penchant (for the Florida First Coast Writers' Festival), The Write Stuff (for the North Florida Writers), theFCCJ Update, and evenThe International Journal of Elvisology and the Elvisian Era. He blogs at http://howarddenson.webs.com/apps/blog/
Reagen Dandridge Desilets resides with her husband and three children in the beautiful South Carolina Lowcountry. She first became interested in politics, beyond just voting, in 2008. She's gone from once being a straight-ticket GOP voter to a free-market libertarian and agorist. Those that have helped her better understand politics and economics include friend, activist, and author, Tarrin P. Lupo as well as Murray Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek.
In her agorist ventures, Reagen has found a niche in the world of publishing and has been working with self-published authors since July of 2010, starting with Tarrin (http://LupoLit.com). She has worked on all of his books, primarily with creative editing as well as print layout and ebook layout, and created and admins his websites. She is currently working with several more authors helping them convert from print to ebook and finding the right places to market them online, and is open to inquiries from anyone interested in publishing their own book. She believes wholeheartedly in the free market and is glad to be able to take part in helping the literary industry become more varied and diverse.
Reagen's other interests include volunteering and reenacting, urban exploration, photography, writing, art (sketching and painting watercolors), and learning to live naturally. She spends time painting and playing with her children and helping them to better understand the world around them, from nature to politics. She has several books of her own in progress and hopes to have at least one complete and available by the end of 2011.
Reagen can be contacted via Twitter @redd4a3 or email at redd4a3 at yahoo dot com.
Andrew “ K'Tetch ” Norton is a politicized engineer. British born, he now lives with his wife and three children in the state of Georgia, where he analyzes technology, and political practices. He was the first recognized head of Pirate Party International, a post he took on after almost a year and a half running the US party. He has been involved in politics for almost 15 years, including time spent with the Liberal Party and Conservative Party in the UK and the Libertarian Party in the US. His hobbies include science fiction, astronomy, and particle physics, and his core belief is that Personal Integrity and Honesty is the core to a functional society. He blogs at http://falkvinge.net and his own site, http://ktetch.blogspot.com/ He also Tweets @ktetch.
William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University, taught in universities for twenty years, and then joined the National Science Foundation, where he currently is a program director in Human-Centered Computing. He is author or co-author of 20 scientific books and over 200 shorter publications. Several of his major projects were based on computer software he programmed, most recently the 2006 book God from the Machine: Artificial Intelligence Models of Religious Cognition. Four of his earlier projects were textbook-software packages, and three books focused on the sociology of space exploration. He has also published extensively in the sociology of religion, notably The Sociology of Religious Movements (1997) and Across the Secular Abyss (2007). Most recently he has written about virtual gameworlds in Online Multiplayer Games (2010), The Warcraft Civilization (2010), and The Virtual Future (2011). He edited a pair of two-volume reference works, Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction (2004) and Leadership in Science and Technology (2012), plus the proceedings of the first major scientific conference held inside a computer game, Online Worlds (2010).
A journalist, activist, artist, and professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa, Kembrew McLeod is the author of Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property Law and has written music criticism for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Spin, Mojo, and the 2004 edition of the New Rolling Stone Album Guide. He is also the co-producer of a documentary on intellectual-property law, Copyright Criminals: This Is a Sampling Sport, which is currently in production, and he worked as a documentary producer at the Media Education Foundation. McLeod was involved in the traveling art show Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age, which traveled to New York, Chicago,Washington,D.C., and was hosted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Artist Gallery in 2003. You can download some of his work from h is Web site, http://kembrew.com
Dr. danah boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. Her work examines everyday practices involving social media, with specific attention to youth engagement, privacy, and risky behaviors. She recently co-authored Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning With New Media. She co-directed the Youth and Media Policy Working Group,funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She blogs at http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ and tweets at @zephoria.
Travis McCrea is a 21 year old activist and entrepreneur, formerly an officer of the United States Pirate Party. He has moved to Canada and has run for Parliament through Pirate Party Canada, and uses direct action to protect civil liberties and the internet. He blogs at http://falkvinge.net and his ow n site, http://travismccrea.com