CopyNight Gainesville is tonight!

Wednesday, Jan. 24, 7 pm
Tim and Terry’s, 1417 NW 1st Ave. (the purple house behind the Target Copy on University Ave.)

CopyNight is a social meetup for people interested in copyright reform. We meet once a month in cities around the world. Here in Gainesville, we meet on the 4th Wednesday at Tim and Terry’s.

CopyNight is a way to build strong social ties among the various communities who all have a stake in copyright law that works in the public interest. We invite students, professors, creative artists, technologists, librarians,
businesspeople, lawyers, and everyone else. We meet over drinks to chat about recent events and the challenges that face us.

CopyNight is free to attend is open to all ages. A word to the wise for those driving to Tim and Terry’s: allow extra time to find a parking spot. There will not be one nearby, and you will have to walk a few blocks.

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Student Government elections will be held this Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 27-28. Every registered UF student is eligible to vote.

The election will choose SG’s executive officers: President, Vice President, and Treasurer. Students will also elect an Honor Court Chancellor and half of the seats in the Student Senate (representing colleges, freshmen, sophomores, and graduate students). In addition, students will decide the fate of three ballot questions: a referendum on a renewable energy fee, an amendment to SG’s constitution to prohibit discrimination on the grounds on gender identity and expression, and a referendum on funding a student-run homeless shelter. (Referenda are non-binding questions to express the opinion of the student body, and require a majority of votes in favor to pass, i.e. 50% plus one. Constitution amendments require 60% approval to pass.)

The parties contesting the election are the Gator Party and the Pants Party, as well as some independent candidates. A complete list of candidates is available here (.xls).

Polls will be open 8 am - 8 pm on both days. Bring your Gator1 card. A list of polling locations is available here (.doc). (Find your classification in the right-hand column, then see available polling locations in the left-hand column. Students with 0 - 29 credits completed are classified as freshmen; 30 - 59 credits completed, classified as sophomores; 60 or more credits completed, classified in your college; graduate students are classified as graduate students; professional students are classified in their professional school.)

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Today, we installed “Open Art” in the gallery in the Reitz Union. It looks really good! With Vyki’s matte-making talent and Cain’s lighting-design skills, and the sharp eye and elbow grease of everyone else, it all came together.

The exhibit opens tomorrow, Monday, Feb. 19, and runs through March 2. The reception is Thursday, Feb. 22 at 7 pm; refreshments will be served. The exhibit will also stay open late for Gator Nights on Friday, Feb. 23, until 9:30 pm.

Thanks to the artists, the gallery, and everyone’s help for making this come together.

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If you weren’t able to make it to the open access panel on Feb. 15, or if you want more information, there is an upcoming seminar on the subject at the USDA lab.

The seminar will be on Feb. 21 at 10:30 am. The speaker is Dr. Henry Hagedorn, from the Office of Scholarly Communication and Publication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It will be in the main conference room (room 102) of building 11 of the Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology, located at 1600 SW 23^rd Dr.. (Building 11 is the southernmost building — the one closest to Archer Rd. The number is marked on the building exterior.)

There is some parking outside the building. It’s along the route of the number 9 bus, down Mowry Rd. and past Campus Edge. There is also a nearby stop for buses 1, 12, and (I believe) 35 and 36, on Archer Rd. at the intersection with SW 23^rd Dr. (in front of Mount Vernon Apartments).

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Here are the slides from the open access panel on Feb. 15:

• Gavin Baker
• Stephanie Haas
• Ashley Wills

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It’s taken us a while to get this posted, but on Jan. 22, our adviser, Jordan Wiens, published an article in Networking Computing titled “Mirage and the USPTO: Patently Ridiculous.”

Can you patent a hack? The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seems to think so. Mirage Networks has been granted patent No. 7,124,197 for its description of techniques such as ARP poisoning to control access to protected network devices.

But ARP poisoning, which lets one host intercept traffic intended for another, isn’t a new idea. In fact, it predates Mirage’s patent application (filed in 2002) by at least five years

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“Open Art” is a Creative Commons art show presented by Florida Free Culture. The show will be in the Reitz Union Gallery (second floor) from February 19th til March 2nd. There will be a reception on February 22nd from 7:00-9:00pm with refreshments and music. The art is also be available for downloading and sharing online. For more info, visit uf.freeculture.org/openart.

Culture confined by an increasingly extreme intellectual property regime may appear to be culture in appearance, but it is not culture in spirit. The artists exhibited in Open Art understand that culture is not simply passive appreciation and that any attempt to force society to accept it as such should be rejected.

These artists recognize that culture is not and has never been a zero sum game - that as a society, the wider availability of culture can only enrich us. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” Culture should be “free” in the sense that it at once belongs to no one and to everyone.

All art on display is under a Creative Commons license. You are enabled and encouraged to freely copy, share, and, in some cases, create derivative works. Rip mix burn!

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