In a playful response to the controversy caused by the YCC Election Committee’s attempt to censor one of our posters that parodied a candidate in this year’s election, Yale Students for Free Culture has launched a massive advertising campaign for our event with Meme Factory parodying ALL of the candidates’ posters.

To be clear, this isn’t meant to be an attack on the YCC or the candidates — we actually like the YCC and think they do good work. All of this was just to exercise our right to remix, and you know–for the lulz.

Anyway, we hope you’ll come out to our event tonight!

Meme Factory — http://www.whatweknowsofar.com/memefactory/

From the NYC based group “What We Know So Far”

April 14 — 7 PM — Davies Auditorium

Three gentlemen with five computers and three projectors take the audience on a fast-paced and whirlwind tour of every major internet meme, famous piece of internet media and upwards of three hours of Youtube footage over the course of one and one half of one hour.

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=103325236376588&ref=ts

First, the original that sparked the controversy:

And now the rest!

More (a LOT more) after the jump!

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Seven months after Kanye West’s “Imma let you finish” outburst during the Video Music Awards in which he interrupted Taylor Swift, Kanye is still causing trouble–this time here at Yale in the form of one of our flyers advertising our upcoming event with Meme Factory (April 14 at 7PM in Davies):

original poster on the left, our parody on the right

The YDN covered this story in Cross Campus:

The YCC Elections Committee chided the group Students for Free Culture, whose parody of events coordinator candidate Taylor Vaughn-Lasley’s ’12 posters they accused of “unfairly enhancing the name recognition of one candidate over another, and thus potentially biasing the electorate.” After the committee threatened “dramatic measures,” the group agreed to take the posters down.

This, however, is only half of the story. In fact, after the original demand to take down the posters, Free Culture pushed back sparking a long debate with the Elections Committee on the issue of free speech at Yale. At the end of all this, it was in fact the EC who backed down and rescinded their threats. Only at this point did Free Culture agree to take down the poster until after the election as a courtesy to the candidate in the midst of her campaign.

A more thorough look into this Kanye poster controversy, including full texts of the Election Committee’s emails threatening us and then rescinding these threats, is below after the jump.

Read More »

Memes. The cultural baubles that ornament the Internet. Large cats who want cheeseburgers. A kid who wanted so very hard to be a Jedi. Even a video of poor David after visiting the dentist’s office.

Why do these spread? Why are they so popular? If Kanye interrupts Taylor Swift, is it really that much of a FAIL? Well, Students for Free Culture is hosting two events to help you understand the culture that resides on the Internet.

That’s right. Welcome to Meme Week.

MEMEFACTORY

Wednesday, April 14

7pm – Davies Auditorium

Three gentlemen and three projectors take the audience on a fast-paced and whirlwind tour of internet memes, famous pieces of internet media and tons of youTube footage. The modus is not depth, but breadth, and occasional audience participation. The show will discuss internet phenomenon including but not limited to: LOLCats, Advice Dog, Boxxy, Star Wars Kid, David After Dentist, FAILs, WINs, and more. You can think of it as somewhere between a lecture, vaudeville and Double Dare.

Check this video out for a sneak peak!

Master’s Tea with moot

Friday, April 16

5pm – Calhoun College

moot, the creator of the popular imageboard 4chan (click at your own risk), was Time Magazine’s “Most Influential Person” in the year 2009. He was the winner (by far) of the online poll. But wait, who is this guy and how is that possible? Well, those questions just go to show you the power and influence that the forum he created has over internet culture (lolcats? Rick rolling? pedobear? all came from 4chan), the real world (Anonymous’ war against Scientology? 4chan), and the internet in general. His real name is supposedly “Christopher Poole,” though nobody really knows for sure.

Woo woo!

PS. Be on the lookout for some of our, uh, special posters around campus.

Just got word that Yale has delayed their Gmail/Gapps initiative, and the administration will open up to the community for arguments and concerns. With a lot of help from some professors in the CS department, our collective actions and coverage apparently made them realize they have more to think about than they originally realized.

Once again, we’re not saying we’re against Google or this switch to Gmail. There are a lot if potential issues, however, and a lot of questions raised that we feel need to be brought up and addressed by the powers that be.

Cool! Hopefully I can give you a more substantive update soon.

Yale Students for Free Culture held a successful live screening of the Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig. We want to thank the folks who braved the rain to come watch with us (and enjoy BAR pizza).

It was kind of an exciting time: We got not one but TWO questions in to the Q&A session with Lessig!

The talk will be available to stream and/or download at the Open Video Alliance website soon.

Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig: Fair Use, Politics, and Online Video

Yale Students for Free Culture and the Information Society Project at YLS are hosting a live screening of a global webcast of a talk by Lawrence Lessig, put on by the Open Video Alliance and Harvard’s Berkman Center. It’s happening Thursday, February 25th from 6:00 to 7:30 EST, live from Cambridge, MA.

The screening will take place in William L. Harkness (WLH) Hall, room 116. It’ll start fairly promptly at 6pm (so try and get there a bit early), and we’ll have our own talk down/discussion afterwards. And there will be food. Yums.

Once again:
Thursday, February 25
6pm
WLH 116
http://bit.ly/WiresideYale

The Lessig:
Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School. He helped found Creative Commons as well as the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford. He also wrote the books “Free Culture,” “Remix,” and “Code.” He also founded Change Congress, an activist group outspoken about publicly funded elections. He’s one of the most lucid speakers I’ve ever heard (and has a black belt in Powerpoint kung-fu).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig

The Talk:
This is a talk about copyright in a digital age, and the role (and importance) of a doctrine like “fair use.” Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video. As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage creative expression and political participation, not just passive consumption.

The lecture will last 45 minutes and will be followed by an interactive Q & A. The event will be moderated by Elizabeth Stark, lecturer here at Yale (“IP in the Digital Age,” “Intro to Law and Technology”) and fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Questions can be submitted using the hashtag #wireside.

For more information, or to find out about screenings in other locations, visit the Open Video Alliance at http://openvideoalliance.org/event/lessig/.

Did I mention there’d be food? Hope to see you there!