q&a James Powderly didn't trek from New York City to Beijing during the 2008 Olympics to watch table tennis. The artist was plotting to laser-beam a billboard-size, pro-Tibet message at the Bird's Nest Stadium. Instead, he spent six days locked up and interrogated by Chinese police under conditions he likens to torture. He was joined by other American would-be protestors sentenced to prison without being charged of a crime, then released early following U.S. pressure.
The Graffiti Research Lab co-founder and former engineer has helped pioneer open source, digital graffiti techniques, like L.A.S.E.R. tag projections of words and icons onto public walls, as well as LED bulb "throwies" that stick to surfaces to spell out messages in light.
Originally Powderly was invited to participate in a show at the National Art Museum of China, until he says organizers, fearing political controversy, kicked him out. Instead, he collaborated with Students for a Free Tibet (SFT).
Powderly says his high-tech gear--including a cell phone, green laser, laser printer, laptop, camera, tripods--may have tipped off Chinese authorities. And he suspects that if Twitter stops working in China, you might blame him and his collaborators.
Some protestors were deported from China after this street protest outside the Olympic stadium. The message is made of LED "throwies," lights that stick to surfaces.
(Credit: Students for a Free Tibet)Q: The last time we were in touch, you'd mentioned the upcoming Green (Chinese) Lantern project, which you didn't detail for obvious reasons. What happened? How did Chinese authorities find out what you were planning to do?
Powderly: When I entered the country on the 15th of August I had a cell phone that might have already been compromised. It had already been used by protesters in the country...We don't know. They weren't telling.
It's safe to say I'm much more like Dr. Strangelove than like James Bond. I stick out like a sore thumb in Beijing. I'm about a foot taller than everybody. I'm wearing a fedora, camos, and sleeveless vest...
These people were still kind of bumbling but resourced and numerically outnumbered adversaries, in terms of the Chinese secret police. There are just so many of them and they're working with so much citizen support, meaning there are 300,000 people in the city just looking constantly and reporting, from taxi drivers to people on the street, undercover cops, policemen in uniforms, soldiers.
Whatever clued them into us, by the afternoon of the 18th I was being tailed by a woman. I spotted her, but I'm in a city of 20 million people. No way they're on me, I hadn't done anything. I was literally at the Wal-Mart superstore buying supplies..I doubted what I was seeing...
Powderly was among the would-be protesters detained in China without being charged of a crime.
(Credit: James Powderly)
What happened next? When did you know for sure? How were you arrested?
Powderly: I spent the day of the 17th scouting locations, buying a new laser printer. I went to kind of a safe house to build this laser stencil thing...They'd snuck a new laser in to me and I'd snuck in LED throwies for the LED banner for another group of activists...
I went to Tiananmen Square to scout that location because we'd planned to do two projection events. If we got away with the first one at the Olympic stadium, then we were gonna do the second one in Tiananmen Square...We were gonna project "Free Tibet" or "Tibet will be free" or "6/4/1989."
What worked and what didn't go forward?
Powderly: None of them worked. We did nothing. We were arrested and detained in China...for doing nothing except for thinking about it.
On the 18th...I did my one and only laser projection that evening out the window on some torn-down buildings...way out in the outskirts of Beijing, literally the last stop of the "One" line...It worked better than any had before, and I'd come up with a new technique for making the stencils to do transparencies with a normal laser printer.
I'd printed out one test message, a little computer inside joke, just the words: "Free Beer." It's a quote from a renowned hacker (Richard Stallman) that refers to free software...
... Read moreThe International Olympic Committee has retracted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request it sent to YouTube over a Tibetan protest video.
According to Corynne McSherry, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the IOC requested earlier this week that YouTube remove the video called "Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony." The video, posted by Students for a Free Tibet, is a montage of scenes from Tibet protests around the world. The Olympic rings are shown in the video briefly a couple times.
YouTube initially removed the video, but subsequently questioned whether the IOC could truly file a DMCA claim and asked the group to withdraw its takedown notice. The EFF also questioned the IOC on its copyright infringement claims. The IOC retracted its request, and the video was reposted. (Warning: The video, shown below, contains some graphic images.)
The IOC has been working with YouTube to provide content as well as to monitor for copyright violations.
McSherry said that such takedown requests have little to do with copyright infringement, but are instead "timed to directly interfere with the impact of a political message."
YouTube has not yet responded to a request by CNET News for comment.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
Just days before the Olympic torch will reach Beijing, Internet leaders Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft say they are close to an agreement on a code of conduct for doing business in China and other countries that censor the Internet.
Sen. Dick Durbin on Monday released separate letters from the companies, stating they have "reached agreement on the core components of the principles" of the code, as Google put it.
Those components, the letters say, include principles for promoting freedom of expression and privacy, implementation guidelines, and an accountability framework. The specifics of the code are now being reviewed by the individual organizations involved. Google said the companies are working toward "a set of clear and rigorous principles, such that restrictive governments would be unable to ignore or reject these best practices on freedom of expression and the protection of individual privacy."
"This code of conduct would be one important step toward our shared goals of promoting freedom of expression and protecting the privacy of Internet users around the world," Durbin said in a press release.
The companies began work on the code, in conjunction with human rights groups, privacy advocates, and European companies Vodafone and France Telecom, in January 2007. A year earlier, politicians railed against the companies for complying with China's censorship practices. Yahoo was especially criticized for handing over the identity of journalist Shi Tao to Chinese officials, who sentenced the writer to 10 years in prison.
The impending Olympic games have increased questions about Internet censorship in China, especially after Chinese officials tried to block journalists there for the games from accessing certain sites, even after the Chinese government assured reporters they would have full freedom to search the Internet, unlike its citizens.
Google's letter said that the search giant will not provide the Chinese government with "any sensitive personal information regarding American athletes, journalists, and tourists who use the Internet while they are in China during the Olympics other than required by United States law." According to the Yahoo letter, CEO Jerry Yang personally asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to bolster diplomatic efforts in the name of human rights, particularly before the Olympics. (The Microsoft letter is viewable here.)
The letters were addressed to Durbin, Chairman of the Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee, and Sen. Tom Coburn, the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, after the senators inquired in a letter dated July 21 about the progress of the code of conduct. The subcommittee held a hearing on the issue in May.
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