Lasica first shows very entertaining movies involving flagrant infringements of copyright. (Brokeback Muppets, music video)

Ishikawa: People are still making illegal downloads but less are sharing them over networks. Movie piracy is lower but shows are appearing before official openings. Software piracy is the major problem. We have technology to detect piracy, but we’d also like to educate people about it. 85% of those who get warning letters, do stop their activities once they know they’re caught.

Clarke: The goal of Freenet is to enable open communication in countries such as China and Iran. While Freenet prevents other people from knowing what you’re publishing or consuming, it does not disguise the fact that you’re on the network. The problem is, in countries like China, it doesn’t matter as long as you are on a network! So we had to modify the system into a peer-to-peer network (linking up only with people you trust). So we created a scalable Darknet.

We did that using the ‘Small world’ theory (that even in a big community you can connect from person to person in a small number of steps).

Champ: We received a take-down notice earlier this week. 80% photographs are public, 20% private. Flickr is many communities and a small group of them are Darknets, ie only sharing photos with people they know. We’re built upon sharing but our users don’t necessarily understand what copyright is.

Bernards: We represent the Motion Picture studios and we’re in exciting times because there are so many new ways to watch movies now. It’s a challenge for us. At the same time we lose US$5.4b a year to internet piracy. Our goal is to limit the impact to the creative world [I raise my eyebrow at this point – surely it’s mainly for the money!]

Lasica: I work for a global repository for grassroots media, trying to get rights for them to use.

Toole: I’m an artiste, I recognize IP, but I’d like to participate with media. It’s our voice. With technology, it becomes so much easier to participate but we have to find a way that also satisfies traditional media. I’ll propose an idea: traditional media could carve out pieces of their content and let us use it. [It may be easier to have rights to parts than the ‘all or nothing’ approach]

Bernard: We tried to put up trailers on our website but had to approach various artistes’ agents for permission.

Toole: I just filmed everyone in the room but it’ll take me a lifetime to get rights to air it! (laughter) But I know an artiste who put one of his tracks on his website. He got 6 million hits and sold a lot more CDs!

Clarke: I don’t think Creative Commons is sufficient, where it stands right now.

Lasica: I wrote to 7 companies for permission to make a video with my son – not even to put online, just for a family show. 6 out of 7 said no. One of them said no then changed their mind, as it was fair use. I think the companies need to wake up. But we’re trying to work on them, showing them what videobloggers can do.

Inquirers are pointing out that traditional media’s approach needs to change – they can’t just keep on suing people.

Bernards is questioned by a filmmaker on why MPA copied his movie ‘This film has yet to be rated’. She explains that her censors were stalked and they copied the movie as evidence.

See Centerforsocialmedia.org

Clarke draws on Sony’s recent failure with DRM as a good thing – it demonstrated that consumers didn’t want others to control their computers. When people have physical ownership of something, it should always triumph over digital rights. [That’s similar to what … Mr Brown and others pointed out about not being able to convert CDs into MP3 format]

However, Clarke insists if he copies something, it costs everyone nothing. A filmmaker shouts his disagreement to him. Someone else says, it costs electricity! Some disorder breaks out. People start to leave (but that's because time's up :P). This is the most emotional panel I’ve attended so far!

My rating: 4.5/5