open letter
October 2010
University of Ottawa Press
Launches New Open Access
Collection
Sophie Daviau-Dempsey
The University of Ottawa Press (UOP)
has launched a new open access collec-
tion, making 36 books available free to
download with both French and English
titles in the arts, humanities and social
sciences.   will also continue to be available
The launch will allow free and unrestricted access to
scholarly research. The UOP’s commitment to take
part of this program includes a commitment to make
research easier to consult through its institutional
repository, to provide funds to researchers aiming to
publish their work in open access journals, and to
award grants for research on the open access move-
ment. This new movement will allow audiences outside
of University to use the open access collection, there-
fore promoting research, scholarship and discovery
outside of the University realm.
The collection will be available in PDF through the
University of Ottawa’s institutional repository, uO
Research, which can be searced by title, author, date,
or keyword, and many of them will also be compatible
In this issue
Liveblog Party
Page 2
Remixology Rocks
Vancouver
Page 3
SFU OpenMedia Student’s Club
with eBook readers for reading
with hand-held devices. To explore
the University of Ottawa Press
open access collection, check out
the website:
http://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/en/
handle/10393/12941. The books
for sale in their print editions.
In February 2010, Simon Fraser
University also started a similar
initiative. They created an Open
Access (OA) Central Fund to en-
courage SFU authors to publish in
OA Journals, which is part of the
Library's new Open Access Fee. For
more information on this you can
contact Gwen Bird, gbird@sfu.ca,
or check out their public repository
where researchers can put their data
to fulfill new public access require-
ments of granting agencies:
http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/.
Jailbreak Your Phone
and
Destroy Serious
Page 4
 Liveblog Party
Erin Brown-John
Last month SFU OpenMedia put on a fundraising party at the Anza
Club. It was well attended with many representatives from local media,
arts and social justice organizations, including representatives from Media
Democracy Day, GenWhy, Submedia, Raincity Chronicles, Destroy Seri-
ous, The Tyee, Hive Writing Group, CJSF and Rabble to name a few.

More than 170 people danced under blacklights and live twitter feeds
to the music of DJs Arctic Red, MOD, EpiD3MIK and G3N3R4L. The
liveblogging theme had people writing on the walls and on each other and
Media Democracy Day was on hand to make buttons for all participants.

Thanks to an art raffle, sponsorships and good buzz about the event,
we raised a lot of money for OpenMedia.ca and club initiatives. Special
thanks to all of our sponsors, including the Simon Fraser Student Society
(SFSS), the Faculty of Arts, Communications and Technology (FCAT),
Advocacy SFU, R &B Brewery, and all of our media sponsors for support-
ing the event.

Also a huge thanks to our volunteers, our artists Aaron Kelsh and Simon
Wall, the DJ’s, all of the representatives from local organizations who
came out, and of course to everyone else who attended, making it a big
success!

Photos by Erin Brown-John and Jason Wang

openletter page 2
REMIXOLOGY Rocks Vancouver with Thirst-
Quenching Media Innovation
Lindsey Pinto

REMIXOLOGY is a new monthly se-

ries of talks/networking events put on by
Fresh Media, a Vancouver-based project
of OpenMedia.ca that celebrates and
strives to enable innovative and indepen-
dent media and journalism in Canada.
The first of these events took place at the
W2 Storyeum Salon in August, and was
so successful that it sold out…twice.
The topic: “Toward Cooperative Media: How Can
Professional and Citizen Journalists Work Together?”
Setting the stage for some serious remixing of media,
W2 simultaneously displayed some amazing pieces of
art as part of their 1st Annual SURGE Festival of Ur-
ban Digital Culture. Yep, it looked the way it sounds.
From coast to Canadian coast, Which is why the Fresh Media
Attended by journalists from Rabble, Granville
members of the public will made Crew is so pumped for the next
Mag, Media Democracy Day, the Tyee, the Geor-
their voices… er… tweets heard event, Remixology 3. On Novem-
gia Straight, Vancouver Is Awesome, and more, the
using the hashtag “#remixology”. A ber 6th, 2010, in collaboration
August REMIXOLOGY series got media profession-
live feed of the tweets was projected with Media Democracy Day,
als, citizen journalists, and other social-change makers
on a screen in the main speaking Open File, W2 & the Vancouver
to share new ideas and put a new spin on Canada’s
area, soon making prominent twit- Community Television Associa-
media system.
terers the talk of the town. tion (VCTA), Remixology 3 will
feature an interactive dialogue
Even before staff and volunteers from W2 and Open-
Finally, there was an opportunity with CBC’s Steve Pratt on the
Media.ca finished setting the stage for the event,
for participants to do a "collabora- future of media. We will also
people had begun to wander in and begin talking and
tor's callout". Each attendee was offer amazing local music and an
tweeting about fresh media innovation.
invited to give a 30-second intro- opportunity to socialize and net-
duction to a project they had in work. This month’s Fresh Media
Once Kris Krug, acclaimed local photographer and
progress that was relevant to the event is the official after party
social media expert, began his talk, the passionately
group. for Media Democracy Day, the
media-savvy crowd was more than ready to take in
launch party for OpenFile.ca, as
what would come. Kris shared his photos from a recent
The remainder of the evening was well as the fundraiser for VCTA!
trip to the Gulf of Mexico to cover the BP disaster
spent networking and sharing ideas Check out the facebook event for
through TEDxOilSpill; the sight was so simultane-
– this was a party with a purpose. more details: “Remixology 3” or
ously beautiful and sinister that most were unable to
Though the questions weren’t all our eventbrite page to purchase
look away.
answered definitively, not one guest tickets in advance: “http://remix-
left the event seeming anywhere ology3.eventbrite.com/
Oh yeah – REMIXOLOGY hosted a live Twitter con-
near uninspired.
versation to stimulate dialogue within the venue and
to open it up to those who couldn’t be there in person.

openletter page 3

Destroy Serious is a grow-
ing conglomerate of peo-
ple who are tired of the
divisions and elitism in
the contemporary North
American scene.
We want to foster fresh perspectives
from creative people by building
the framework of resources and
Contributors
Writing
Sophie Daviau-Dempsey
Scott Newberg-Wong
Lindsey Pinto
Erin Brown-John
Layout
Erin Brown-John
Want to help out with Open
Letter?
We’re always looking for writers and contributors.
Contact sfu@openmedia.ca for details.
openletter page 4
support that they need to pro-
duce and present their works. By
developing a social network among
artists and garnering attention
through public events, we will con-
nect together those looking to cre-
ate something new and meaningful.
We stand against art with profit
as its ends, against art for a grade, ware, do not constitute digital circumvention
against art that wants to remain
petty and vapid. No more diamond
skulls, no more Interior Semiot-
ics. The glorification of nihilism
and party culture has become an
overbearing distraction, and we are
determined to make art a vibrant
part of social progress again.
Come meet us and get involved
in the dialogue. Bring all of your
ideas, skills, interests, enthusiasm
and a passion to make something
great.
Scott Newberg-Wong
Destroy Serious,
www.destroyserious.com
Photos
Erin Brown-John
Jason Wang
Kris Krug
Jailbreak Your
Phone
Sophie Daviau-Dempsey
On Monday July 26th, the Library of Con-
gress announced that actions, which involved
breaking digital locks in order to access soft-
under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) in the United States.
This means that iPhone “jailbreaking”, and similar
practices will now be protected by fair use laws in the
US.
This is exciting news for the US because it is a step
towards giving the public control over what products
they buy and how they want to use them. US resi-
dents can now legally download programs outside of
apple software on their iPhones. Additionally, this
decision has compelled Canadian Industry Minster
Tony Clement to review Canada’s upcoming bill to
amend the Copyright Act (Bill C-32) to give Canadian
residents these same iPhone “jailbreaking” rights. The
government plans to begin committee discussions on
C-32 when Parliament resumes in the fall.
The new laws in the US are positive as they allow users
to expand user iphone programs beyond apple, which
can include open source programs that users can re-use
and change as they want. This has also encouraged
Canada to review their upcoming bill regarding the
Copyright Act.  It will be interesting to see if Canada
will loosen it’s copyright laws, or if it will continue to
be more restrictive than even the US DMCA.