A reader of Pirate Cinema sent me her amazing story of how she became a video remix artist, and how she views the law and rules for copyright. We’ve published it as a feature on Boing Boing; here’s a little taste of it:

When MegaUpload was shut down, the Japanese media fan community was in an uproa, as it was our main way to directly share our sources and creations. Patchy torrents are now all that remains, along with a handful of somewhat reliable cloud servers. Those aren’t even guaranteed, and in the bleakest of moments we worry that we’ll have to resort to the days of recording to video or DVD and sharing videos that way.

We’re slowly rebuilding, but we’ve been hit hard. All of our archives are gone. Communities that had thrived for years—places you might find a long-forgotted drama from 1987—are gone. The videos that I had made and hosted on MegaVideo are gone. All of the files I’d hosted and provided for people are gone. Even the ones I had created myself, for classwork and without any copyrighted material, are gone. They exist only offline, in random external drives, where they cannot be shared.

Citing my talk on General Purpose Computing and regulation (and many other works), Olia Lialina describes a “General Purpose User… that was formed through three decades of adjusting general purpose technology to their needs”:

General Purpose Users can write an article in their e-mail client, layout their business card in Excel and shave in front of a web cam. They can also find a way to publish photos online without flickr, tweet without twitter, like without facebook, make a black frame around pictures without instagram, remove a black frame from an instagram picture and even wake up at 7:00 without a “wake up at 7:00” app.

Maybe these Users could more accurately be called Universal Users or Turing Complete Users, as a reference to the Universal Machine, also known as Universal Turing Machine — Alan Turing’s conception of a computer that can solve any logical task given enough time and memory. Turing’s 1936 vision and design predated and most likely influenced von Neuman’s First Draft and All-purpose Machine.

But whatever name I chose, what I mean are users who have the ability to achieve their goals regardless of the primary purpose of an application or device. Such users will find a way to their aspiration without an app or utility programmed specifically for it. The Universal user is not a super user, not half a hacker. It is not an exotic type of user.

There can be different examples and levels of autonomy that users can imagine for themselves, but the capacity to be universal is still in all of us. Sometimes it is a conscious choice not to delegate particular jobs to the computer, and sometimes it is just a habit. Most often it is not more than a click or two that uncover your general purpose architecture.

The whole thing is a refreshing addition to the long debate and discussion over users, user experience design, and interfaces.

Turing Complete User

(via Beyond the Beyond)

Hey, DC! I’m heading to Bethesda today for my Pirate Cinema tour — I’ll be at the Bethesda Public Library tonight at 7PM. Come on out and say hi before I head to Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and Boston! Here’s the full schedule.

We’ve hit the halfway mark on the Humble Ebook Bundle, a name-your-price, support-for-charity, DRM-free ebook promotion. With one week to go, we’ve added in FIVE more books: XKCD Volume 0; Zach Weiner’s Save Yourself, Mammal and The Most Dangerous Game; Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots; and Penny Arcade: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings.

If you’ve already bought the bundle and paid more than the average, these are unlocked and ready for you to download. If you’ve bought the bundle, but didn’t beat the average, you can go back and pay the difference to get them. And if you’re new to the bundle, you have seven days to buy these ones. Don’t miss out!

Humble Ebook Bundle