Send letters to fe – AT – fifthestate.org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220
All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length
Creative Commons glitch
As a fellow traveler/indie film maker, I have had the chance to learn about copyrighting from posting and also utilizing other people’s videos. [ See Fall 2011 FE, “Copyright or Wrong.”]
It is my understanding, unless intentionally filed for, every creative work of art is given a default copyright status upon its creation, a set of provisions which entail certain restrictions on reuse, and if ever brought to court, a judge would handle the case according to laws based on those default presumptions.
By filing for the Creative Commons license, you are stripping those provisions and restrictions away from your work, should you select those options on their website.
Andrew Stewart
Prisoner email
Regarding prison inmate mail in Letters, Spring 2011 FE, I’d like to point out that any prisoner who uses or has his friends and family use Corrlinks, JayPay, or any other Internet service, is facilitating the monitoring of our communications. It is far easier for them to scan email than snail mail. Only a moron would fail to see that the prison administrators’ plan is to eliminate snail mail entirely.
As a Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) prisoner, who found it difficult enough to stay in touch with family and friends at the old rate, I was disappointed but not surprised, when the MDOC recently entered into a five-year contract with Public Communications Services that has nearly doubled our phone rates.
The excessive cost limits prisoner’s contacts by placing an unfair burden on prisoners’ families and friends who are overwhelmingly the working poor, if not the unemployed, foreclosed on poor. It is an attempt to get blood out of a stone, an attempt that is already failing as indicated by the precipitous drop in prisoner phone calls.
Incredibly, the MDOC initially claimed the new charge was necessary to pay for equipment to detect unauthorized cell phones, claiming that at least 20 were found in Michigan prisons last year.
There are only two ways unauthorized cell phones get into a prison. Either during visits, getting by the search of visitors and the strip search of prisoners, or the MDOC staff bring them in. Every cell phone bust I’ve heard of in these prisons has had a guard or other staff member resigning to avoid getting fired.
Rand W. Gould
#C-187131
Thumb Correctional Facility
3225 John Conley Drive
Lapeer MI 48446
Filipino zine and distro
We are an anarchist press and distro based in the Philippines called Mindset-breaker Distro. We look forward to have regular contacts abroad especially people who might be interested in supporting our newly started project.
Mindsetbreaker Distro is maintained by a tiny number of people publishing and circulating anarchist literature at the local level. Also existing projects and campaigns being carried out by members such as infoshops, info events and other autonomous activities.
We provide counter informational radical ideas and alternative sources. We also want to reach anarchist groups abroad to build solidarity. We recently printed our publication, Gasera Journal. Mindsetbreaker Press and Distro operates in the local anarchist infoshop that has almost run out of money to pay for rent.
We work and put most of our time at the infoshop by keeping it as a base for regular meetings and radical activities.
We want to save the infoshop, publish more literature, and raise money to pay the rent of the infoshop, 3,000 pesos a month. If you are interested in our magazine via mail order, we need your support.
Gasera Journal is a compilation of anarchist writings covering history, politics and anarchism in the Philippines, autonomous struggles, the black bloc, transnational community building, and more.
There are two articles in Filipino and the rest are in English.
Solidarity,
Mindsetbreaker Press and Distro
mindsetbreakerdistro.blogspot.com
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