by Whatsblem the Pro

No less a light than R. Buckminster Fuller once said that “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Art sometimes requires access to tools and substances that are well beyond the pale of normal day-to-day existence; procurement of this matériel can be vital. It can also be difficult, even if you live in a place where what you need is technically legal. Try sourcing a large supply of tannerite sometime, and you may get your phone tapped or your e-mail gone through even if nobody knocks on your door to see what you’re up to. Maybe all you need for your shenanigans are some industrial-strength fireworks, but you live in an area where fireworks are tightly controlled.

Fireworks – screenshot by Whatsblem the Pro

Silk Road has rendered the existing model obsolete. The site is an online marketplace that preserves anonymity, provides escrow service and a reputation system, and allows the sale of just about anything at all.

You can’t just point your browser at Silk Road, though. The site’s servers can’t be pinpointed, and can’t even be communicated with if you’re not set up for it. Silk Road is the major player on the Deep Web, sometimes called Darknet, or Undernet. Unless you’re already anonymized, you can’t get there from here.

Tor (aka “The Onion Router”) is the big workhorse of the Deep Web. How does Tor work? From the Wikipedia entry:

How Tor works

“Tor aims to conceal its users’ identities and their network activity from surveillance and traffic analysis by separating identification and routing. It is an implementation of onion routing, which encrypts and then randomly bounces communications through a network of relays run by volunteers around the globe. These onion routers employ encryption in a multi-layered manner (hence the onion metaphor) to ensure perfect forward secrecy between relays, thereby providing users with anonymity in network location. That anonymity extends to the hosting of censorship-resistant content via Tor’s anonymous hidden service feature. Furthermore, by keeping some of the entry relays (bridge relays) secret, users can evade Internet censorship that relies upon blocking public Tor relays.

Because the Internet address of the sender and the recipient are not both in cleartext at any hop along the way, anyone eavesdropping at any point along the communication channel cannot directly identify both ends. Furthermore, to the recipient it appears that the last Tor node (the exit node) is the originator of the communication rather than the sender.”

Once you’ve got Tor installed and running, you’ll have a special Tor-hardened browser open that keeps you anonymous on the Internet. . . or does it? Not entirely, as it turns out. You still have to avoid doing things that might reveal your identity, which means your Tor-enabled browser should be the only browser open, and you must resist the temptation to do everyday things like log in to Facebook, or check your e-mail. Doing so while using Tor is actually much less secure than doing it without Tor running, because hey: people are watching. Tor does not, and by design cannot, encrypt your traffic between exit nodes and target servers. In other words, you can send and receive data all you like and nobody will know where or who you are just by looking at the flow of data, but if you yourself send information that tells where and who you are, you may be exposing your most sensitive data to hackers or law enforcement. You can expose where and who you are indirectly, as well; as an example: in September 2007, Swedish security consultant Dan Egerstad reported the interception of a large number of email account usernames and passwords by running and monitoring Tor exit nodes. Once someone has information like that, finding out who you are, where you live, and all kinds of other things about you becomes trivial.

Posting photographs without taking the necessary precautions can also compromise your identity while running Tor. Digital photos normally have what’s known as EXIF data attached to them, and the EXIF may include things like the precise GPS coordinates of where you took the picture. Scrubbing or spoofing the EXIF data is easy, but it’s also essential that you don’t skip that step if you want to upload photos and remain anonymous.

You can log in to Silk Road and lots of other Deep Web sites safely because they avoid those exit nodes that make your data sniffable and therefore vulnerable; since Silk Road also wants to remain anonymized, your requests to the site and the site’s replies to you meet and negotiate with each other at some random point in the middle of the Tor-enabled network. Again: don’t open a second browser, don’t check your e-mail, don’t sign into Facebook or other sites that know your real identity, and don’t browse web sites casually. The Deep Web is for getting in, getting what you need, and getting out.

Some popular Silk Road offerings – screenshot by Whatsblem the Pro

The best way to get to the anonymized dark side of the Internet is to boot to a CD, a USB thumb drive, or an external hard drive that contains a special Tor-enabled security-hardened operating system. This will enable you not only to completely, securely anonymize yourself, it will also give you the ability to take your show on the road and safely access the underworld from just about any computer with an Internet connection, even the ones in the library. There are several options to choose from in such an operating system; two very good choices are Tails, and Liberté Linux.

If you boot to one of these specialized operating systems, Tor will already be enabled, and you’ll be ready to go. Point the specially-modified browser at the Silk Road and you’re there (please note that if you don’t have Tor installed and running correctly, though, you’ll get “404 Not Found” or your DNS provider’s equivalent instead).

OK, so you’ve created a Silk Road account and logged into that. What now? You can feast your eyes to your heart’s content, but how do you buy anything, and what is the weird pricing system all about?

That’s the other part of the Deep Web equation: anonymized money. Silk Road’s transactions (totaling over 1.2 million US dollars per month in 2012) are conducted using Bitcoin, an electronic currency introduced in 2009 that was designed with your privacy in mind. So, before you can buy anything on Silk Road, you’ll need to acquire some bitcoins. There are several ways to do this, and more all the time; just in the last few weeks, a Bitcoin ATM was announced for use in public spaces. The most common way of obtaining bitcoins is to go through a site like Mt. Gox; this method involves a trip to a local bank to finalize the transaction, which places bitcoins in your encrypted ‘wallet’ to be spent online. As Bitcoin achieves greater recognition and acceptance, even easier methods of trading non-virtual currencies for bitcoins should quickly become trivial and routine.

Just buying bitcoins isn’t enough; you’ll also need to use a mixing service or three if you want your transactions to remain truly anonymous. You’ll need to pick your mixing services judiciously; they also operate anonymously, and a fly-by-night operation could simply disappear with your bitcoins. Do your due diligence! As a general rule, anyone you do business with anonymously should have a reputation that is worth much more to them than your transaction.

Now you can buy, but who can you trust? If everyone’s anonymous, what’s to stop vendors on Silk Road from simply keeping your money and sending you nothing at all?

Fortunately, Silk Road provides both an escrow service and a reputation system. Do your due diligence and shy away from the early funds release option, and your transaction is assured. Your bitcoins won’t be handed over to the seller until you both agree that the deal was completed fairly.

Safely communicating with vendors is also an issue. You’re going to have to give them a name and address to ship to at some point, so take steps to keep anyone in between you from sniffing that information out of the packets of data you transmit as they travel through the cloud from server to server. Make sure you use a dedicated e-mail account, and encrypt your messages in both directions with PGP or the free alternative GPG. . . or take the easy way out, and get yourself a Hushmail or Tor Mail account.

How PGP works

Finally, you’ve got to receive the product. It might be advisable to limit your purchases to vendors in your own country; Silk Road allows you to declare a country for your account (or not), and provides a handy “domestic only” checkbox at the top of every search page. You’ll need a name and address; PO boxes are commonly used and if you’re in America the USPS is highly recommended over other carriers like UPS or FedEx, simply because the Post Office handles such an immensely larger volume of mail and packages than the alternatives.

Volumes have been written about secure shipping, and indeed, there’s a great deal more to say about all of this. This article should be considered the tip of the iceberg; it will give you enough information to get started, but by “get started” I mean “do a lot more reading.” It’s no small or simple thing to free yourself of the burden of an obsolete old paradigm, especially when the corpse is still violently thrashing around and hurting people who try without first preparing themselves adequately. All the information and resources you need are available to you, but it’s up to you to put in the study time necessary to master the tools you’ll need.

Proceed with caution!

by Whatsblem the Pro

People who don’t know what Burning Man is tend to assume that it’s just another festival; a place where consumers go to enjoy passive entertainment arranged by event promoters. Burning Man’s not like that, and it never has been.

What would we have, if the only work that got done out there on the playa was what the Org either paid for or did themselves? If there were no volunteers, no independent artists or laborers or engineers or architects or visionaries or weirdos or pranksters or sex deities or bartenders? Nobody out there just doing their thing?

Attendee participation is fundamental to Burning Man, and it is what provides us with 99% of the shade, art, diversions, exposed flesh, alcohol, and other critical resources to be found in Black Rock City. Even most of what the Org provides gets built, torn down, and cleaned-up after with volunteer labor, and all of it gets paid for with money we give them. Imagine if all those burners who put all that time and money and effort into being amazing on the playa – all the people who aren’t part of the Org or paid by them – were suddenly replaced in the middle of the burn by passive attendees looking to be entertained and vended to in exchange for their ticket purchase. There would be no Burning Man. There wouldn’t even be a festival; instead, we’d have a major tragedy in an artless, corpse-littered desert wilderness: Thirsting Man. Mummifying Man. What-the-Fuck-are-You-Doing-Here Man.

In short, it’s a huge mistake to give the Org too much credit for Burning Man. Burning Man co-founder John Law understood that; back in 2007, he wrote:

“Burning Man, since it’s inception has depended upon the gratis efforts of many. Since my leaving active organizing of the event in 1996, it has become a huge business generating more than 8 million dollars a year. Some people are paid quite well for their efforts. If the organizing core of the event believes, as they say quite clearly in their literature that the BM concept is a true movement, and has an opportunity to really make a difference in peoples lives and ideas around community, the arts, etc., then they shouldn’t have a problem releasing the protected trademarks Burning Man, Black Rock City, etc to the public domain where ANYONE can then BE Burning Man. Doing this will not impede their ability to manage and organize the event, sell tickets, pay themselves, and any artists, vendors and tradesmen as they choose using ticket sales receipts.

The only thing that would change is that NO ONE would be able to capitalize on “Burning Man” by licensing the name or selling it or using it as an advertising pitch. There is no other reason to retain these legal ownership titles other than to capitalize on their brand value at some later date.

I was defrauded by Larry and Michael’s actions. I hope they choose to do the right thing and give Burning Man to the people.”

John Law

Of course they didn’t give Burning Man to the people. They settled with John Law on undisclosed terms instead, and they’ve been jealously guarding the brand they officially own ever since. . . and that eight million dollars? It’s now up to over thirty million.

Yes, I said “jealously guarded,” and there’s no hyperbole in that. . . if anything, it’s an understatement. In 2009, digital civil rights watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation slammed the Org for their ticketing terms and conditions, saying “It’s bad enough that some companies routinely trot out contracts prohibiting you from criticizing them, but it’s another thing altogether when they demand that you hand over your copyrights to any criticisms, so that they can use the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to censor your own expression off the Internet.”

Having recognized that the Org may very well have good intentions behind their terms and conditions, the EFF still notes that “the collateral damage to our free speech is unacceptable.”

The Org’s defense to this is that their over-reaching and draconian measures are necessary to protect Black Rock City culture. Some would say that by ‘protect’ they must mean “reserve it for their own exploitation.” The most charitable interpretation I can make of the Org’s response to the EFF is something like “we don’t trust burners to do it themselves, and we lack the imagination to come up with a solution that isn’t a massive violation of peoples’ rights all year long, everywhere.”

The corporation that runs Burning Man is slated to become a non-profit, but this has not yet happened, and it won’t necessarily make things better, or curtail the ability of board members to skim off massive paydays for themselves. For now, the Org is still a non-transparent, for-profit corporate entity whose board members primarily serve their own interests behind closed doors. With most of their operating costs paid for out of the pockets and sweat glands of volunteers, they control tens of millions of dollars per year in ticket revenue alone. . . yet they seem to have zero respect for the people who not only give them that ticket revenue, but also literally build and painstakingly strike the event that makes it possible for them to sell tens of millions of dollars worth of tickets in the first place.

Zero respect doesn’t mean zero interest. Off-playa, the Org seems all too eager to establish and maintain a Disney-like control over every aspect of burner culture they can get their hands on, a process that effectively quashes the very freedom and can-do DIY attitude that burners thrive on and that the Org themselves love to trumpet as their greatest triumphs.

Given the amount of lip service that the Org gives to the idea of spreading the culture as widely as possible, it seems both hypocritical and graspingly self-serving to exert the kind of stranglehold that they do on ‘their’ trademark. That kind of control freakism is par for the course, though. Regionals must adhere to a strict set of policies and rules set by the Org, just to be ‘officially’ recognized as nothing more than organized groups of burners. Try to organize anything bigger than a living room sleepover while self-identifying as Burning Man enthusiasts, and you’re asking for unwelcome attention from the vultures in the Org’s legal department and their mania for protecting the Burning Man brand from the very people who give that brand its value.

The Org even has an official set of rules for online communities, and they are both dismayingly extensive and incredibly oppressive. Rudeness, vulgarity, being disrespectful, being snide, being overly-critical of the Org, or even wandering off-topic are just a small part of what is explicitly forbidden.

“They want burner-oriented Facebook groups to enforce all those rules for them. So naturally, nobody wants their group to be official,” says Michael Watkiss, an administrator of and participant in several such groups. “The official rules are just way too strict.”

The words of John Law echo in our ears: “There is no other reason to retain these legal ownership titles other than to capitalize on their brand value at some later date.” The Org’s death grip on the Burning Man trademark is a visible sign of their preparation of new revenue streams – at the culture’s expense – in order to maintain and increase the personal income of board members in the face of their imminent reconfiguration as a non-profit organization.

There are a surprising number of Burning Man groups and pages on Facebook, most of them unofficial, created and administered by volunteer burners. They range from the Org’s own heavily-moderated Facebook page to various Regional or special-interest groups, including one called “Burning Man Sucks.”

Photo by Michael Macor

The administrators of these groups are, of course, unpaid volunteer burners. To one degree or another, they strive to keep their groups lively, useful, and relevant. One thing plagues them all: advertising. People show up in their groups and post ads, aka ‘spam.’

The largest Burning Man group on Facebook, with some 28,000 members, has this problem all the time. “We have to be constantly on the watch for spam,” says Watkiss. “We’re a decommodification zone, no advertising allowed. The only exceptions are for events and fundraising that directly benefit either recognized Regionals, or art projects that are destined for the playa.”

It’s easy enough for the admins to just delete the totally unrelated marketing blather that washes up in our online communities, but some of it isn’t totally unrelated, and is posted by burners themselves. Somewhere between the exceptions made by Watkiss’ group and the realm of outright corporate spam, there lies a grey zone of burner-oriented advertising by and for individual burners. Deleting a corporate sales pitch for diet lard, the latest model of Pootmobile, or low easy payments on plutonium siding for houses is trivial; deleting a fellow burner’s post in which he’s trying to sell the yurts he builds can cause friction.

“It’s often cut-and-dried,” says Watkiss, “but the grey areas are very, very grey indeed. That can really generate a lot of anger.”

Recently, a small group of volunteer administrators like Michael Watkiss put their heads together over an improved solution to the spam problem that wouldn’t shut out individual burners from making contact with each other and buying and selling things. “A guy from one of the Regional groups told us that his people opened a second Facebook group strictly for buying and selling things to each other,” Watkiss explains. “It seemed like a great idea, so we talked about starting one for burners all over the world to use. It keeps the buying and selling out of the main groups, but gives it a place to happen where we can still guard against people from outside the culture trying to market random junk to us. Decommodification is wonderful in its place, but it shouldn’t mean that burners are forbidden from ever having any commerce with each other, anywhere. This way the burners on Facebook get their burner swapmeet if they want it, without polluting the main groups with commerce.”

The charter of the new group, dubbed “Burning Man Classifieds,” reads as follows:

This group is given to the burner community as a place to freely post any appropriate advertisements we wish. Funding an art project? Tell us about it. Need a new roommate, or a job, or a car, or a rideshare, or some exotic materials for your art? Try us. Want to sell something? Give us your best pitch. You can even beg here, if you think your cause is good enough to garner donations. You can even look for a date! What you can’t post: MLM pyramid schemes/scams, obvious attempts to market to us from outside our community, and blatant trolling. Everything else is fair game; the admins will use their best judgment in sorting the wheat from the chaff.

PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU POST. This is a worldwide group of people. If you post an ad looking for a room to rent, for instance, then we need to know where you are. Not the intersection, the city and State (or Province, etc.). Try not to make extra work for the volunteer administrators, or we might assume you’re a troll.

If you administer a Burning Man related group and would like to help us out, get in touch with one of our admins so we can add you to the team.

Just a week after the new group’s inception, the Org seems to have taken notice in a big way. “Apparently, they’ve been sending thinly-veiled legal threats to one of the administrators,” says Michael Watkiss. “They don’t want the group to use the phrase ‘Burning Man’ because they say it violates their trademark.”

Trademark infringement is not so simple, though. In most cases of alleged infringement, the acid test is consumer confusion. If the defendant isn’t selling a product that consumers might think came from a different manufacturer because of the trademark, then generally speaking, no infringement has occurred. There are also protections for non-commercial use of trademarks, and for parodies.

Michael Watkiss: “I don’t understand why the Org would think they have a leg to stand on. Nobody owns the group, and nobody is making money by running the group. It’s just a place for burners to have a funky little swap meet with each other. The group itself is not a commercial enterprise, and nobody is going to confuse a Facebook group with a giant week-long arts festival in the desert. The idea that there’s some kind of trademark infringement going on that requires their legal team to swoop in is just silly.”

Holle had to change his plates from BURN BRC to BRC LUV

According to Watkiss, the Org’s legal team suggested that a name change to “Burner Classifieds” would be sufficient to call off the dogs. . . but sadly, most people – including the State – still think ‘burner’ means someone who smokes a lot of pot. “It makes it harder for our tribe – burners – to find Burning Man communities that aren’t controlled by the Org, and encourages both dilution and demonization of our communities by making outsiders think we’re all about drugs.”

Watkiss’ complaint seems to hold water.

“I ordered ‘BURNBRC’ license plates from the State of Nevada for my pickup truck,” burner Jawsh ‘Sparrow’ Holle told me. “They printed the registration that way on the spot, but then the State sent me a letter saying they wouldn’t issue the plates because the word ‘burn’ was drug-related, and I had to change my request. I asked for ‘BRC LUV’ instead.”

Trademark law protects people using phrases that can’t be adequately expressed with an alternate phrase, especially for non-commercial uses, and particularly when there’s no consumer confusion likely. The Org’s attempts to exert total control over the term “Burning Man” aren’t just contrary to everything they say about fostering community and culture, they’re also unsupported by trademark law.

“It’s all been very politely worded,” points out Watkiss, “but the implicit threat in these messages from the Org is very clear. It’s the iron hand in the velvet glove. If they can’t be in complete control, the Org wants to marginalize us. . . and we’re burners!”

Judge Jones in Reno, who said the settlement deal cut between Burning Man and Pershing County was “illegal, unenforceable and absurd“, and suggested the lawyers involved should go back to school – has issued a new ruling on the case. Once again, he’s accused both sides of collusion, fraud, breaking the law, and abuse of process. The judge also acknowledged that he lacks the jurisdiction to void the contract – maybe it was him who went back to law school? However, he is still trying to get the nudity in front of children shut down:

He ordered the federal case closed but not before he again accused both sides of collusion, fraud and an abuse of process, and repeated his concerns about exposing children to public nudity

The judge said that the settlement was illegal – but he passed it into law anyway.

In a typical display of BMOrg humility, Burning Man’s lawyers told the media “the judge’s ruling has no legal effect” (wow!)

Here’s the full story, from Associated Press

RENO (AP) — A federal judge who refused to affirm a settlement agreement between a Nevada county and Burning Man organizers because he says it is “illegal, unenforceable and absurd” has issued a new ruling declaring the county the winner in a First Amendment fight that both sides insist was over long ago.

Lawyers for Burning Man’s Black Rock City LLC and Pershing County say they settled their differences in October over a proposed ordinance governing the counterculture festival and had been asking U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones since then to give their agreement his blessing.

Both sides said late Friday they believe the deal intended to head off a legal showdown over constitutional limits on obscenity remains intact without Jones’ endorsement. Burning Man’s lawyers consider the judge’s latest ruling to be moot, while the county continues to review any potential legal ramifications.

Jones, who dressed down both sides’ lawyers and accused them of fraud before refusing their most recent request in his Reno courtroom Nov. 29, acknowledged in the new written order earlier this week he lacks jurisdiction to void the contract.

He ordered the federal case closed but not before he again accused both sides of collusion, fraud and an abuse of process, and repeated his concerns about exposing children to public nudity at the festival in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles north of Reno.

In an unorthodox move, he also granted a motion the county had filed July 31 seeking approval of its right to enact an ordinance banning children from attending the event. And he renewed his sharp criticism of the county’s legal team’s willingness to negotiate a deal that he says ensures no such ban will take place under a new 10-year-law enforcement agreement.

The annual weeklong celebration of self-expression and eclectic art leading up to Labor Day draws 60,000 free spirits to the desert playa, where costumed characters perform guerrilla theater and dancers spin — sometimes sans clothes.

Black Rock City filed suit in 2012 arguing the county’s proposed ordinance would be unconstitutional if it banned children, or prohibited “obscene, indecent, vulgar or lewd exhibitions” protected under the First Amendment as free speech.

Jones said in his ruling on Monday the county should have stuck to his guns because he would have upheld their right to pursue such rules.

“BRC, in collusion with the county’s counsel, filed and prosecuted this contrived, pre-textual lawsuit in order to obtain its new and illegal agreement with Pershing County, and in doing so, committed a fraud on this court, Pershing County and the Nevada Legislature,” Jones wrote.

“County counsel mimicked BRC’s charade, encouraging its client to settle on such obviously unfavorable and illegal terms,” he said. “It raises serious questions regarding the county’s decision to settle.”

Jones said the agreement implies the county cannot prevent minors from attending the event “even when state and local laws concerning child endangerment, child delinquency or child trafficking are implicated.”

“Such a contract is obviously illegal and no court would enforce it,” he said.

Jones said he recognizes he lacks jurisdiction to void the contract but that he does have jurisdiction “to declare an abuse of process and the commission of fraud upon the court in the filing and prosecution of this federal action.” He also said the county could revive the case in state court.

Annette Hurst, a San Francisco lawyer for Burning Man, said Jones’ order has “no legal effect” and the contract “remains valid, binding and in full effect.”

“BRC has every intention of performing in accordance with its terms,” she said in an email to AP on Friday.

Pershing County District Attorney Jim Shirley said he has not taken an official position on the effect the order has on the agreement, but believes Hurst is correct.

“At present time, there is an agreement in place and the parties intend to comply with the agreement,” he said.

The “moral” of this story? Money trumps the judicial process, in Northern Nevada.

Now that the deal’s been done, Pershing County gets paid $$$ per Burner, and traffic concerns have supposedly  been addressed…don’t be surprised if we end up with a larger population cap this year.

Is there anyone out there who thinks Burning Man doesn’t care about lawsuits any more, because it is a charity and cares more about spreading Burner culture than it does about profit? If so, sadly, you are mistaken.

In the latest development of the continuing “BMOrg vs Burners” war, Decommodification, LLC has filed suit in the Federal Court of Canada, against burningmanarts.ca – long-time Burners who are the current holders of the “Burning Man” trademark in Canada. This Vancouver-based non-profit group trace their lineage to the Baker Beach/Cacophony Society Days. Old school original Burners, coming from the true essence of this movement, Shao Lin style. Their Burn BC Facebook page has 1100 followers. From burnbc.org:

The Burn BC Arts Co-Op is the first registered non-profit arts cooperative in BC.

The Burn BC Arts Cooperative was founded in May of 2007, and first incorporated in October of 2009 under new legislation recognizing non-profit cooperatives. Burn BC was restructured under a new incorporation (August 27, 2013) to apply for charitable status to facilitate the development of an Industrial Arts and Multimedia Arts Centre in BC.

photo by Gilles Bonugli

Burn BC supports local creative initiatives, like The Cacophony Society, Outsider Arts, Mutant Vehicles, Art Cars, Fire Art, and Performance Art that encourage “Creative Self Exploration with Mutual Respect of Personal Boundaries”. We wish to support forms of Art that generally fall outside the bounds of traditional fine arts aesthetics, and receive less support and recognition then more traditional forms of Art.

Created around an organic and casual administrative process to facilitate ease of access by the outsider arts community, Burn BC encourages participants to experiment with developing our distinctly Canadian Burning Man culture, by celebrating Open Source Cultural groups like The Cacophony Society, and the many wonderfully creative organizations and groups throughout BC.

Burn BC has evolved with one guiding principle relating to our Burning Man culture.
“Creative Self Exploration with Mutual Respect of Personal Boundaries”

The Burn BC Arts Co-Op has four general goals.

• Establish the “Cascadia Burn”
  A Leave No Trace, No Vending, Temporary Autonomous Zone somewhere in BC.
• Establish a Burning Man™ Arts Centre
  To be used for collaborative community projects involving industrial and multimedia arts.
• Fund and manage a creative property.
  To be used for Arts Retreats and to store large scale sculptures and creative projects.
• Foster Arenas of…
  “Creative Self Exploration with Mutual Respect of Personal Boundaries”
  By cooperating and collaborating with community projects, peer organizations and events that participate in the overall cultural paradigm of “The Burn”.

When hosting special events we ask people to:

• Respect the Space
• Respect the Art
• Respect Each Other
• Respect Yourself

This seems real to me, so perhaps it’s unfortunate that they chose April 1 to start this project:

The Burning Man Arts Association is a Cacophony Society project that was founded April 1st, 2014 by Bhak Jolicoeur and the Burn BC Arts Cooperative to support the Burning Man Culture that developed between 1990-2003.

Bhak Jolicoeur has been intimately involved with The Cacophony Society, Fire Arts, and the Burning Man culture and Burning Man community since the early 90′s.

We love to celebrate Burning Man through, play, dance, music, art, performance art, and the chaos of spontaneous creative fun. We have supported initiatives that are open to the organic process and the ephemeral experience, and find much joy in fostering arenas of personal exploration.

We have been intimately involved in the creation and development of many wonderful projects and events since the early 90′s.

• parade of lost souls, Vancouver

  The Vancouver Cacophony Society

• The Cascadia Burn
• The Orange Party
• The Fools Parade
• Radiant Heat
• Vancouver After Burn
• The Work Less Party
• The Car Free Commercial Drive Festival
• Parade of Lost Souls
• Illuminaries
• Burn in the Forest
• Recompression Vancouver
• Decompresson Vancouver
• and various Burning Man art projects.

We love to celebrate life.

If this is all just an elaborate joke, it’s a very clever one. Burn BC have hit back at BMOrg with a cyber-offensive, a web site that clearly makes their arguments. What they’re saying sounds very reasonable to me. BMOrg’s presumed argument that “this takes money away from us that is rightfully ours”, is weakened by their other argument that “we’ve given everything to a non profit, Burning Man is about helping the world not making money”. You can’t have both, BMOrg, either you want money so much that you’re prepared to sue your own customers in the hope of getting even more, not from your efforts but taking it away from theirs; or, you’re not about money.

2014 Vancouver Cacophony Society Flyer

I like what they stand for – freedom, openness, inclusiveness. Burners profiting together from Burner culture. They’re on the side of Open Source Culture, as are we. Open Source works, it fosters innovation, and people can still get rich from it. This technology industry approach to Intellectual Property has built the Internet, and made San Francisco the second richest city in this country.

Do we want Burning Man to become Disneyland 3.0, or stay more like it has been for most of its young life – something new and fresh that is spontaneously created by us all, and shared by us with each other?

Nomad Traveler just shared a great comment here about “stone soup” events, where everyone is encouraged to give. This was the essence of the spirit that gave birth to Burning Man, the culture that was harnessed and packaged into an LLC (and now, multiple LLC’s) as well as tax-exempt entities.

So far, for all the hoopla, the Burning Man Project “outreach” is uber-lame. It is as if they “discovered” the stone soup idea, which ironically did NOT include exploiting others for personal profit. You can squeeze a lot of “free” time and stuff out of people, but if you are not giving back more, that pretty much disappears over time. My stone soup organizations have been around for decades, so they seem to be working. We all pay expenses and time to participate, and we pay annual dues to let the organization have some operative overhead and full-time staff.

And we get grants and commercial support, that is used to help develop information for us all to use to work better. But those funds are spent based on ideas from the base-level members, not from top-down decisions. And we do get to vote on who holds those top jobs.

“Sharing” and “gifting” – are they really important to BMOrg? If they were then there’d be no need for these discussions, let alone expensive international law suits. The Burning Man Project would be immediately opening the books, opening the suggestion box to ideas, opening the source code of their systems, opening the governance of the temporary city to include its residents out of civic responsibility, radically including everyone who wanted to radically self-express, gifting the use of their name and logo and expertise to any who wanted it. Basically, all the things that Burn BC say they want to do with the ownership of their Burning Man trademark. Instead of doing this, though, BMOrg seem more into hosting panel discussions.

“Decommodification, LLC” is an ironic name for the lawsuits vehicle. The royalty stream from the events to this entity will have to be large enough to fund the legal bills – but that doesn’t guarantee BMOrg victory. If they lose, they will have to pay all the legal costs for the trademark owners as well as funding their own expenses, and possibly additional penalties. Which in turn means we  Burners will have to pay, through higher ticket prices and new taxes. The fact that Canada is not a signatory to global intellectual property treaties could be a significant issue in this case.

This case could set a strong precedent for the spread of Burner culture around the world. Are Burners “allowed” to dress up, dance around, and drive around in art cars in their hometowns? Is this a natural part of Burner culture spreading? Or may only BMOrg, sorry, Decommodification, do these things? Does the bureaucracy make the culture, or the Burners? And where do you draw the line – or, perhaps more appropriately, the target? Is it raves ecstatic trance rituals? Raves in the desert? Raves where people wear “leather and feather”? Ritual effigy burns? Anything called Burning Man, anywhere, any time? What about the movie called Burning Man then?

Perhaps Decommodification LLC thinks that American laws just automatically apply everywhere on the planet, and override national laws. This approach might not go over well with the local Vancouver media, although as we’ve seen in the past, BMOrg seems to think “any publicity is good publicity”.

Just because Burning Man’s founders think “the mainstream is becoming like Burning Man”, doesn’t mean they suddenly own everything, everywhere. A legally registered trademark in another country, is governed by the laws of that country. The days of America stomping all over the legal systems of other first-world countries are long gone – unless Burning Man has some special level of protection that can over-ride national laws. Canada in particular has a long history of resisting these kind of corporate bully tactics from United States corporations, both politically and legally. If Decommodification wanted to protect their trademark in different nations, they should have registered it in those nations. A small fraction of their annual legal budget would have covered every country in the world, and perhaps in multiple categories of use too.

This suit offers a glimpse of the thinking that’s really behind the “100 Years Plan” to spread Burner culture around the world with a “non-profit”. Spent 30 years creating the culture you co-founded, back home in your own country? Tough titties, Burning Man owns that. Have a legal trademark in your country that was registered before theirs? So what, Burning Man has lots of lawyers and will sue you anyway.

Here’s one example of what the Burning Arts crew have to say about Principles:

“Transformation” can happen almost anywhere, even the Proprietary Culture of the Juggalos can manifest experiences that emulate non-lucid “Transformation”. The way they reference “Home” and “Family” with their experience may seem uncomfortably familiar to some. It’s up to you to judge the quality of the Juggalo “Transformation” or what they are transforming into.

The “success” of Transformational Events, aren’t really measured by “How Many” are involved, or “How Much” is made. Success is more relevant to whether or not the event can facilitate an unmediated experience. The foundation of the lucid transformational experience is Immediatism.

They are not looking to deny the past – more, it appears, to learn from it.

When the Burning Man Arts Association was initially formed to foster Burning Man™, we looked at declaring concepts like “Mission Statements”, and “Vision Statements”, and defining things like “Codes of Conduct”, and found that they imposed limited personal aesthetics and definitions on participants.

We realized very quickly that while we (personally) want, and like, people to dress up, have fun, be silly, (celebrate Burning Man™); the intent of our project to support Burning Man™ and foster personal growth and transformation, could get lost in the mix. In over defining we could quickly digress into little more than well produced costume parties hosting re-branded Raves. The substance of the experience would be overwhelmed by the pressures of production, consumption, and expectation.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

So we asked ourselves…

• What do we want to encourage?
• What is Burning Man™?
• How has it evolved?
• What is our local relationship to our Burning Man culture?

We contacted, and met with, the people who created the San Francisco Cacophony Society, we talked with members of the San Francisco Suicide Club, we took time to gain insight from the people who manage the American Burning Man festival in Nevada. We reflected upon our local experiences over 20 years with Burning Man™, and asked ourselves how we wished to critically consider the decisions and evolution made by all our peers who preceded us, reflected conclusions on our perceptions of our Burning Man culture, then worked out solutions that reflected our desire to offer catalysing environments for lucid transformational experiences to potentially manifest.

Two important elements we considered….
- Play
- Immediatism

We discovered that these two elements are critical to fostering lucid transformational experiences. By focusing on the least imposing rhetoric or bureaucracy possible, we could foster these two important elements and help catalyse the potential for lucid transformational experiences to manifest at our Burning Man™ events.

Burn BC Founder and Champion of Burner Rights, Bhak Jolicouer

Founder Bhak Jolicouer provides more information about his history here. Significantly, he had been participating in Burner culture for almost 20 years before he ever attended the Burning Man event in Nevada in 2004. At this point in time Decommodification LLC (the new privately held for-profit company that owns and controls the royalties from the events) didn’t even exist. The American Burning Man trademark (in the arts festivals category) was first registered in 1995 , then allowed to lapse, then registered again in 2003. The company that owned the trademark, Paperman LLC, was also allowed to lapse, as Larry Harvey didn’t pay the corporate fees. In 2006 Larry signed a 10-year licensing agreement between Paperman LLC and Black Rock City, LLC for the trademarks. This seems to be expiring before the Founders exit, and presumably there is an expectation that the Nevada Burning Man festival will want to renew it. This would set a price  precedent for the Regionals. The Intellectual Property Assets were the subject of a very public lawsuit with Burning Man founder John Law, who tried to keep his co-founders Larry Harvey and Michael Mikel true to their vision and promises of inclusivenesses. In 2007, he sued for Burning Man to be free. “If it’s a real fucking movement, they can give up control of the name”, Law told the SF Bay Guardian. The lawsuit was settled financially out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Maybe there’s still hope that Burner culture will survive corporatization and regime change at the Nevada event, because it’s already grown much bigger than that. The Black Rock City Population is capped at 70,000 for the next few years; tickets for sale were capped even tighter, at 61,000 this year. There are many more Burners than that on this planet. Burners.Me has been visited by more than 2 million people from 212 countries. Burning Man lists 46 official Regional events on their site. However, some of those are Pre- or De- compressions, most of them are in the US, and one is in virtual reality: Burn2, in Second Life. The number of countries throwing proper Burns in the official Burning Man list of Regional events is 6, plus the United States.

Burning Man Arts have provided a pretty easy to read FAQ, reproduced below. If they win this case, Burners elsewhere in the world will be able to license the name Burning Man from them as an alternative to BMOrg. It sounds like they are offering MUCH friendlier terms than Decommodification, LLC (who is the legal entity launching the law suit against them in Canada). Of course, if someone owns the Burning Man trademark in another jurisdiction, then that would take precedence over either of these groups’ ownership claims.

The battle is just beginning, and we will bring you more information as we get it. We invite both parties to communicate with us and share their side of the story.

__________________________________________

from http://burningmanarts.ca/our-rights-faq/

FAQ

Here are some FAQ’s regarding our rights as independent Canadian Communities, and why we are defending our existing legal rights in Canada, and our obligations to these rights in Federal Court with the action commenced by the American Corporation Decommodification LLC.

Burn BC and the “Burning Man” mark

Burn BC currently ‘owns’ the “Burning Man” mark in Canada. While Burn BC has full rights to use the mark, we cannot license use of the mark until it has been properly transferred to the Canadian National Non-Profit Arts Organisation (The Burning Man Arts Association).

We are not stopping anyone from using it, have no desire to sue Burners, and when the transfer is complete, we will allow it to be used by our communities and by Artists who respect the Burning Man Culture in Canada. The mark will not be used, owned, controlled, or influenced by Corporations.

We do not speak for the community or have any desire to speak for the community. We are not asking you to conform to an identity, take sides, or adopt any edicts. We are setting this up so each of us can continue exploring self defined, and self managed personal identities and communities with respect to our Burning Man Culture and it’s roots with the Suicide Club, theCacophony Society, Zone Trip #4, and how we evolved our culture from 1990-2003 as the Burning Man Culture.

Our self defined personal creative self exploration has always been at the core of the sublime beauty we have loved and respected with our Burning Man Culture, and Burning Man Communities; An ephemeral and beautiful space beyond the reach of Corporations and Dogma.

NOTE: We have no issue with Corporations. Some of our very best friends are Corporations. Many Burners work for corporations, and own corporations. Our only desire is to experience ephemeral Immediatism with environments beyond the reach or influence of Corporations or Dogma.

 Decommodification LLC

You have to understand that in Canada we currently and completely own our rights to our independently developed communities, our expressions, and our “Burning Man” marks.

This action commenced by Decommodification LLC is an attempt to take these rights away from us and claim our communities, our expressions, and our rights to our “Burning Man” marks in Canada, and claim our rights, communities, and expressions, as property of the American Corporation called Decommodification LLC. This is not hypothetical, this is in writing in the “Statement of Claim” filed in Canadian Federal Court.

In the Statement of Claim filed in Federal Court, Decommodification LLC claims our communities, and the expressions of our communities and culture, as property of the American Corporation Decommodifcation LLC.

Decommodification LLC
- VS -
Burn BC Arts Cooperative

To understand this case, and why it matters to you as an Artist and/or a Burner, and to anyone that celebrates culture in Canada; you have to understand this is about an American Corporation claiming our Canadian Communities, our Cultural expressions, and the very format we use to gather, as property of the American Corporation and it’s 2004 American Brand.

Passing Off

To understand the confusion that is being passed off on our community. You have to understand there are TWO “Burning Man”.

1: The Original Burning Man Culture that was formed on the foundations of the Suicide Club(1977), and the Cacophony Society (1986), and Zone Trip #4 (1990) and how we evolved on these foundation between 1990-2003 creating one of the most relevant events our culture has created and experienced.

2: The proprietary American brand that was registered in 2004 in the United States created by an American Corporation, and based off the expressions of what we created at our home in the Nevada Desert between 1990-2003.

Trademark Law

Decommodification LLC
will be referred to as
Black Rock City (BRC)

• Doesn’t BRC have a worldwide trademark?

The 2004 “Burning Man” Brand Registered in the United States is also registered with the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO). Canada has never signed the Madrid Protocol and is notunder the jurisdiction of WIPO.

• Does BRC own our mark in Canada?

No; currently WE as Canadian Burners do. For an American Corporation to own a mark in Canada, it must register the mark with CIPO, and do business in Canada through a Permanent Entity.

• Is Canada part of WIPO?

No. For a company to register a mark in Canada it has to do business in Canada through a Permanent Entity, and Register a Trademark with CIPO. Canada has never signed the Madrid Protocol and is not under the jurisdiction of WIPO.

• Has BRC ever done business in Canada?

BRC has never done business in Canada through a Permanent Entity. Our independently developed communities pre-date the 2004 registered mark in the United States, and are not Permanent Entities of the American Corporation.

• Is the “Regional Network” a permanent entity for BRC?

No. Regional Contacts are not partners, or employees of BRC. The RC network was started by a person who self appointed himself as a contact point in 1997. The RC network was an informal contact point for our independently developing communities, and was not formalized under the Ten Principles until 2004

• Does first use count with CIPO?

No. CIPO goes by first to register, and only looks at existing registered trademarks in Canada when considering opposition to a mark.

• The Nevada Burn has existed for years, does that count as first use in Canada?

No. BRC registered it’s new brand in the United States in 2004. Our independently developed Burning Man communities formed symbiotically with the 1995 Registered Mark that wascancelled in 2003. That mark was not owned by anyone anywhere for two years.

• Does NAFTA apply to this?

NAFTA is a trade agreement. Trademarks are managed by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO)

What is Burning Man?

• Did the American Corporation create our culture?

No. Our culture created the Nevada Burn from the roots of the Suicide Club and the Cacophony Society between 1990-2003.

• Did BRC create our communites?

No. The BRC American Mark is in reference to the Baker Beach Burn which was shut down by authorities in 1990. The Communities had already been established through the Cacophony Society and gathered in the Black Rock Desert from 1990 onward.

• How did our Burning Man Communities Form?

Our Communities developed from the Cacophony Society and it’s loose affiliations, with roots to the Suicide Club dating back to 1977. Between 1990-2003 Burning Man and the Cacophony Society were synonymous.

• How did our culture become Burning Man?

In 1990 the Cacophony Society hosted Zone Trip #4. It was primarily a Cacophony Society event with the man sculpture added at the last minute. From 1990-1995 the Cacophony Society adopted the Burning Man name in reference to the burning of the man sculpture at their event. From 1990-2003 the Cacophony Society and Burning Man were synonymous. Many Burners hosted Cacophony Society events including Santacon. The loose affiliations of the Cacophony Society became the loose affiliations of our Burning Man Culture, and no one owned us.

• Who owns our Canadian Burning Man Communities?

WE do. Currently our Canadian Culture has developed independently over the last 20 years. We have had a loose affiliation with Burners everywhere, and our relationships to the “Regional Network” have been as a networking process, not a governing body. As Burners who celebrate the Burning Man Culture, we celebrate the achievements of Burners around the world. The Nevada Burn is the most notorious accomplishment created by our culture.

• Who created the Nevada Burning Man Event?

Our Culture created the event between 1990-2003. The Format, the style, the content were all self defined elements expressed by our culture. The infrastructure was organized by the hosts of our culture and how we expressed ourselves there. We have always assumed all liability, cost, and responsibility, for the content and expressions we created and expressed at the Nevada Burn.

• Does the BRC Regional Network Represent our Culture?

No. We are self defined. The Regional Network is now being used to re-brand our independent culture with a new Corporate Brand developed in 2004. This new brand is intentionally causing confusion by misrepresenting itself as our culture.

• Do we have to be recognized by BRC to be a Burning Man Community?

No. We own these rights in Canada. We have full rights to develop our Burning Man Communities as we please with respect to our Burning Man Communities and the Original Burning Man Culture that developed between 1990-2003. The Nevada Burn has always been something created by our culture and hosted in the Black Rock City. BRC represents the company that organises the infrastructure of the Black Rock City.

Burning Man in Canada

• Who will manage our marks in Canada?

The Burning Man Arts Association will host Burning Man Arts Events, and help communities that wish to celebrate our Open Source Burning Man Culture in Canada. Organisations, individuals, and communities can become members of the Burning Man Arts Organisation to offer input and guidance to the Burning Man Arts Association.

• Who will have access to our marks?

The Burning Man Arts Association will invite Burners to become members of the organisation. It will be managed by our community, for our community, to support our community. The “Burning Man” mark will be protected from use, ownership, control, or influence by Corporations. It will be used to support Art, and Arts Events outside the reach of Corporations and Dogma.

• Why not just apply to the American Corporation to be recognized as “official”?

The American Corporation manages a proprietary brand created in 2004. We own our rights in Canada. There is no need to give away these rights to a disinterested American Corporation and it’s 2004 proprietary brand based on our culture. We have no desire to interfere in the Business of an American Corporation and how it conducts it’s business in the United States.

• Can we still celebrate the Nevada Burn?

Of course. We are Burners, and our culture created the original event that the Nevada Burn is based on. We have no issue with the Nevada Burn, and many of our friends and family love the experience of the Nevada Burn.

• Can we be an independent Burning Man in Canada and still support the Nevada Burn?

Yes. The Nevada Burn is an event in the United States. It is not a Canadian Event. We can support it as a great achievement by our Burning Man Culture and have mutual respect for each other as Burners.

Artists and your rights

• Who owns my Artistic License? You do.
• Who owns my Art? You do.
• Does the Burning Man Arts Association control the content of my Art? No.
• Can I receive payment for my services? Yes.
• Can I sell my Art made for Burning Man events? Yes.

What you can do.

• First and foremost do not give up the rights you have earned in Canada. The only Corporation threatening the rights we have earned for our community is this American Corporation that does not own the rights to our communities in Canada. Do not be swayed by rhetoric to gain favour with an American Corporate Brand.
  YOU are Burning Man.
  Own it.

• Write to Decommodifiaction LLC and tell them to drop this case. These rights in Canada are yours, they are not the property of this Corporation. We can have a mutually respectful, independent, and self defined relationship.

• Contact us to support us with legal help, or donations to support the defence of our existing legal rights in Canada. All funds will be used for our legal defence fund, any funds left over will be donated to the Burning Man Arts Association, and used to support the Burning Man Communities in Canada.

If there are any questions that have not been addressed in this FAQ, please let us know by sending an email to FAQ@BurningManArts.ca

Burner Brandon has a warning for Burners contemplating taking I-395: steer clear of Mono. The anti-Burner sheriff who set up special checkpoints last year has been voted out of the town – but this doesn’t go into affect until next year. There is a good chance that the “by the book not by the spirit” sheriff is not happy about the situation, and will be looking to take out revenge by further “racial profiling” of our community to prove his point.

This guy targets Burners in road raids

Brandon says: Sheriff Braun will take his place. Sherrif Obengerger wrongfully terminated her when she first took office now she is taking his job. The guy really thinks he can do whatever he wants to anyone http://www.sierrawave.net/tag/sheriff-ralph-obenberger/

Last year they screened 341 vehicles. They made no DUI arrests, but with the help of faithful sniffer dog Tara they made 17 felony arrests, and smeared the good name of Burners as well as the career of someone who should have been innocent until proven guilty. This was brought up in the town’s Board of Supervisors meeting last December, and the response was quite telling. From Rons Log:

Supervisor Stump “Brought up law enforcement issue over Burning Man weekend.” The District Attorney gave a legal answer. Supervisor Johnston warmed to the subject:

• Wants an agenda item to discuss the stopping of motorists, saturation patrols.
• These stops are subjective and potentially prejudicial; we need to have a discussion about this.
• Personally it’s a breach of his freedom to be stopped in this way.

Supervisor Fesko backed up Supervisor Johnston. Then Sheriff Obenberger defended the operation saying it was all legal and proper. On his campaign website the Sheriff writes:

After leaving the Board room that day I felt it proper and necessary to advise the Board what their role is relating to law enforcement policy in the County and the Sheriff’s Office. I drafted a letter how the Sheriff’s Office is a constitutional office and that the Sheriff alone has the authority to set policy relating to law enforcement services in the county.

Sort of a “respect mah authoritay!”

A week later on December 10, 2013, the Sheriff read a letter to the Board of Supervisors and it sounds like the Supervisors heard the message. The minutes tell us that Supervisor Johnston “wasn’t questioning techniques, he stated he doesn’t like being stopped at sobriety checkpoints, a lot of people don’t. That’s his opinion. Asked Sheriff not to take offense. Sheriff has a lot of good things going on in his department.”

Meanwhile, candidate Braun seems to be staying away from the issue. Her FAQ page has only two questions! (C’mon Mono-ites, you gotta ask more questions!) neither one of which refers to Burning Man or traffic stops or drugs.

The area around Mammoth Lakes is beautiful, I drove through it with my parents once. Looked like stoner territory for sure.

It seems like the Sheriff may have missed the point in his power lecture, that the people elect the Sheriff. And it seems the people have spoken: the former deputy that this Sheriff fired, has now become the Sheriff. But not for a little while yet. Not until after the burn.

From Mammoth Times, who called the victory a landslide:

Ingrid Braun, the soon-to-be Sheriff

Ingrid Braun, a 21-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who last year was dismissed by Sheriff Ralph Obenberger, easily won election against Obenberger Tuesday night.

This Sheriff doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who would celebrate his defeat by reversing all of his interpretation of the law and his rights in the county, to the position held by the lady he fired. But that’s just my opinion, Burners: you be the judge.

The new Sheriff seems pretty Burner friendly. She went to Berkeley and was “big cheese” in the LAPD: From thesheetnews:

“My focus as Sheriff would be to, target those areas that drive crime.” For example, she would go after people selling narcotics not just possessing narcotics. And Braun doesn’t believe in using arrest statistics to measure success. “Sure, arrests are up but statistics can be really misleading in a county this small. It’s not hard to have a huge spike up or down based on just a few numbers,” she said. “It’s not the same as LA when you’re dealing thousands and thousands of crimes. Here, you maybe have 100.”

Braun has served in law enforcement more than 22 years. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in Political Science, she joined the LAPD as part of a hiring push in the early 1990s. “I didn’t grow up wanting to be a policeman. It didn’t occur to me. It never occurred to anyone who knew me,” Braun said. “It turns out I am good at it.”

At the LAPD, Braun worked patrols, as an investigator in internal affairs, as a detective, and as a supervisor for 12 years, running a night watch in Central Los Angeles: “I was the big cheese in all of downtown Los Angeles,” Braun said

…“We care and we want to be involved in town and that’s a skill set that we have that most people don’t that we can offer.”

The old sheriff says he doesn’t care about stats…but thanks to the 17 felony arrests from his Burner road raids, his arrest stats nearly doubled:

“Law enforcement is about helping people, not just putting people in jail,” says Obenberger. “I don’t care about the [patrol] statistics,” he says. “I told the guys, ‘my administration doesn’t routinely monitor the stats. You can write a ticket, you can give a warning. That’s up to you … But get into your communities. We tell ‘em to talk to people.’”

While Obenberger says he doesn’t care about the stats, an increase in criminal arrests since he took office is among the items Obenberger lists in the one-page handout he provides at “meet-and-greets.”

Criminal arrests were up 89% in 2013 over 2012.

But as Obenberger says, “we will not break the law to enforce it.”

Let’s Be Careful Out There, Burners. Know your rights. Last year’s arrest bonanza for the cops included:

…possession of cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, and psilocybin mushrooms;  possession of psilocybin mushrooms; possession of a methamphetamine pipe and a used syringe; possession of cocaine, ecstasy, MDMA, LSD, and marijuana; possession of Mdma, psilocybin mushrooms, GHB, and ecstasy; methamphetamine and marijuana; possession of GHB, ecstasy, MDMA, and Ketamine;  transporting LSD, ecstasy, marijuana, and cocaine;possession of Adderall and Xanax without a prescription.

Presumably, once Sheriff Braun takes possession of the office, she also gets the keys to the evidence locker containing felony quantities of all of the above.

Laywers for Burners have a more general caution for when you get to the event, whichever route you take:

In recent years, the BLM has shifted its drug enforcement efforts from patrolling inside the Event to stopping vehicles as they enter the Event. While the BLM cannot freely enter your camp and search for drugs without a warrant, probable cause, consent or exigent circumstances, the BLM can stop your vehicle and create probable cause with its dogs. You do not have to consent to a search. Take great care while entering the Event and while driving to your camp on Gate Road, the outer ring of the Event. In 2013, about 85% of the participants who contacted Lawyers for Burners reported receiving citations while driving into the Event.

    Participants reported being stopped for ticky-tacky motor vehicle infractions like driving 13 mph when the speed limit was 10 mph or obstructed rear license plate. Once stopped, participants reported being asked if they had any drugs and whether they would consent to a search of their vehicle. Some Participants reported that after they said no, the officer went back to his vehicle and returned with a drug sniffing dog. Some participants reported that it seemed like the officer caused his dog to “alert” even without the presence of drugs. This “alert” by the dog can become probable cause to search Participant’s vehicle.

    If the BLM finds drugs in your vehicle, the BLM will issue you a citation for $525. If you wish to contest the citation or plea bargain the citation to a non-drug offense, contact Lawyers for Burners through the feedback form on this site. Contrary to what the officer may tell you, it is very unlikely that you will be arrested or evicted from the Event for drug possession. Be polite, know that you do not have to consent to any interrogation or search, and enjoy the rest of the Event. Lawyers for Burners will assist you after the Event.

That advice is for the gate. Our advice is to avoid the problem entirely on the way up, and steer clear of Mono County. The 5 is fine once you get North of LA.

From Burner Brandon Burns:

I would like to remind the Burning man community of the problems driving through Mono county on the 395. Sheriff Ralph Obenberger set up illegal check points directly targeting burners through out the entire burn. Making people empty out their cars and taking Tara their dog through burners cars. The people of Mono county have said enough is enough with Sherrif Obenberger and his harrassing practices to Burners and the Mono county citizens and voted him out of office but this does not go into affect until Jan 2015. So rest assure you will be harrassed going through Mono county again this year.

There are many ways to get to BM aside from driving through Mono County. I feel bad for the citizens counting on burners for revenue but I believe while he is in office we need to avoid this route one last year.

Here are some links to articles from last year.

http://burners.me/2013/10/01/crime-shenanigans-2013/

http://mammothtimes.com/content/election-2014-braun-wins-sheriffs-seat-landslide-corless-johnston-win-supes-races-wentworth

http://www.sierrawave.net/26242/conduct-saturation-patrol/

http://thesheetnews.com/2013/09/08/mono-county-burned/

http://ronslog.typepad.com/ronslog/2014/04/mono-county-law-enforcement.html

posts on mono county

Jeremy Wojo DO NOT DRIVE THROUGH MONO!!! 

Brandon Burns Really its no JOKE. There are plenty of ways to get there. from lone pine take the 168-264 all the way up. beautiful drive. No problems 

Heather Ann We had zero issues on the 395 last year. We also drove the speed limit and gave them no reason to pull us over. Know your rights!

Jeremy Wojo I find tis better to take the 6 from Bishop and then the 95. Drops you into Fallon or Fernly with plenty of options for water/food/etc. July 29 at 1:56pm

Brandon Burns You can drive it . Your choice I personally had no issues but they set up several road blocks at different times across the entire 395 north. They also very aggressively followed people then pulled them over w the dog and made them dump there entire vehicle. Go whatever way you want I am just trying to save some burnsers a major headache. I will be going up the 264. 

Dmitry Shapiro “I do NOT consent to a search! Am I under arrest, or am I free to go” <– REPEAT!!!!! 

Brandon Burns Look up the sheriff of mono county and how many people have lawsuits for not consenting to search. Sounds good on paper but he is one of a kind. You have to prove no consent was given and usually your word against his. He has won all these cases and there are a few 

Andy Wilson What Brandon is saying is true... Dmitry…. You think that works? Not in mono county… It’s a chess match for them…. Checkmate!!!

Nick Bourbeau I was one of those pulled over and searched in Bridgeport. Had nothing in the car so I consented in order to get it over with ASAP. It was clear what they were doing. Within approximately 3 miles I saw no less than 14 law enforcement vehicles. 

Scott Kampmeyer It doesn’t matter if you drive the speed limit and give them no reason to pull you over, they will invent a BS reason like “one of your taillights appears to be brighter than the other” and even if you do not consent to a search, they will insist 

Erica Sadhaka Swick Make sure you record any interactions you have with law enforcement. Be polite and do not consent to search! John Speer knows more about this than I do. 

John Speer Make sure to be polite, and record your encounter with LEOs in its entirety. If they try and seize your camera for evidence purposes, tell them to send you a subpoena for the evidence. Make sure you understand the state laws. 

Brandon Burns The reason I am posting so much on this issue is because it’s serious! I’m sure you have read a few of the responses of people that got caught up in this crap. This is a small town sherif that doesn’t care about rights. He has dogs at a supposed DUI checkpoint…My advice travel a different route. Have a great Burn

Fred Heald Also – don’t carry any drugs. 

Brandon Burns This is very true but this is just to avoid being harrassed. Like I said my girlfriends had tthe sherrif empty out there entire car to find nothing. No appology nothing.

Heather Ann At least they didn’t get drugs planted on them. Any word about that?

Fred Heald I do agree that Mono county, and several of the others on the 395 route, appear to have gone Burner-mad. I love the 395. It’s one of my favorite parts of driving to the burn. (I usually turn right at Bridgeport.)

Brandon Burns Sherrif Braun will take his place. Sherrif Obengerger wrongfully terminated her when she first took office now she is taking his job. The guy really thinks he can do whatever he wants to anyone http://www.sierrawave.net/tag/sheriff-ralph-obenberger/ Sheriff Ralph Obenberger | Sierra Wave: Eastern Sierra News www.sierrawave.net Madrid keeps Mono County in federal suit

Lawgives has put together this Free Legal Guide. It’s a great list of legal tips for all Burners to benefit from, big thanks to Lawgives and all the Reddit contributors.

Lawgives says: Know your legal rights, and have an amazing burn! (Inspired by a thread on Reddit. Compiled from sources and resources listed below) Wikipedia Burning Man Official Site (Preparation) Burning Man Official Site (Rangers) Burning Man Official Site (Environment) ACLU Nevada Governmentattic

Infographic compiled by Lawgives from governmentattic.org

 

These are just the BLM stats, there may be Pershing and Washoe County and Nevada Highway Patrol arrests and citations too. See our 2013 coverage and also here, and 2012  here.

 

 

 

Re-blogged from Lawgives.com

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The post-Burning Man headaches for BMOrg continue to mount. If you believe in karma or physics, then you understand that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you threaten legal action towards the people who create your global following, you should consider the risk that something might come back to bite you in the ass. Such as, your own words, and proof of the motives behind your actions.

At least, that is what’s being threatened, by some Canadian Burners who appear to have little defense left to them but the “nuclear option” of revealing the truth.

There are as many people at Burning Man from Canada as from Nevada. 20% of Burners are international, and more are from Canada than any other country. It’s 6-7% of the Burner population. Canadian Burners have spent decades building up our culture by throwing burns all across their vast country. Someone has legally owned the Canadian trademark “Burning Man” for many years, and BMOrg are suing them even though they appear to have registered no trademarks of their own in that country. Perhaps they think that Canada is just another part of America?

We covered the beginnings of this dispute earlier in the year: Canada Draws Battle Lines For Burner Culture. As per usual, naysayers came out to accuse us of click-bait and fear-mongering.

Well, fear not, nay-sayers. The Battlespace has now gone to Def Con 1, with this email last night to Burning Man’s Regional Contact mailserv:

stop your malicious lawsuit or WIKILEAKS!

Hi, I’m sure many of you will remember me, I was one of the founding members of the Regional Network, acting as Vancouver RN rep 2001-2006, while also being a member of the Media Team, & working as the first editor of the Regional Contacts section of BurningMan.com.

Burning Man is suing the non-profit Burn BC Arts Cooperative for $35,000 over trademark infringement. I am not involved in Burn BC or any of their events, but I feel strongly that Burning Man is acting as a corporate bully in this situation, attacking long-time community members & artists.

In response, if Burning Man does not drop this frivolous lawsuit immediately, ALL Regionals List & Media Team correspondence, as well as one-on-one communications I had with Burning Man senior staff, including Larry & Marion, will be made publicly available on WikiLeaks, all correspondence from 1999-present, This means that all of your names, the names of persons in your posts, legal issues that were discussed, etc. will be in the public domain. Hopefully this information will help Burners fight trademark infringement cases by showing the evolution of Burning Man’s deceptive practices using volunteers to build corporate brand value under the false guise of community.

Burning Man internal emails were published by Wikileaks before, in the Paul Addis case.

What could be there in 15 years’ worth of correspondence, that could in any way harm this non-profit, which organizes an annual week of dancing and debauchery in the desert? What could be juicy enough that they would send it to Wikileaks? Why should this even be a threat, something to use as leverage against the giant BMOrg behemoth?

It is not for me to speculate – draw your own conclusions. But to all those who accuse Burners.Me of making stuff up and crazy conspiracy theories, consider that this is going on – and it’s nothing to do with us. We just have multiple sources who provided us with a copy of the email, which is the intellectual property of its author. If there was nothing of note in there, why would Burners even make such a threat? The Canadian Burners, who legitimately owned the trademark, and seem to have taken all the right steps legally to renounce their ownership so that there can’t be any dispute, are still getting pursued by Burning Man. For how much? Forty grand. What difference is that going to make to a company that spent $1.43 million on lawyers last year?

I asked Bhak Jolicouer, who first contacted me about this story, what’s up? 1076 pages of legalese to demand the cash, that’s what up. It seems Burning Man have been busy in their spiteful pursuit, since June when the arts collective formally relinquished all rights to the disputed marks in their territory. This is an example of the “it’s not enough that we win; everyone else must lose” mentality that runs this corporation. Most non-profits I know of, don’t sue other non-profits, then ask their donor community to buy $150 scarves so they can keep this kind of bullying up. In fact, it’s rare to see these sort of tactics from for-profit companies, unless they’re Apple or Samsung or Microsoft.

Bhak says:

Burn BC Founder and Champion of Burner Rights, Bhak Jolicouer

​Burn BC released our marks “Burning Man” and “BC Decompression” back to the public domain with the attached letter filed on permanent record.

I thought that was the end of the story as there had been no communication from anyone since late July… until three days ago when 1076 pages of text came in the mail telling Burn BC to respond to a Motion of Default Judgement by 2:00PM Friday regarding a hearing this Tuesday September 23, 2014.I made the same offer yesterday to their lawyer, who was interested in approaching a settlement.
He said he would get back to me by the end of the day.
There has been no response, and again, no list provided.This is AFTER: We released our marks, deleted all references, and removed myself and Burn BC from any online groups or lists that are “Burning Man”.The case has no merit.
But if Burn BC does not participate in the hearing and offers no defence; then any claim Decommodification LLC makes regardless of accuracy or merit will be awarded.It seems they are now asking for damages, claiming Burn BC hurt their ability to control the good will of Canadians, and are seeking legal expenses, and a court order for Burn BC to turn over BurnBC.Org and BurningManArts.ca over to Decommodification LLC.They are looking for damages of $40,000 against the non profit Burn BC Arts Cooperative (Created by a founding member of the Vancouver Burning Man Community, and other long time Burners), and are not content to just let it go. They know full well this will mean the end of Burn BC, and seem content to push frivolous litigation wasting the resources of the Canadian Federal Courts.They had NO need to take it to the courts, as all they had to do was file an opposition with CIPO.
Burn BC had no intention of using any mark that had not been approved by CIPO.
Now we have no desire to use it at all, even as Public Domain under section 13(1B) of the Canadian Trademark Act.If the judge awards damages, Burn BC receives the bullet to the head.I was surprised as anyone with this post by …one of our founding members, he has a great heart and contributed countless hours of service to the free and open community spirit that was our Burning Man Community and our Burning Man Culture.~ Bhak Jolicoeur (AKA Napalm Dragon)
Lover of Chaos and Cacophony, Art and Beauty.

The non-profit Burn BC group suggested that if BMOrg wanted to own the marks in Canada, then they should register them in Canada. Which to me seems like a very good point. Instead of doing that, BMOrg is trying to shake down a non-profit collective for $40,000. That’s 2 tickets in a Safari Camp to them. OK, we get it: BMOrg forgot to register trademarks in their biggest export market for 30 years. Why not simply register them now? Why pursue and punish Burners, when the matter is clearly settled? The answer is “mentality”. The way THEY think about US.

Welcome to the new, non-profit culture we are teaching to newbies and spreading around the globe. Gift us your art, so we can monetize it and sue non-profits.

This case may take a number of twists and turns, if they find enough financial backing from the community to take BMOrg on, there could be all kinds of documents produced in a courtroom under discovery laws. Not to mention the public release of 15 years of correspondence between the two charities and their volunteers.

As always with this blog, comments are encouraged. Anyone from BMOrg is welcome to come here and inform the community about what’s going on, as is anybody else with knowledge of these events. Thanks to our multiple anonymous tipsters for sharing this leak.

[Update 9/18/14 5:46pm]

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the Burner who wrote the email to the Regionals list has responded to our request for comment, elaborating further on their motives:

[Update 10/1/14]: please help with the modest amount they are raising to mount a defense.

Napalm Dragon, who is being sued by BMOrg who never registered their trademark in Canada, has asked for help on Ello. It seems threats of leaking emails have not dissuaded Goliath from trying to demonize David’s dissent. Is there a lawyer in the house?

Now back to Burners.Me:

The case is being tried now. We’ll find out soon what the Judge thinks. BMOrg have presented a 1076-page complaint, which seems like an attempt to out-lawyer the other, much smaller, charity. The Burning Man Project’s stated mission is to spread Burner culture around the world, but clearly they need to be more specific. What they really mean is all Burner culture in the world is “theirs”. If you want to help spread it you need to get a license from Decommodification LLC and obey their rules – one of which is “do not criticize BMOrg publicly”.

Those familiar with BMOrg’s views on Intellectual Property and crowd-sourcing might be interested in this week’s brand new South Park episode, “Go Fund Yourself”, which is about cultural appropriation by corporations who do nothing and make all the money from culture that is sacred to others:

The boys from South Park decide to create a start-up company funded through Kickstarter so that they never have to work again. In the process of deciding on a name, they realize that the Washington Redskins football team have lost their trademark to the name due to it being considered by some as offensive to Native Americans, so they decide to use that name for their company. The new company receives enough money that the boys running it can live luxuriously without doing any work until the football team destroys Kickstarter during a raid.

The episode is about the absurdity of corporations trying to own culture through trademark law. Check out the “Goodell-bot” and the bug-eye guy. The South Park creators are Burners, we hope they’re Burners.Me readers too.

http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e01-go-fund-yourself

Although Larry Harvey has claimed he wasn’t influenced by the movie The Wicker Man, he hasn’t said anything about The Legend of Billy Jean, which came out the year before he and “Air Force brat” Jerry James took their effigy to the Presidio’s nudist beach for a pagan ceremony.

They have been burning a Man called “Old Man Gloom” at Zozobra in Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 1924.

Fans of Pink Floyd will no doubt be familiar with Storm Thorgerson‘s image “Burning Man”, which appeared as the cover of the Wish You Were Here album in 1975.

“Burning Man”, by Storm Thorgerson

In the current lawsuit between “non-profit” BMOrg, and non-profit BurnBC, a Canadian arts collective, BurnBC claim that “Burning Man culture” was something that arose in Canada independently of  how the US Burning Man culture developed and was seized by corporate interests.

Certainly, TTITD was not called “Burning Man” for many years. The first trip by the Cacophony society in 1990 was called “Zone Trip # 4″. Their first permit was issued in 1991 – it is not clear to whom, or if the permit mentioned Burning Man at all. By 1992, they were marketing the Cacophony Society event with the words “Burning Man” and asking for donations of $25. The first ticket sales were in 1995. In 1997, they formed a corporation “Paperman LLC” and registered the trademark. Larry Harvey let the corporation’s registration lapse, and the trademark was filed again in the US in 2003. The trademark has now been transferred from “The LLC” (Black Rock City, LLC, which puts on the Nevada event, and this year was sold to The Burning Man Project), to “Decommodification, LLC” (a private, secretive company created by Burning Man’s founders in 2010 to own and monetize the intellectual property assets).

We can date this flyer to 1987 because that’s when June 20 was on a Saturday. The )'( logo was probably added later

the Cacophony Society’s 1990 flyer mentions “the Burning Man” and “Burning Man committee”

Cacophony Society and Burning Man founder John Law says that the Cacophony Society came up with the name Burning Man, and used it to describe the Baker Beach burn in 1989. This is in direct conflict with Burning Man’s trademark filing, which claims the mark was first used on June 1, 1986. To put that in perspective, their first Solstice burn (with a wooden dog effigy also) happened on June 21, 1986. Either they called it Burning Man before they ever built and burned a man, and had a vision for it being a money-spinner from the get-go, many years before they first sold tickets; or someone is being fast and loose with the truth. Here’s Larry Harvey saying the event began in 1985, a claim that is not supported anywhere else:

Note that the capture and deliberate incarnation of a spirit is the stated purpose of the event.

Burning Man’s trademark application was filed in 2003, and approved in 2010. It claims that the mark’s first use anywhere was 6/1/1986 and its first use in commerce was 6/1/1987.

From Trademarkia:

International class code 41, and US classifications 100, 101, and 107: “Education; providing of training; entertainment; sporting and cultural activities”

ORGANIZING COMMUNITY FESTIVALS FEATURING A VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES, NAMELY, LIVE MUSIC, ART DISPLAYS, AND PARTICIPATORY GAMES; CONDUCTING ENTERTAINMENT EXHIBITIONS IN THE NATURE OF ART FESTIVALS; AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE NATURE OF ART FESTIVALS

According to Wikipedia, the first ticket sales were in 1995 ($35). It’s hard to see how the mark was used in commerce before then, although Larry’s friend Flash used to sell t-shirts: “I had my concessions. I was the only one who made money, every single time” (This is Burning Man, Brian Doherty, p 111)

Cacophony Society t-shirt, 1990

Michael Mikel’s 2006 lawsuit claimed:

“In 1997, the claimant, Michael Mikel, formed a Limited Liability Company with respondents Larry Harvey and John Law. That company is known as Paperman, LLC…[it] owns one asset – the federally registered mark BURNING MAN – and Paper Man has one business activity, to license the mark BURNING MAN to its licensed operators of the desert arts festival that uses that name… Ever since its creation in 1999, Paper Man LLC has licensed the mark Burning Man to Black Rock City LLC for its use in connection with the desert arts festival

…on May 14, 2000, Paper Man LLC and Black Rock City LLC entered into a re-stated license agreement…[that] gave Black Rock City a non-exclusive, non-asssignable license to use the service mark for a period of 7 months…at a license fee of $1800

….in 2004, however, Black Rock City LLC announced that it would no longer be bound by the written agreement. Instead, Black Rock City demanded that Paer Man sign a one paragraph document that granted Black Rock City an exclusive license but failed to include any terms for quality control or maintenance of Paper Man’s right to police the mark. Paper Man, nonetheless, has continued [to] exert control over the mark, despite Black Rock City’s regular protests

…Michael Mikel learned, under established principles of trademark law, the type of “naked license” that Black Rock City demanded from Paper Man can be worse than no license at all…it would be possible that the designation BURNING MAN, and thereby the event itself, could fall into the hands of a corporate owner, in direct contrvention of every principle of which the BURNING MAN festival was founded

…Larry Harvey presumed to act for Paper Man LLC, and then used that position to obtain a benefit for himself in his capacity as Director of Black Rock City LLC…His action was simply the latest in a series of efforts to seize control of the BURNING MAN mark, to exclude other members of Paper Man LLC from participation in the comapny’s operations and control of its assets, and ultimately to divert ownership of the mark from Paper Man LLC to Black Rock City. These actions, undertaken in secret and in complete contravention of Paper Man LLC’s interests, constitute a breach of the fiduciary duty…Larry Harvey’s conduct over the past several years towards Paper Man LLC and its other members demonstrates his on-going disregard of – indeed, contempt for – the obligations of utmost good faith and loyalty that he owes them. 

John Law then got involved in the suit, arguing that BURNING MAN should be in the public domain. The case was settled out of court.

If Burning Man is really a movement, the name should belong to everyone, not three guys who don’t get along anymore,” Law said.

From the Black Rock Beacon:

a crucial point is Law’s contention that it was the Cacophony Society that came up with the name “Burning Man.” His suit claims that the term was coined in a 1989 Cacophony newsletter. Law claims he and the Cacophony Society also played a critical role  in moving the event to the Desert. Harvey was “completely defeated and dejected” when police blocked the 1990 Burn in San Francisco, but Law says he suggested burning the Man at an already-planned Cacophony trip to Nevada. The Nevada Burn was successful, although Law claims Harvey “did not participate at all other than to arrive at the event as a spectator after it was completely set up.”

John Law: “I was sleeping in Golden Gate Park in 1976, after hitch-hiking here with an arrest warrant out for myself in some central state…then I met all these weird people and it’s been ongoing ever since”

This film from 1994 shows the term BURNING MAN being used at the event’s gate, and on t-shirts.

In 1994, Australia’s government TV channel ABC aired this documentary from Journeyman pictures. Check out the drive-by shooting range, including bicycle drive-bys.

Larry considered himself a “social engineer” even way back then, and Satanic (death of god) religious values were very much a part of it: “it’s like a religion that you make up as you go along”…”the camp was divided into Heaven and Hell, with angels and demons competing for lost souls”…”Bill Smythe is known in Hell as the father of devil spawn”…”this is just a big slumber party for Boy Scouts from Hell”.

One of the more astonishing claims in this video is that “the Monks from Heaven” were recording video of Burning Man and uploading it to the Internet at $9/minute via a satellite phone. This was before the first advertising appeared on the Internet. In 1994, it had only recently become possible to view color graphics on the World Wide Web. There was no standardized digital format for video files, there were no browser plug-ins to play video – there were barely even any browsers. Stanford spin-off Yahoo was a document you downloaded with a list of web sites, not a search engine. The first YouTube uploaded was in 2005. This demonstrates that as early as 1994, Burning Man’s attendees had access to the world’s most advanced technology, very probably military-grade.

From Quora:

The first video footage ever shown over the Internet was probably a live feed of a June 24, 1993 performance by Severe Tire Damage, a garage band consisting of employees of DEC Systems Research Center, Xerox PARC (company), and Apple Computer.  The footage was broadcast on the Internet just a few months before researchers at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge created the first webcam by broadcasting static footage of the Trojan Room coffee pot on the Internet in November 1993…conditions were so primitive by today’s standards that broadcasting the video of Severe Time Damage into cyberspace required hogging almost half of the bandwidth of the entire Internet.

The first image posted on the World Wide Web, July 1992

A random bunch of hippies could use half the entire Internet for their desert festival? Who the Hell was watching?

BurnBC, the non-profit collective of (some) Canadian Burners who is being sued by BMOrg for $40,000 for daring to have a legally registered trademark in their own country that they’ve been using for 20 years, has asked for our help. They’re trying to raise the modest sum of $2500 to cover the costs of appearing in court to defend themselves against a $30-million a year behemoth which spends more than $100,000 every month on lawyering.

If you want to help spread culture around the world, a donation to BMOrg will lead to more lawsuits, and a donation to BurnBC will help them have their day in Court. Let’s let the law decide, instead of one party with more resources being able to bully a weaker one. According to BMOrg, this is all in the name of charity and making the world a better place – but there are very few non-profits that go around suing other non-profits. It’s kind of against the point of the whole thing – unless the point of the whole thing is a tax-free way for 6 people to earn royalties off the efforts of Burners, rather than the stated aims about Principles, values, and cultural expansion.

Please help their Gofundme if you can, they’re not asking us for much so even a small donation helps.

For some of the history of the case, including how Burning Man’s US trademark was in widespread public use for many years before corporations took it over in this country, see:

Back in the Day

Embattled Burners Ask Community For Support

Canada Draws Battle Lines for Burner Culture

One of our readers asked us today on Facebook what was going on with the lawsuit between Decommodification, LLC, a for-profit US company which did not exist before 2010, who are trying to use the term “Burning Man” in Canada for money-making purposes; and Canadian arts collective BurnBC, who are fighting as best they can for usage of the term to remain free in the Public Domain in their country, where they argue it has been for at least 20 years.

Artist Napalm Dragon reports:

image: Napalm Dragon

Not much to say right now.
The only thing that’s happened is that the judge is deciding if Burn BC can defend itself.
She’s going to make a decision at some point, (could be days or months).
If Burn BC is not allowed to self represent than Burn BC has 30 days to find a lawyer or it goes to default judgment.
Decommodification LLC has lowered “damages” to a lump sum payment of $2000.
I doubt they’ll ever see a penny.

So yeah. 

Nothing much to say other than Decommodification LLC is coming off like an arrogant bully pushing frivolous litigation through the courts to intimidate me into signing a ridiculous settlement agreement I will never agree to.

Sounds like Decommodification LLC have backed off a bit on their financial demands, but aren’t prepared to let this case go – even though they have finally got around to applying to register their trademark in the jurisdiction. Their application for a trademark has not been granted yet, and could still be opposed.

Napalm Dragon said recently on Ello:

Does this look like a reasonable attempt to reach a solution? Or corporate bullying?

What changed. What was the thing that took it out of the hypothetical and made it real.
The court case. www.gofundme.com/f8bo7g
The trademark wasn’t being used to protect “the community” it was being used to suppress it.
In the court documents, Decommodification LLC makes false claims, including that basically it owns all the Burning Man Communities.
A hypothetical possibility was made real by Federal Court Documents.
That’s what changed.

Since Decommodification/BMOrg are only seeking $2000 (down from an earlier claim of $40,000), money is not the objective – and neither is protecting the trademark, since they’ve now filed an application for it like they should’ve done in the beginning. So what is the point of continuing? To me it seems punitive, and somewhat petty. What is this lawsuit actually “protecting”? Who benefits? Who’s paying?

If you want to help the little guy Burners against the corporate machine in this David vs Goliath battle, please support them here: Burning Man is Not A Commodity. Every little bit helps, no donation is too small.

Previous coverage of this story from Burners.Me:

Embattled Burners Ask Community For Support

Canada Draws Battle Lines For Burner Culture

Help Canada

Burnileaks: Bullying The Burners

South Bhak – Burning Man and South Park S18 Connection Again

Filed under: News Tagged: bmorg, burnbc, Canada, commerce, decommodification, lawsuit, legal, news

A guest post from our reader Pantsless Santa. It’s an eye-opener! The desire of these people to laugh at the very principles they created, and told us we had to live by, seems to know no bounds.

image: RK Richardson/Flickr (Creative Commons)

By Pantsless Santa:

This belongs in the totally effin’ hilarious category more than anything else:

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Decommodification LLC is actually trying to register the word “decommodification” as a trademark itself, and they’re doing it in the most hypocritical and illogical way possible.

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Trademark registrations and applications are all public record. If you search for “Decommodification LLC” on the Patent and Trademark Office’s search system, “TESS,” you can see all of the trademarks that that the LLC owns and has applied for.

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There are the usual suspects “Burning Man,” “Decompression,” and “Black Rock City.”

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“Flambe Lounge,” which dates back to 2003, is probably some old business idea that never panned out.

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“Burning Man Brew” was originally registered by a brewer and later purchased (I suspect) by the LLC, likely because it would have been more expensive to fight over it in court – nothing indicates that the BMOrg intends to get into the speciality beer business.

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“Black Rock Gazette” is registered by the BMOrg (Black Rock City LLC). Nothing is currently registered by Larry, Michael, or Marian.

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Finally, the LLC has applied to register “Decommodification.”

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I’ll stop for a minute here to explain a couple of important things about trademarks. Trademarks are very different than copyrights. You can’t simply pick out a word or phrase or logo (a “mark”) and get the rights to it.

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To oversimplify greatly, you can’t register or protect a mark unless it’s associated with a particular good or service (defined broadly), and has actually been used publicly to promote or sell the thing it’s associated with. That last part is called “use in commerce.” People often get tripped up over “use in commerce,” because in normal human language it looks like it means the same thing as “used commercially.” It doesn’t. It’s a legal term of art meaning something like “used to promote or sell any type of good or service for any reason whether or not for profit.” This keeps companies from simply registering all of the words they think that they or their competitors might use and squatting on them. They can only register marks they’re actually using.

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To oversimplify again, you can only protect or register a mark in order to keep people from using your name (or brand or logo) on their products in a way that might fool consumers.

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So, Decommodification LLC applied to register the mark “Decommodification.”

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Thinking back to the above, you might ask yourself: “What the hell good or service could Larry & Co. POSSIBLY plan to use this for?” Well, they put it right in the application: “Commercial administration of the licensing and sublicensing of intellectual property by others.”

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Now, before anybody (*cough*) gets started with grand theories about what the LLC might be planning with this, I want to share my opinion that absolutely nothing sinister or underhanded is going on here. “Commercial” is still being used as a term of art as above, and the rest of the sentence simply describes exactly what the LLC does. In other words, the actual purpose of this trademark application is to prevent somebody else from opening up their own Decommodification LLC or Decommodification Inc. or Decommodification Gmbh that does the same thing as this one.

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This trademark has a very narrow reach. Remember, a trademark must be associated with a particular good or service. This wouldn’t stop any of us from calling our toilet-removal businesses “Pantsless Santa’s De-Commodeification” or whatever. So why bother bringing it up in the first place? Like I said above, it’s effin’ hilarious! To spell it out:

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Larry Harvey & Co. are attempting to define the word “Decommodification” as “Commodifying intellectual property.”

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Decommodification LLC filed their application for “Decommodification” on March 26, 2012. The application is still being processed because the LLC has not, even after multiple extensions, been able to provide evidence that they have actually used the word “Decommodification” in “commerce.”

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Honestly, there is no reason for them to actually register “Decommodification.” Who else in the world would ever create an intellectual property licensing company by that name? The only reason anybody might do that is to poke fun at the BMOrg/Decommodification LLC: and a trademark does not protect you against parody.

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You can check the history and status of the trademark application here: http://tinyurl.com/mojkq47

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Pantsless Santa, Esq.

Image: Roger Luijten/Flickr (Creative Commons)

The epic fight between Burners in Canada and the corporate conglomerate of Decommodifcation LLC, the Burning Man Project, and Black Rock City LLC (together trading as “Burning Man”) is over. The “800 thousand ton gorilla” won,  crushing the opposition who could not even afford a lawyer.

Napalm Dragon (source: Google+)

20th Century Fox has a new film coming out “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials”. Quiznos makes sandwiches. Put two and two together, and what do you get?

Burning Man 2.0. When the Shark ate the Subway.

Here’s the “offensive” commercial:

Taco Bell did it first. Without any known repercussions. So why wouldn’t their competitors try it too?

BMOrg are pissed. Could it be because these guys hit a little too close to home, and somehow nailed EXACTLY the problems happening with our culture now? You know, the ones BMOrg either deny exist, or tell us they’ve listened to us and completely solved (while actually doing nothing), or if there is any acknowledgement, blame on us?

Laugh at yourselves, Burners. Because some of this is really freaking ridiculous. A unicorn car that shoots fireballs? Is that somehow not ridiculous?

Some choice quotes:

“Don’t you understand?

Understand what?

How to look cool on Instagram?”

…

“They lied to us. They said it was an anti establishment society based on radical self expression. Now it’s become a place for rich people to tick off their bucket list.“

True dat.

How does BMOrg respond? “Ha ha, yes that’s funny, everything we do is just an ironic prank, like all the Satan/Hellco stuff, or being the first org since the Nazis to officially employ a Minister of Propaganda?”

Nope. Threats of lawsuits. Quelle surprise.

From the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Burning Man isn’t laughing at a new Quizno’s advertisement.

The toasted sandwich company published a parody video, “Out of the Maze and into the Playa,” on YouTube earlier this week, a day after the weeklong utopian arts celebration in Northern Nevada’s Black Rock Desert concluded on Monday. The plot sends the characters of the “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” a not-so-well reviewed science fiction thriller to be released later this month, to Burning Man as a test of character…

Burning Man takes issue with the clip and is considering legal action, not because of the mockery it makes of the more than 70,000-person annual event but because the video is theft of the event’s intellectual property, according to Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham.

“We are pretty proactive about protecting our 10 principles, one of which is decommodification,” Graham said. “We get a quite a number of requests each year from companies wanting to gift participants with their product or to capture imagery or video of their products at the event, and we turn them all down…We’ll be coordinating with our legal team to see what action we can take…Burning Man’s busiest time of year, when it comes to defending decommodification, is immediately after the Burn, Graham said, when companies and individuals attempt to market their products by paring [pairing] them with Burning Man content.

…Burning Man has taken it to legal action in the past…Burning Man won the lawsuit against Girls Gone Wild, Graham said…Burning Man makes an effort to support certain businesses that serve the Burner community, many of them Reno-based, by promoting them in one of Burning Man’s annual newsletters each year before the event.

It’s not Commodification when BMOrg does it. Still, I’m all for supporting local Burner-friendly businesses, including the 100+ vendors licensed to sell stuff at Burning Man. Quiznos seems pretty Burner-friendly to me; clearly, they understand where our culture is at in late 2015.

Burning Man had not taken any legal action against Quizno’s as of Thursday evening.

[Source: RGJ]

I find some chuckles in the empty threat of the $30 million charity tax-exempt non-profit BMOrg suing the $8 billion phone hackers over at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, or the $14 billion hedge fund behind Quiznos. To make their case, Larry and Marian would have to swear on the Bible that parody is not a legitimate art form and must be censored and suppressed. Then they would have to prove how their sold out event was financially harmed by millions of dollars worth of mainstream media advertising – while the other Fox product, The Simpsons, can parody Burning Man and that’s totally fine.

Personally, I think this Quiznos ad is brilliant. Timely. Poignant. Very funny. #nailedit!

“The course of this festival will determine the course of humanity. Until next week when you return to your desk jobs”

If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

Perhaps this is karma for all the Satanic pranking of Burners by BMOrg lately, such as “bugs are here and they’re everywhere and they crawl up inside you and bite” at burningman.com, or “don’t share photos that we share on social media, that’s why we have teams of lawyers”; or lining up at Will Crawl for 8 hours with no shade or water to pick up your $400 tickets; or the idea that we are saving the world through a dusty rave; or that we are supporting the arts by underpaying artists and screwing them in contracts and saying they shouldn’t ever sign their work. Even the theme this year was that we’re all chumps, suckers, and rubes, while they’re hucksters and carny barkers.

It sure has seemed like they’re laughing at us in recent years. Well, now the whole world is laughing at them. Let’s see how they take it. So far, not so good.

Given the recent mass media obsession with Burning Man, this lawsuit (were it to ever eventuate) could rapidly become the biggest story in the world – a convenient distraction from the real current affairs of global economic meltdown, Hillary keeping State Department secrets on a home-brew email server shared with her tax exempt non profit, refugees who are all young men of fighting age storming Europe, and Israel/US lining up against Russia/Iran in Syria over gas pipeline routes.

BMOrg’s usual trick of going to the media to fight their battles against small town judges and sheriffs, ain’t gonna work against the world’s biggest and most powerful media group and the world’s 13th largest hedge fund.

Chocotacos just seem so quaint these days.

[Update 9/12/15 1:58am PST]

Quiznos is a privately held company with revenues of about $400 million and more than 2000 stores around the world. It is the #2 sandwich maker in the US, after Subway. Since 2012 they have been majority owned by Avenue Capital Group, an international investment firm with 200 employees and offices in 8 countries. It is the 13th largest hedge fund in the world, 15% owned by Morgan Stanley, with $14 billion assets under management. Chelsea Clinton worked there from 2006-2009.

The founders of Avenue Capital previously worked for multi-billionaire Robert Bass, who is Chairman of Reno-based supersonic aviation company Aerion Corp, a DARPA contractor.

Quiznos has a long history of legal battles, they are no stranger to court and seem to have used lawsuits for marketing before.

[Update 9/12/15 3:10am PST]

Thanks very much to Nomad for finding this. Toasty.TV is part of a broader Quiznos parody marketing campaign.

Thanks very much to Burner ShaggyDog for this guest post about some of the legal issues surrounding the recent Quiznos parody.

If we really are impotent to fight this sort of commodification, we might have to just be happy with building our own communities and living within them, and not paying too much attention to this sort of exploitation by external actors. Really that’s what we’re already doing.

Burners.Me:

Just to add further to ShaggyDog’s excellent commentary. There has been an attempt to “fuck with the fuckery” – replacing the audio in the Quiznos ad with “eat a shit sandwich”. This is a more “Burnery” approach, IMO.

Uproxx in an article titled Our Nonsense Is Serious! Burning Man May Sue Over Legitimately Funny Sandwich Ad compares the situation to the Book of Mormon. Rather than suing the South Park guys behind the spoof, the church embraced them – advertising in the musical’s playbook, and even sending busloads of churchgoers to Broadway to see the show (if you’re lucky enough to have seen it, you’ll know that it’s harder on the Africans than it is on the Mormons).

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Other Burners have raised the example of another recent parody “Burning Man – The Musical!”, which BMOrg seem to have allowed so far.

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This article at TechDirt Myth Busting – Yes, An Advertisement Can Be Fair Use Parody has some good information and further links.

A few choice comments from Reddit:

HotterRod:

The primary protection for trademarks is to prevent consumer confusion. No one is going to confuse a sandwich with an arts festival, so that’s obviously not in play here.

The secondary protection is dilution of the brand (in this case tarnishment: “association arising from the similarity between a mark or trade name and a famous mark that harms the reputation of the famous mark”), which is covered by the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006. Section 3.b & 3.c explicitly exempts news and noncommercial use from charges of dilution, so the rest of the act covers commercial use. The Act section 3.a.ii defines fair use as:

identifying and parodying, criticizing, or commenting upon the famous mark owner or the goods or services of the famous mark owner.

Personally I think Quiznos’ ad is obviously fair use and the Org’s purpose here is to scare off other people who might make parodies and don’t have a legal team to defend them. It’s sad that the legal system works that way. :(

Deckard256:

I think the bmorg is gonna have a hard time on this, and quite frankly I think it’s a bit hypocritical to piss on Quiznos over it. How many parodies of business has burning man hosted over the years? Wall Mart, Costco, Starbucks, jiffy lube, and Wall Street are just a few of the brands major theme camps have parodied. The org should lighten up a bit. If a samich shop can make everyone giggle like this, then maybe they’re saying something about the event that everyone else seems to be clued into. 

Larry Harvey: (not on Reddit) 

“Gift giving networks can produce massive amounts of social capital, and the rate of return on social capital is a lot better than the rate of return on normal capital investment in the market world”

ABurnGuy:

They took that social capital right to the bank!

And now with the hordes, sufficiently convinced by what they read in the brochure about ‘decommodification’, bring the pitchforks out whenever it isn’t Blessed By Larry. Of course they don’t seem to care about it if Larry Likes It.

A dumb internet video? We need the lawyers, they’re profiting off of our brand!

People running for-profit camps at Burning Man itself, directly profiting off of the brand and experience? Oh, just have some token effort to pretend you’re a “theme camp,” it’s okay, commodification is a spectrum!

(Spark BluRays on sale near the door. Make sure the last one to leave turns out the light.)

Now that BMOrg have come out and said “People at our office thought the video was clever and funny” and “we are not threatening to sue Quiznos”, I wonder if the Burnier-Than-Thous will change their tune also? Burning Man was never supposed to be serious.

[Update 9/17/15 7:34am PST]

The Voices of Burning Man have finally spoken. It seems they have a brilliant sense of humor, and really enjoyed this funny joke. It’s just, they have to stick up for the poor artists who got no compensation for someone else making money from their work.

As creative and funny as it was (we had a good laugh, we’ll admit), clever unfortunately doesn’t trump our commitment to protecting our community from commercial exploitation. We’ve been fielding anguished calls and emails from participants and horrified artists whose creations were used in the video without permission, a number of whom who have issued take-down requests of their own accord. We can laugh at ourselves. But we’re not laughing when a corporation exploits the artwork of others under the guise of poking fun at our event.

Brings to mind Green Tortoise, the exception that proves the rule of how they protect our community from any commercial exploitation.

Halcyon aka Pink Jesus has weighed in on QuiznoGate (I was calling it SandwichGate to avoid promoting the brand). Facebook users can follow his new “happy happy joy joy” page Pink Hearted at Burning Man and Beyond. Even BM’s biggest fan is outgrowing the NV Burn…

Over the last couple of years, we’ve been following with keen interest a lawsuit in Canada. The plaintiff was Decommodification, LLC – a private company the founders set up, which owns all the Intellectual Property assets of Burning Man and is paid royalties by the Burning Man Project for their use. The defendants were Napalm Dragon and Burn BC – a Vancouver-based arts collective co-operative that has been participating in Burning Man and other burn events since the early 90’s.

Here is some of our previous coverage

Canada Draws Battle Lines for Burner Culture May 14

BURNILEAKS: Bullying the Burners Sep 14

Embattled Burners Ask for Support Sep 14

Help Canada Sep 14

South Bhak Oct 14

Quick Update from Canada Nov 14

Burn BC Admits Defeat in Battle for Public Domain Jan 15

The lawsuit saw some eye-brow raising moves from BMOrg, including a claim by founder Crimson Rose that she invented fire dancing.

A year ago, it seemed that BMOrg had won – Burn BC couldn’t raise enough money for a lawyer, and was forced into a default judgement.

Napalm Dragon explained how he was prevented from even mounting a defense in our Jan 2015 story Burn BC Admits Defeat:

A couple of months ago the Lawyers for Decommodification LLC (The new American Corporation that now owns the American Burning Man Trademark) blocked Burn BC from defending itself.

They would not allow the directors of Burn BC to submit a defence, suppressing a very lengthy defence I’d put together for the organisation.

(I was hospitalised with a major panic attack from the stress of dealing with this).

The judge gave 30 days for Burn BC to find a lawyer. If Burn BC could have found a lawyer, we have mountains of evidence that could have easily defended Burn BC.

So without a lawyer, the flimsy claims against Burn BC went to default judgement. Without a reasonable defence for Burn BC, the Judge was forced to rule based on weak claims by the plaintiff.

Decommodification LLC didn’t just stop at $10,000 plus $25,000, they also wanted the Burn BC website. There’s NO need for the website.

The Judge ruled $10,000 damages (based on one sided claims, and no defence), and turning over our Burn BC website to Decommodification LLC. I can’t blame the judge, he had limited information, and Burn BC was completely unable to defend itself.

The judge ordered them to cease using the trademark, they agreed – so BMOrg got what they want, right?

It seems this small victory wasn’t enough. Decommodification LLC – apparently using the Burning Man Project’s extensive legal resources – had to burn the villages too. They pursued Napalm Dragon personally for damages. No matter that the guy has no money, and they take in $32 million a year. He needed to be taught a lesson, publicly shamed, ruined. How dare he be throwing burns and contributing to the community for 20+ years! How dare he try to defend himself against outrageous claims and character attacks! Destroy! Exterminate! Humiliate!

Well, karma can be a bitch: it looks like this strategy backfired. Since Decommodification LLC was going directly after Napalm Dragon personally, he was able to represent himself in court without a lawyer, something which was not possible the way the original case had been structured. It seems the Court did what courts do, looked at the facts, looked at the history, heard the arguments from both sides, and made a ruling based on the law – resulting in a total defeat for the American Decommodification company, and vindication for Canadian Burn BC.

Here is Napalm Dragon’s initial report on his victory:

Burn BC Founder and Champion of Burner Rights, Bhak Jolicouer

The final paperwork came back today.
I WON!!!
I ROASTED the lawyer, and he caved. He very literally cowered before the courts.

The Burn BC Arts Cooperative is alive and well, I am in the clear, and I forced Decommodification LLC to, not only back off of me, but to leave me alone and relinquish any attempted claims to otherwise very important sacred cultural domain I’ve been intimately involved with for over 20 years.

I briefly thought about going all the way with it; pushing “Burning Man” finally and completely (and undoubtedly) back into the Public Domain where it is and belongs (and could have without a lawyer). I was very literally one Court Motion away from doing it.

But, instead I roasted the Lawyer, and demanded respect, and demanded some clear terms, and got EXACTLY what I wanted and had declared for over a decade.

I was able to do this because Decommodification LLC was not satisfied with destroying Burn BC by forcing it into an undefended default judgement and just leaving me alone.

No, the vengeance of one greedy sadistic and highly duplicitous and domineering woman, and her asinine arrogance, nearly led to her complete downfall by one punk from Canada and his little prank.

[Metaphorically speaking] I had her, and her entire plot by the balls, I squeezed tightly to get her attention, then said “Leave me the F**K alone, I am free to do and say what I please, and if you push me any further you lose every exaggerated claim”.

When Decommodification LLC came after me personally they screwed up. They gave me the opportunity to finally defend myself; and when this finally came before the courts, I completely ROASTED the lawyer. He was very literally cowering before the “judge”, and went pale.

All the egregious demands disappeared.

I then turned it around and said (metaphorically) “This is what’s going to happen, and this is what you are going to do.”

So now it’s done and I’m moving on, and I am free to do and say what I please; as has ALWAYS been my right, as an Artist, Prankster, Empresario, and Sacred Clown.

F**** You!!!…and your Burning Man too.
Keep that dead lie far away from me, and anyone I love.

Now I can finally get back to what I really want to do before this giant stinking pile of bull dung distracted me.

BMOrg have not had their Propaganda-spun statements tested in a court very often. There were a couple of big cases in 2007. Founder John Law tried to keep the Burning Man name in the public domain for all Burners to use, saying “If Burning Man is really a movement, the name should belong to everyone, not three guys who don’t get along anymore”. Although the case got a lot of media attention, and raised the hopes of many Burners, it was settled for an undisclosed sum before going to trial. In the Paul Addis arson trial, BMOrg controversially provided muddled information that ensured a mischievous prank in the Cacophonist spirit was treated as a terrible, malicious felony. Addis got jail time, lost his legal career, then became yet another Burner whose exit from this “movement” was a horrific public suicide.

I asked Napalm Dragon if he had any further comments for Burners.me readers. He said:

I want nothing to do with Marian Goodell or her “Contractually Obliged Brand Cult”.
Anyone who “volunteers” for any project, group, or event, “controlled directly or indirectly by Decommodification LLC” through the use of the so called trademark “Burning Man™” is being taken for a ride by a private American corporation that wants to join the Billionaires Club on the backs of the wide eyed and naive, lost in a labyrinth of past relevance.

The last Great Cultural Emergence of the 20th Century is moving on, leaving behind an empty calcified echo of a spectacle.
The culture created Burning Man; “Burning Man™” did not create the culture.
There is no longer a home for the culture under this so called trademark “Burning Man™”.

When it comes to Burners.me, know that I forced Decommodification LLC to agree to make no claim to “The Burn”. SO the culture has a place to go, freely, and of its own free will and accord, and it’s beyond the reach of Decommodification LLC. (IN WRITING).

Fuck “Burning Man™”, that term missed its opportunity to have a profound, respectful, and positive relationship with relevance, and instead chose to suffocate an agonising and slow retreat into obscurity.

When Decommodification LLC went after me personally, the lawyers could not block me from defending myself (like they did with Burn BC)
I waited for someone who understood the significance of this to hand me a lawyer, and when it didn’t materialise. I played my cards wisely.

Unable to block me from defending myself, I decided to turn it in my favour and completely roasted the lawyer before the Canadian Federal Courts. All the egregious demands faded in the presence of the courts.

I protected some sacred terms, protected Burn BC, and protected myself.
I’m bowing out of this stinking saga with this last prank; and letting Marian Goodell and her American Corporation Decommodification LLC fester in the pursuit of a meaningless trademark in Canada.

Anyone is free to oppose the application with CIPO, I will not be participating in any opposition.
I’ve lost interest. I have nothing but disdain for Decommodification LLC and the words “Burning Man™”.

I’m now going to take some time to consider the most epic prank of my life, and think about the love of my son, and the love of my wife, and our rights to be the creative people we are; unfettered by the looming shadow of a “Contractually Obliged Brand Cult”, or the American Corporation that claims to control it.

I was right all along, and I feel at peace with a clear conscience.
I hope this prank offers some peace to Paul Addis, Caleb Schaber, and Howler (Rest well in your afterlife).

This is my parting gift to those I inadvertently led astray, and those who have inadvertently led us astray.
With Love,

Bhak Jolicoeur (AKA) Napalm Dragon
Avant-garde Artist, Impresario, Prankster, and Sacred Clown.
(Now, to get busy with the good stuff.)

Maybe now BMOrg will accept that Burners create this culture and event, not them. The point of Burning Man, and burns in general, is to create a temporary city together for entertainment –  not to cook everybody’s souls using a cauldron called The Devil so they have a Transformational Experience™. The culture has been developed from the bottom-up, grass roots if you like. Replacing it with top-down legal control from a tax-exempt entity and a board of 1%-ers is not going to make our culture flourish for the next hundred years under their Burning Man™ corporate banner.

[Update 1/14/16 1:29pm PST]

Napalm Dragon wanted us to be clear that Burn BC is a co-operative, not a collective. Sorry about that!

He also points out that the owners of Decommodification LLC, mostly are in no ways the founders of the Burning Man event. He has a good point: Larry Harvey is the only one of the 6 who was at the first one; Michael Mikel the only other one who was there at the Beach and Desert; Crimson Rose and Harley Dubois came to the second desert event, Will Roger arrived in 1994 and Marian Goodell 1995. Black Rock City LLC was incorporated in 1997, after the disastrous Helco burn.

Are the 6 owners of Decommodification, LLC, the same as these 6 “Founders”?

Again, it looks like Napalm Dragon is right. We don’t know very much about this private company. It was spun off before the donation to the non-profit, and the main assets of the business were transferred to it. Supposedly, the “6 Founders” each have an equal share, and have to unanimously vote against a transfer to the Burning Man Project in 2018 to stop it. Does it earn royalties from the Spark movie, the newspaper photo rights, music soundtracks, art sales, or anything else? Or does it simply get $75k per year from the Burning Man Project, and nothing else – everything else goes to Burning Man? We don’t know, and I’d love to think it was the latter – but if so why don’t they just be transparent about it? Why are we only going to find out what is going on with all these LLCs and assets and inter-group relations AFTER many years?

Here’s the official story, as of about a month ago:

Here’s what Corporation Wiki says:

Doug Robertson is listed in the Burning Man Project IRS Form 990 as the organization’s CFO. Ray Allen is the Burning Man Project’s in-house General Counsel. Nanci Elliot is better known by her alias Crimson Rose.

The address listed here in 3rd street is also associated with Black Rock Arts Foundation, Black Rock Solar, and Tomas McCabe. From CorporationWiki:

Justia lists trademarks owned by Decommodifcation, LLC. Interestingly, the Ranger logo is here, but the name Burning Man and the regular )'( dude are not.

Trademarkia only has one trademark associated with Burning Man: the main one, which proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that Burning Man is a festival. It was last renewed in 2014, with Decommodification, LLC as owner.

Of course, “organizing community festivals featuring…live music, art displays, and participatory games; conducting entertainment exhibitions” is not even remotely close to Live Entertainment – what are they smoking in Nevada?

Bizstanding lists Larry, Marian, and Harley as the three “Managing Members” of Decommodification LLC. It also lists Brooke Oliver, who claims to have been the legal architect of Burning Man’s non-profit transition.

Where’s Will, where’s Danger Ranger? Both of those guys only got paid $70k or so in 2014. Why’s that?

Did donation money given by Burners to support art projects end up going to this lawsuit in Canada? Or did Decommodification, LLC pay for it?

I don’t expect we’ll hear answers to these questions – although it would be a lovely surprise if we do. Simply to ask them, doesn’t make me a “conspiracy theorist”. They are quite reasonable questions, the kind of thing I would ask any $30 million non-profit that wanted me to give them money.

Napalm Dragon has cemented his place in Burner history, along with other eclectic and eccentric figures like Chicken John, Paul Addis, John Law, Caleb Schaber, and (IMHO) myself, who have risked a lot simply to fight for what’s right. A movement that came from a community, not a corporation.

Bhak reached out to the community to help raise funds to get a lawyer. They raised $1650, he wants to wish a big thanks to everyone who donated. If more Burners had stepped up in support, perhaps “Burning Man” might be a free term in Canada today.

The idea that BMOrg need to protect the Burning Man name from anyone else ever using it because people might get confused is kind of ludicrous in 2016, when it’s on Oprah and The Simpsons. Dude. We get it. It’s BURNING MAN™. A name that is now MASSIVELY COMMODIFIED after years of saturation promotion in mainstream media. You need these lawsuits because people might sell t-shirts, really? There are 30,000 merchants on Etsy selling Burning Man products and nearly 8,000 on eBay. Let’s stop kidding ourselves, stop pretending that this is somehow “against Burning Man” or “ruining Burning Man”. This event was built on selling t-shirts. If anything, it’s the “hey it’s cool if we jump the shark, we want new people anyway, doesn’t matter if they’re self-reliant or participants” attitude that is “ruining Burning Man”.

We want to go to officially sanctioned events that are based on the Ten Principles. So why not enable thousands of those around the world, get royalties from all of the franchises, donate generously to art and the environment, and really see if we can make a difference with this culture? Take the royalty money from the 30,000 Etsy vendors, and use it to do some good?

They have enough Burners for that…but do they have enough lawyers? It seems to me that is what is holding our growth back the most right now.

Why is “Burning Man: The Board Game” (free, made by 20-years Burners to entertain other Burners) bad, but “Burning Man: The Musical“, (commercial, by a Google employee who’s never been to Burning Man) good?

Why does Decommodification, LLC feel it has to own Decommodification Itself? What would be the point of that, in a temporary company created only to safeguard Burning Man’s brands for a couple of years? 

Here is Napalm Dragon’s Christmas Day message (and Gift) to those of us who did support him.

I submit this with a heavy heart.

Yet, I submit this with a burden released from my conscience, after enduring a long, distressing, and frivolous process.

Signed on the longest night of the year (December 21), in sacred concert with the ages, I part ways with the empty spectacle, and protect the integrity of a sacred domain of the arts, and the ancient rites.

My signature ends an era of open cultural relationships with what was once the most relevant cultural event of the 20th century; made relevant by the gathering tribes of the last great cultural emergence of the 20th century.

Until December 21, 2015 I held in my hand the last flickering flame of the Original Burning Man Culture that created the event, created the city, and created the communities.

We created Burning Man.
Burning Man did not create us.
This is the truth, and the truth has set me free.

My submission today, and my signature on this document ends the name of our culture. It ends our relationship with the secret American corporation (Decommodification LLC) that secretly makes questionable claims to what was once the public domain name of a culture, and the public domain iconography of a culture.

In Canada, this secret American Corporation (Decommodification LLC) will soon take control of a trademark based on our Public Domain Culture and Public Domain Iconography in order to steal control of what little remains of our independently developed communities.

I will not be taking part in any opposition to this, that window has passed for me. I held that window open and the loud cries of the vain were all that were heard.

I will not participate in this deceptive practice in any way, or with any organisation, group, or individuals who are blindly mislead by this contractually obliged brand cult.

Our culture and it’s association with what was once our name has lost all relevance. What remains is an illusion, a deception, a mere figment that exploits misconceptions.

What remains is not our culture.
It’s the synthesised echoes of how we express our culture.

It’s a calcified and degraded, proprietary facsimile of the expressions of our culture. It looks like culture, but it’s little more than the exploitation of those of us seeking to connect with our culture.

Our Culture has moved on, and no longer exists within the domain of what Decommodification LLC vainly and arrogantly claims to control.

Pushed to the very brink, I stood next to justice with my back held straight against the wall of truth. I held to my convictions, my rights, my honour, and trusted in my faith that the truth prevails.

In the face of intimidation, being ostracised, slandered, my reputation all but destroyed, and my friends deceived, I stood by the truth and trusted in the power of justice to perceive the truth.

Very literally under the scrutiny of our Canadian judicial system, this deception and intimidation fell apart. What remained was a compromise.

I accepted this compromise and demanded concessions to this compromise that might respect my artistic rights, my integrity, my honour, and my self respect (the only things left to me in this fiasco)

I was failed by the very people who so grandiosely stand on the backs of the artists and declare themselves “the community”. These people loudly proclaimed to support my position, but did little to step up to “Radical Self Reliance”, and offer what mattered. Their words fell to the floor, the empty ashes of an illusion; those of us believing in this illusion vainly grasping at it.

Yet, despite my challenges, I faced the truth on my own accord, and the truth prevailed through the wise mediation of the honourable Prothonotary Milczynski.

I can now lay to rest this deplorable action by Decommodification LLC and move on with my life, as I asked before, and have asked many times before that.

The integrity of my culture now remains relativity intact by other means; holding back the looming shadow over our culture, and out of reach of this secret and deceptive corporation.

I have taken responsibility for my part in being mislead over the last 10 years, and inadvertently misleading others who respected my reputation and good will over the last 25 years.

I can now get on with my life with a clear conscience. My last gift to this community being the truth.

I submit my settlement agreement with a heavy heart, a clear conscience, and a clear perspective on the heinous actions that have transpired over the last 20 years.

I choose today (December 25th) to submit this document to the Plaintiff and the Courts, not as a gesture of good will, but as a reminder of what it really means to offer a gift to the world.

To remind the Plaintiff that a gift was offered to the world, and it was tossed aside like a dirty worthless bone.

I pick up that bone and bury it with grace and respect.

It was a sincere, heartfelt, gift to the community; something we (our culture) offered to the world. Something taken from us, perverted, and tossed away; then synthesized and sold back to our peers with the intent of making the profound; proprietary, mundane, and superficial; something to easily consume from the bucket list of past notoriety, a minor novelty exploiting the good will of vague references to an obfuscated past.

With this settlement, there is no going back.
It is done.

The desert has lost it’s last hope to be anything more than just a misguided, shameful and shallow expression of excess and delusional cultural exploitation; a spectacle cut off from the profound depths of an open culture.

It is no longer a maze of possibilities to transcend the madness, it’s a labyrinth of madness that has no exit.

It’s a culture trap.

A gift is something offered without obligation, and the obligations demanded by the Plaintiff throughout these proceedings with Burn BC and myself were deplorable. They were both egregious and vitriolic. They only served to destroy what remains of the beauty and grace we offered this Culture and Cultural Iconography, and the independent communities that have given (very literally) their love, and their lives to our culture.

Many of us have very literally given our lives to the gifts we offer to our community. We had no intention of giving our gifts to greedy, exploiting corporations. Many of us who could not face our complicit assistance to this deception committed suicide, or died by the symptomatic obfuscation that confuses the profound.

People took their lives, and have died for this culture.
– Caleb Shaber walked into his room in Gerlach Nevada and killed himself with a gun.
– Paul Addis threw himself in front of the San Francisco Bart Train.
– Hours after visiting with my wife and I in Austin Texas, a man went home and shot himself.
– Another close friend swam to his death, and drowned himself.
– Another hung himself in Vancouver.
– Others were murdered by a crazed gunman in Seattle.
– One man hung himself in the Nevada Desert.
– Another recently walked into the fires of an event in the United States.
– A famous CBC radio host died.
– A woman was killed while riding an Art Car.

People died for this culture and because of this deceptive cultural appropriation. These deaths are now empty, sad statements to the deceptive cultural appropriation this corporation has committed with absolute callous disregard for the very culture they claim to have created “from a ceremony on Baker Beach”.

My conscience weighed heavy, it is now clear, and I remember these lives with dignity as I move forward with the rest of my life.

I close this heinous chapter in disgust. I open a new chapter alleviated by taking responsibility. I move forward with a light and clear conscience to live with joy, share in charity, and love with honour, dignity, and respect.

I have fulfilled my obligations.

The intentions of our culture, and our lives, were to offer a gift to the world, and offer a gift to our communities by creating spaces for our communities to flourish unhindered by mediated consumerism, and the marketing exploitation that turns people into predictable products to be repackaged and sold back to us as a limited set of archetypes that we adhere to without question or Critical Thought.

The very foundation of our culture was deeply undermined in the name of pure greed. We were deceived, and as I faced the obfuscation that surrounds this deception, a most egregious realisation was revealed by this frivolous litigation.

It is no longer my concern, this is for others to contemplate.

I am irrevocably done with the words: Burning Man™

What has transpired here with this document I submit, and my signature, is no less than the “end of an era”, not because I have the power to end it, but because I’m willing to recognise the significance of this settlement agreement in relation to the dark shadow that looms over it.

I have been blessed to witness and participate in the last great cultural emergence of the 20th century which emerged around the world throughout the 90’s. It gave profound power and meaning to a name, and cultural iconography.

Now with the stroke of my pen, a cultural relevance is gone forever. It is truly the end of an era. This sad end forced by the unyielding and arrogantly uncompromisingly deceptive greed of one woman and her secret corporation.

When given the opportunity to share in an incredibly significant opportunity to continue respecting the independent nature of our cultural relationships; this was not only rejected, but crushed with brutal dominating vengeance; I realised that the best course of action was to walk away from possibly the most damaging relationship I have ever encountered.

Questionable claims were made by Decommodification LLC under frivolous litigation. There was no reason to waste the precious time of the courts.

The Burn BC Arts cooperative was prevented from defending itself; and even after the matter was clearly resolved, intimidation, and callous technicalities were exploited to undermine justice and force an undefended default judgement against Burn BC.

What remains is a lie, a deception of cultural proportions, a system of exploitation that sullies the very idea of the founding culture here in Canada that gave the last great cultural emergence of the 20th century its power and relevance, and opened a door to beauty, grace, kindness, and the sincerity of The Gift.

A gift is given without obligation. Yet under the guise of a gift, one greedy woman and her secret corporation have taken the greatest gift we could offer to the world, and turned it into a farce, a façade, a lie. She forced those of us afraid to challenge this injustice into obligations that robbed us of hope.

Twenty years of my life have been taken from me, exploited, and destroyed; My reputation ruined by slander, and blindness, and the rewriting of a profoundly beautiful history to wipe the truth from the pages of relevance in a vain and arrogant attempt to own a delusional messianic nightmare based on an outright lie.

My contributions to the history of my culture and my local community developed in British Columbia; and the real significance of it’s impact on the greater cultural evolution have been vainly and disrespectfully wiped from the history books, and replaced by a superficial lie.

I have nothing but disdain for Decommodification LLC (et al), and will never be party to it’s deplorable deception. I will not be party to the death of a once beautiful cultural relationship, and cultural relevance.

Yet, a compromise has been reached.

An agreement has been forged that protects the ancient rites from the delusional claws of this sadistic attempt to “own the exclusive rights to a culture”.

I hold hope in my heart, and feel at peace moving forward. After years of enduring the stunning realisations of what is happening, why it’s happening, and how it transpired, I have found a compromise that can let me live with my conscience cleared and in relative peace.

I can close this ugly chapter and concentrate on what matters. The love of my son, the love of my wife, and the unfettered joy we will have without the looming shadow of this American Corporation and it’s domineering, vengeful, and deceptive practices.

We are no longer party (in any way) to the cultural exploitation of this “contractually obliged brand cult”.

I leave you with this on Christmas Day, the day of The Gift, to remind Decommodification LLC of the vitriolic and divisive darkness they have spread under the guise of “gifting”, and the heavy conscience they must live with on what should be a day of peace, forgiveness, and kindness.

Before this transpired they were given the greatest opportunity to have a dignified and mutually respectful relationship with Canada.

They choose greed, and get the empty remains of the fading echo of the past. The greatest gift slipping through their fingers, greased by money, and replaced by ignorance.

Good bye forever to this deception.
Napalm Dragon
Avante-Garde Artist, Impresario, and Sacred Clown.

[Source: Gofundme]

[Update 1/14/16 2:00pm PST]

Anon wanted links to the court documents. Here’s one. If anyone else has any, please share.

Burning Man announced today they won their appeal. Burners were left scratching their heads, without Propaganda Czar Will Chase there to put the usual spin on things. What does it all mean? Who’s suing whom? And will this affect ticket prices?

Here is the full text of the ruling. And here’s a summary in one paragraph:

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Basically, Pershing County wanted Burning Man to pay for their police presence. BMOrg said no, we pay the Feds, we pay Washoe. Pershing said pay up, and we don’t like nudity around children. Burning Man said “fuck you! free speech! We demand nudity!” and sued Pershing. Pershing responded by making life very difficult for Burners, partnering with the Feds for an unprecedented police crackdown. Sniffer dogs were brought in from the Mexican border. This was the beginning of “we’ll pull you over for the slightest thing and the dogs will search your car”. Burners were understandably pissed. Some of the more vocal DPW crew formed a group called RIOT and threatened to strike. BMOrg decided that maybe they should just pay the extra hundred grand or so to the cops. They agreed a deal, and both parties took it to the judge. The judge went apeshit and threw it out of court, telling the prosecutor to go back to law school. It seemed like it was all sorted it out, but it obviously wasn’t because of this appeal. The one judge sounds a little loco, and his Boss Judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals seem to agree.

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This has nothing to do with Burning Man’s other matter, objecting to the Live Entertainment Tax. So no effect on ticket prices. They will probably keep going up, and new things like Vehicle Passes and handling fees on Vehicle passes will be introduced to drive revenues further.

Here’s our previous commentary on what’s been going on in the case, in reverse chronological order. The headlines kind of speak for themselves:

https://burners.me/2014/02/04/radio-interview-with-pershing-da/

https://burners.me/2014/02/03/reno-gazette-journal-covers-pershing-county-cops-settlement/

https://burners.me/2014/01/13/judge-backs-off-pershing-roadblock-deal-is-done/

https://burners.me/2013/11/29/absurd-illegal-mealy-mouthed-more-on-judges-ruling-on-burning-manpershing-dispute/

https://burners.me/2013/11/29/go-back-to-law-school-judges-nukes-pershing-deal/

https://burners.me/2013/11/14/associated-press-misreports-pershing-county-fees/

https://burners.me/2013/11/11/breaking-burning-man-reaches-deal-with-pershing-county/

https://burners.me/2013/08/23/pershing-county-cops-and-federal-agents-integrated-and-synchronized/

https://burners.me/2013/08/22/busting-man-riot-calls-for-general-strike-at-burning-man/

https://burners.me/2013/05/07/failed-to-even-make-a-facial-pershing-county-claims-huge-defeat-over-burning-man/

https://burners.me/2012/10/11/pershing-county-hits-back-at-burning-man/

https://burners.me/2012/08/17/county-cops-duke-it-out-with-feds-for-burning-man-buck/

Today’s coverage by Scott Sonner (AP) in the Sacramento Bee was much better than the BJ or Burning Man in-house reporter Jenny Kane’s sales pitch for Will’s job piece at the RGJ.

How can this Judge tell lawyers to “go back to law school” when he gets slapped down unanimously by the Appeals Court – 7 times in 4 years? He must have some powerful friends in the Wild West of Northern Nevada. Pantsless Santa tells me that Federal Judges are appointed for life, and it would be no surprise if one was part of the old boys network.

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Masks in the Cibolo Creek hunting lodge, where Bohemian Grove spin-off the Order of St Hubertus hosted Burning Man-connected Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s mysterious demise.
Image: Wayne Madsen Report, via Fellowship of the Minds

So far, Satya Yuga Collective founder Derrick Ion has not been charged with any crime in relation to the so-called “Oakland Ghost Ship Fire” which killed 36 people at the beginning of December. Nobody else has been charged either, and so far there is no evidence of arson. The various authorities have not yet concluded their investigation.

$200 million of civil suits have been filed against 9 people by families of the victims.

re-blogged from The Daily Californian:

The family members of two victims who perished in the Oakland warehouse fire Dec. 2, including UC Berkeley alumnus Griffin Madden, filed civil lawsuits in Alameda County Superior Court on Friday against several people associated with the “Ghost Ship” warehouse.

One lawsuit was filed on behalf of 23-year-old Madden, as first reported by KTVU, and another was filed on behalf of Michela Gregory, a 20-year-old San Francisco State University student who died clutching her boyfriend, Alex Vega. These are the first known suits filed in connection with the Oakland fire, according to the East Bay Times.

The suit filed by Madden’s parents, Michael and Catherine Madden, alleges that the defendants were negligent with regards to the safety conditions of the “Ghost Ship” warehouse and are liable for Madden’s death. It also alleges that the defendants did not obtain permits to convert the warehouse into a residential or public event space.

Nine defendants are listed in the suit, including Chor Nar Siu Ng, the owner of the warehouse; her daughter Eva Ng; warehouse managers Derick Ion Almena and Micah Allison; and warehouse lessors Daniel Lopez and Omar Vega. Joel Shanahan, the performer at the warehouse the night of the fire, known most commonly by the stage name Golden Donna; Jon Hrabko, who organized and promoted the event; and Los Angeles record label 100% Silk were also listed as defendants in the suit.

The Maddens are being represented by Mary Alexander & Associates, a San Francisco law firm. In their suit, the Maddens demanded a trial by jury…Ng has hired attorney Keith Bremer from the firm Bremer Whyte Brown & O’Meara to represent her, while Almena is being represented by attorney Tony Serra…

“Said defendants had mandatory and nondelegable duties to inspect and maintain said property in a safe and usable condition, and to repair any dangerous or unsafe conditions,” the lawsuit states. “Each of them, were somehow negligent or otherwise responsible for the injuries and death of Griffin Madden and the damages alleged herein.” You can be easily recover from injuries with the use of the best inversion table for therapy there is.

The suit calls the warehouse a “death trap,” alleging that it was poorly constructed and lacked a safe and accessible exit, as well as adequate fire-safety measures…

[Source]

Attack Is The Best Form Of Defense

A 2015 booking photo of Derrick Ion Almena. Source: Glendale Police Department via LA Times

In a two-pronged attack, this week the defense team released to the media a report from an anonymous “expert” suggesting neighboring properties, government agencies, and P G & E could have been at fault for the blaze; and at the same time, Micah Allison (Mrs Ion) took to the stage at a city council meeting to say how sorry they were and they wish that something could have been done sooner and she needs a house.

They got a crack lawyer who has represented the cream of the crop of Bay Area ruffians: the Black Panthers, the Hell’s Angels, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and Shrimp Boy. Describing the defense team leader Tony Serra as a “firebrand attorney” is perhaps in poor taste, LA Times. He seems to be earning his money, as the defense have come up with what seems like an attempt to create reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury: the fire didn’t even begin on his property, and he wasn’t even there, so how can he be culpable in any way?

On Monday, Almena’s lawyers said they had conducted their own inquiry into the fire. “Our investigation shows that Derick Almena committed no conduct amounting to criminal negligence

[Source: LA Times]

Hey, if his defense attorneys say he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it…right?

YMMV on whose fault it was that the junk piled up around the idols and altars, that staircases were constructed from wooden pallets, that 20+ people were residential sublet tenants, or that it was not a licensed venue for occult trance rituals all-night dance parties with DJs and live fire performances.

Micah On The Mic

Micah Allison, the wife of Derrick Ion Almena, spoke publicly for the first time at a special meeting in Oakland on January 23.

She complained about unfair treatment from neighbors and the media, and that more had not been done earlier by the council – because now she and her husband have to carry a heavy weight on their shoulders.

She turned up at a special meeting of the City Council on Monday, where legislators were considering several proposals aimed at shoring up tenant protections and providing an emergency moratorium on evictions from unpermitted live/work spaces that spiked in the wake of the deadly blaze.

“The main thing I wanted to say is how sorry I am for what happened on Dec. 2,” Allison said, before thanking the activists and organizers at the meeting. “I wish that more had been done before because we carry a really heavy weight on our shoulders right now.”

But Allison spent the majority of her time at the podium decrying the treatment she said her family has received from the media and former neighbors, who she claimed thwarted a recent attempt to move back into an Oakland house where they had lived previously.

“It’s been pretty terrible what they’ve done to my family,” Allison said, speaking about media reports.

She continued, describing a former landlord who offered to let them stay in exchange for replacing windows and painting the older home.

“The neighbors, who were my friends during the entire time I lived in that house before, got wind that we were going to move back into the house because our landlord really loved us and wanted to help our family,” she said. “In a couple hours, or over a 24-hour period, they contacted the landlord and said that if they let us move back into the house that they would cause a lot of trouble for him over his house.”

The deal would have allowed the family some stability to enable them to “start changing this narrative that’s gone out about Satya Yuga, the Ghost Ship, my family, my husband, myself,” she said, referring to the art collective occupying the warehouse

Allison expressed frustration about trying to find a stable place to live while keeping her three children in their Fruitvale-area schools.

“In order to keep my kids in school, I need a house,” she said

[Source: East Bay Times]

A house for the kids would have been a great idea, rather than a venue for underground raves all night DJ parties. 36 people including one minor might still be alive if that had occurred to them earlier. But is this really the City Council’s problem? They should be investigating this woman, not giving her a house. Her desire to “start changing this narrative” emerged the same day the defense team released their report. This act may have been more strategic than spontaneous.

Here is the anonymous expert report being used by the Defense team. It seems long on speculation and short on actual evidence.

A good report on the report from Matthias Gafni and Katrina Cameron at the San Jose Mercury News:

OAKLAND — The defense team for Derick Almena released a report Monday alleging that the deadly fire that killed 36 people last year started not in the now infamous Ghost Ship artists collective, but rather in an adjacent building.

In a 10-page report released Monday, prepared by an unnamed investigator hired by Almena’s defense team, also pointed the finger at PG&E for inadequate electrical inputs into the building. Almena’s attorneys argue the findings should relieve their client of any criminal liability. It is not the first time that Almena’s lawyers have sought to deflect blame from their client: last month they said government agencies were at fault.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has been investigating Almena, who was the master tenant at the Fruitvale warehouse, and others for possible criminal charges in the Dec. 2 blaze. The office declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. But an expert who reviewed the evidence offered by Almena’s legal team, was not convinced.

The report, which cites various photos of the buildings on the 1300 block of 31st Avenue from street level and above, raises questions about how electricity was delivered to the warehouse and adjacent buildings. It has various conclusions, including that “there must have been enough heat PRIOR TO the entry into Ghost Ship section for fire to occur.”

“The defense team for Derick Ion Almena has received a reliable scientific report … indicating that the origin of the fire was at the building adjacent to the so-called Ghost Ship warehouse,” attorneys Jeffrey Krasnoff, Kyndra Miller and Tony Serra wrote in a statement. “Such should reasonably foreclose any criminal negligence charges against Mr. Almena. Recall that the ATF could not conclude where the fire originated. The reasonable doubt here is overwhelming.”

Dan Rapperport, a fire and explosion investigator and president of Rapperport Associates, reviewed the report and found the theory that the fire started next door a “stretch.”

“They did not offer compelling evidence to me, as a fire investigator, that the origin of the fire started outside the Ghost Ship space,” he said in a phone interview. It is not surprising that the massive fire would create roof and other fire damage on adjacent buildings, he said.

However, Rapperport said, the report makes a valid point that PG&E’s conductors from outer power poles may have been undersized. The photos show “undersized wiring” leading into the building, meaning the PG&E capacity for electrical current from outside could have been below the inside capacity of the Ghost Ship wiring, he said. That could have led to overloaded wiring which could cause a short or ignite a fire, however that doesn’t mean PG&E is necessarily to blame, he added.

“There’s legacy wiring going into the place and if they’re using more power than PG&E ever anticipated, it’s up to the user to call PG&E to say I need more power,” Rapperport said.

Tamar Sarkissian, a PG&E spokeswoman, said records over the last decade-plus show no reports of “electric theft or any other anomaly from this location or the adjacent premises. We will await the findings of the official investigation.”

Sources have told this newspaper that the cause of the fire inside the warehouse art collective was overloaded electrical lines at the rear of the structure.

The Ghost Ship’s power sources — an ad hoc network of extension cords stretched through a maze of small dwelling units and studios — all fed from one line coming through a hole punched in the wall to a neighboring business, a person familiar with the wiring has said. The sources did not mention the fire started outside the warehouse.

Criminal defense attorney Dan Horowitz said Almena’s defense team are creating a jury defense to “humanize” their client.

“Make him sad, sorry and pathetic. Have a cause that blames someone else ‘scientifically’. Then ignore the fact that the place was an illegal electrical nightmare and an accident waiting to happen,” he said. “Let’s say the fire came from the sky. A lightning bolt. Sprinklers, exit doors, clear pathways and the hellish death of dozens would have been avoided.”

A spokeswoman with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, some other tobacco procuts from https://www.superiorvapour.com/collections/mod and Firearms declined to comment Monday on specifics, saying the Oakland Fire Department final report has not been completed.

In a statement late Monday, Karen Boyd, Oakland’s communications director, said that the ATF and the Oakland Fire Department are “collaborating on a comprehensive investigation of the 31st Avenue warehouse fire. The investigation will yield a report that addresses the cause and origin of the fire. That report will be forwarded to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office as part of the ongoing criminal investigation. It’s premature to speculate about the origin of the fire until all investigations are complete.”

Almena’s defense team declined to name the author of their report, but said he was an expert “qualified by both education and experience.”

[Source: Mercury News]

The witness account of the wiring coming through the wall conflicts with the images in the report, taken from the outside of the building.

Show Me The Money

Almost a million dollars was raised in a crowdfunding appeal for the victims, and now almost 2 months after the fire $0 from that has been handed out to them. The charity that took the money, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, is deeply in bed with the Burning Man Project, which may explain the redistribution inefficiency. Money donated via the Oakland A’s, Raiders, and Warriors was distributed in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

“The first phase of allocations for the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts’ Fund —set up as an immediate response to the Ghostship tragedy—have been reviewed by a research committee and program managers and approved by the Gray Area Board of Directors. As of January 25, 2017, 136 intake forms have been qualified. Documentation will be requested, and funds will be dispersed immediately upon receipt of qualification documentation.

To fully allocate the second phase of funds, Gray Area still needs those who may qualify to submit the required intake form. The form has been available since December 7, 2016, via the foundation’s site at http://grayarea.org/initiative/fire-relief-fund/. The deadline to complete an intake form has been established as March 7, 2017 (90 days from the publishing date).

In other words, coming soon.

Intake forms: the new burner profile? The whole process rhymes with Burning Man, that’s for sure.

Josette Melchor, Executive Director and Founder of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, has been on the advisory board for the Burning Man Project since January 2012. In 2010 they received an Honorarium grant for Syzygryd, an art project for “Interpretive Arson”. Gray Area Chairman Peter Hirshberg wrote about Burning Man re-inventing money and governance in the recent book From Bitcoin To Burning Man And Beyond (worth a read).

Melchor didn’t waste any time getting the money after the tragedy:

“Every penny that is donated here should go to the fire victims’ funeral expenses, medical expenses and health-related expenses,” said Josette Melchor, founder of Gray Area Foundation for The Arts. Melchor spoke for the group intent on helping victims the Monday after the fire.

“That’s our priority first and foremost,” she said.

[Source: NBC Bay Area]

“Why is it taking so long?” asked Carmen Brito, a former resident of the Ghost Ship. “They know what we’re dealing with. They know we lost our home. They know we lost everything.”

Brito said she, as well as others who spoke with NBC Bay Area but declined to be identified, are in need of help. They say they received cash assistance hours after the fire from the Red Cross, which distributed money from a different fund led by the A’s, Warriors and Raiders.

But the Gray Area foundation has provided them no money.

“They kinda just didn’t seem to get it,” she said.

That surprised us. Because in December, Melchor, the Gray Area founder, said she was enlisting the Red Cross to help manage the fund.

“This is what they do. They’re good at it,” she said. “We’re not going to reinvent the wheel.”

But the Red Cross says Gray Area opted to manage the fund itself, on its own schedule.

“I would like to have seen an immediate handout,” Steele said.

NBC Bay Area has been asking Gray Area for information for weeks. On Thursday, the founder agreed to a follow-up interview. She confirmed that all the money is sitting idle in a bank account.

 “We haven’t spent a dime,” Melchor said.

Melchor said she has heard people’s concerns but assures them that Gray Area is beginning to approve applications.

“Eventually, they will be getting a check, in the next days to weeks,” she said. “So, to a certain point, I think they’ll begin to be thankful. And I think most people are thankful. They are just a few vocal people who are speaking out.”

As for why it’s taken close to two months, Melchor attributed the delays to getting records from the city and the coroner, which she says the Red Cross had immediate access to.

“There was just a huge hold up in us getting the information that we needed to serve the people that were affected,” she explained.

Our research found another hiccup: a call from the Attorney General’s Office.

Records we retrieved show the state sent Gray Area three different delinquency letters in 2016 for failing to file financial records. One notice, from August, warned of the state’s “intent to suspend or revoke” its registration as a charity.

Melchor told us Gray Area was unaware of the letters until late December – in the middle of fundraising – when the Attorney General’s Office called.

 “We cleared that up within 72 hours of the phone call with the Attorney General,” she said. “So, that is completely a non-issue.”

Not everyone agrees.

“That’s really a bad sign,” said Daniel Borochoff, president of CharityWatch, which scrutinizes and rates nonprofit organizations. Borochoff reviewed Gray Area’s filings as well as its online fundraiser.  

He asked: “If the group can’t even get it together to get their finances reported, their basic public disclosure documents provided to the state of California and the IRS, then how can they be expected to get it together to get this huge quick influx of funds to the needed victims?”

Borochoff questioned Gray Area’s decision to administer the fund.

“There are certainly groups in the Bay Area that are better equipped and have the experience to handle a disaster such as this warehouse fire,” he said.

Melchor said her group’s recent budget exceeds the balance of $901,000 relief fund, so it is capable of handling that much money. 

The victims and donors we talked to told us they just want Gray Area to distribute the money with the same urgency that the sympathetic public donated it.

“I don’t think anybody who gave money was like, ‘Yes I want this money to sit in a bank account of a foundation that’s dragging its feet.’” Brito said.

Steele agreed.

“I understand that it’s a difficult process. It’s a difficult process to weed out. But there’s got to be a way to make it happen faster,” Steele said.

Gray Area is still collecting donations. It has increased its fundraising goal several times and says it will continue to up its target

 

Is it really them? Hard for me to say either way, but it would be an awful lot of trouble to go to just to troll somebody that is potentially under police and ATF investigation. The claims of drug and sex parties were also made in the Daily Mail. I couldn’t find Micah Allison on Etsy but they do sell voodoo dolls.

Michael Allison, Micah’s father. Image: Daily Mail

A guest post from Mark Atwood

How to deal with cops at Burning Man (2017 update)

by Mark Atwood

(Feel free to print out, share, and repost. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. I am not a lawyer. This document is not legal advice. If you are ticketed, cited, or arrested, consult with an attorney. )

* Do not consent to a search.

Never consent to a search. Say the phrase “I do not consent to a search.”

The cops are trained to make you flustered and to “take command” of the situation. Or they can be “polite”: “Mind if we take a look around?” Yes, you mind. “I do not consent to a search.”

Even if you have nothing for them to find, always say “I do not consent to a search.”

Never consent to a search of your body, of your clothing, of your possessions, of your car, of your truck, of your trailer, of your RV, of your tent, or of your camp. You especially never consent to the search of anyone else’s property.

They can ask the other people in your group or in your car, not just the driver or leader. “Mind if we take a look?” You should all sing the same song: “I do not consent to a search.”

Even if they threaten you with arrest or if threaten to bring a sniffing dog, continue to say “I do not consent to a search”. Even while they are searching you or your stuff, continue to say it. “I do not consent to a search”.

* Being Questioned.

Cops can ask you questions.

They may say things like “We’re just talking”, or “What do you think of …?”, or “Can you help us out?”

You do not have to answer their questions, and probably shouldn’t.

They can ask you where your camp is, and who you are camping with. You don’t have to answer them, and you probably shouldn’t.

* Recreational drugs.

Never answer any questions about recreational drugs.

Remember, you never take drugs, you never carry drugs, you never supply drugs, you have no idea where to get drugs, you do not want any drugs, and you do not know anyone who does.

That includes cannabis in any form, in any amount. Cannabis is still not legal on BLM land, even for medical use. Having a medical card from any state is not a defense. The new Nevada personal use possession law is not a defense.

If you have a legal prescription to a Schedule II drug such as Adderall, Ritalin, OxyContin, and/or Methadone, keep your pills in their correct prescription bottle and locked somewhere safe. You can be charged if you cannot prove you have a legal prescription.

* Do not lead them to your camp.

They may try to make you lead them to your camp.

They can be very commanding and matter of fact about it. They may say “We are going to your camp.” They will make it sound as if you have no choice. You do have a choice, and you are going to chose to not to lead them to your camp. Never lead them to your camp.

If they really really insist on you leading them somewhere, then lead them to a Black Rock Ranger outpost.

* Keep your tent closed.

Always zip your tent closed when you are not in it. If possible, use screens or sheets to block transparent window screens, so there is no line of sight into your tent. You may want to use a luggage lock to lock the zipper of your tent when you are not in it.

If your tent is zipped shut, they are supposed to need a warrant to open it, or they are supposed to need your consent. They probably won’t have a warrant, and you are not going to give them your consent, remember? “I do not consent to a search.”

* Your name and your ID.

If they ever stop you, you do have to tell them your correct “wallet name” as it is printed on your official ID. Cops are uninterested in arguments about “dead names”. Tell them your name as it is printed on your official ID, driver’s license, or passport. You do not have to show them your ID if they ask to see it. You especially do not have to go to your camp to get your ID for them.

If you are a not a US citizen and are visiting on a visa waiver program, you do not have to carry your passport with you. If you are a resident alien on a visa (e.g. you have a “green card”), you do have to carry your green card with you. Sorry about that.

* Being Detained, or “Am I free to go?”.

The magic phrase is: “Am I free to go?”

Keep saying it. As soon as they say “yes”, walk away immediately and without another word. Do not run, just walk.

If they write you a ticket, you must take it. Put it in your pocket, and then you say “Am I free to go?”

If they ever say you are not free to go, you say “Am I being arrested?”. If they say “no you are not being arrested”, you say again “Am I free to go?”. Keep it up as many times as necessary. Yes, it will sound like a stupid kid game, like “stop copying me”, but the game is very real with very real stakes, and this is their game to win, and yours to lose.

* Being Arrested.

If they ever say anything like “you are under arrest”, or ever do anything to make you think you are being arrested, such as them restraining you in any way, you must immediately say the following magic phrase (memorize it!): “I do not consent to any search. I hereby invoke my right to remain silent. I want to speak to my attorney.” And then you SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Do not say anything at all about your arrest or why you may have been arrested until you are talking in private with your attorney. Not with those cops, not with any other cops, not with any onlookers, not with anyone else who was arrested, not with anyone who is being held with you. Not even with your campmates, or with your friends, or even with your family. Even your spouse. Assume the police cars, transport vans, and holding cells are bugged. Assume the cops will lie about what you say to them. Assume everyone you meet from when you are arrested to when you are released will testify against you and will lie about what you say to them. You invoked your right to remain silent. Now use it.

* Alcohol.

The camps with open bars that are giving away booze may ask to see your ID to verify you are older than 21. You don’t have to show it to them, but they don’t have to give you free booze either, and they probably won’t, fearing a bust.

The state liquor cops will be there trying to bust your camp with stings. If you are giving away booze, even if it’s only beer or wine, and the person you are about to give it to looks like they could possibly be under 21, you should verify their age by checking their ID.

Even if your camp is not running a public bar, random people will walk into your camp and ask for booze. You will almost certainly have an under-21 plainclothes liquor cop walk into your camp at least once during the week, trying to sting you. Be aware, an alcohol service bust is an expensive way to ruin your burn for your entire camp.

And even if the person asking for a free drink is not a cop, it’s rude and against the burner ethos to beg for a gift.

* Who Watches the Watchmen?

While the cops are dealing with you, you need to be memorizing the color and design of their uniforms, and if you can, memorizing their name tags. They are supposed to be wearing visible name tags while in uniform. Yeah, right.

As soon as you get away from the cops, go to Center Camp, or to a Black Rock Ranger outpost, and fill out a Law Enforcement Feedback Form and turn it in.

If you personally with your own eyes see the cops detaining anyone, arresting anyone, or searching anyone or anything, it is an act of Civic Responsibility (Principle 7) and a Gift (Principle 2) to Participate (Principle 9) in the burner community to memorize what you can, and then fill out and turn in a Law Enforcement Feedback Form as soon as you can.

* Your camera.

When you see the cops, you may choose to use your camera to record them. The judiciary at all levels has clearly stated that everyone, including you, has the right to record the police, as long as you don’t physically obstruct them. Cops hate it, but too bad.

If the cops tell you to turn off your camera, don’t do it. If they threaten to arrest you for recording, keep recording.

They cannot lawfully order you to stop recording. They cannot lawfully order you or anyone else to delete photos or video. They cannot lawfully delete any photos or video themselves. If they do, they themselves are knowingly breaking the law, and that will be very useful in court.

If you ever see a cop order anyone to stop recording or to delete anything, make sure that goes on the Law Enforcement Feedback Form.

While you are recording them, never get in their way, and stay back at least 35 feet / 10 meters.

* “Undercover” cops.

The cops claim there are “very few” “undercover” cops at the event. This is a very carefully nuanced untruth.

There are cops at the event who are not “undercover” but instead are “plain clothes”. This means that instead of wearing uniforms or visible badges they are instead dressed up to look like burners.

They do not have to tell you they are cops when you ask them. You will not be able to “sense” that they are cops. Some of them have been doing this every year for more years than you have come to the event yourself.

People have been busted by a cop who was wearing only sparkles and a miniskirt.

If someone you do not know asks for drugs or offers to trade you anything for drugs, they are a cop. If you met them this year at this Burn, you do not know them.

If you met these two girls a few days ago looking at art out in deep playa, and they are really cute, and they went out dancing with you last night, and they just suggested that if you can supply some “favors”, you all can “party together” in your tent, they are cops. No, really, yes, she and her girlfriend both are cops, and her coworkers are eagerly standing by to ruin your whole year.

* What if I need “Police Services”?

What if you are lost? Or a camp mate is lost? Or your child is lost? Or you have found a lost child? Or you have found a someone who is injured or who is unable to take care of themselves? What if you are assaulted? What if something has been stolen? What if someone is hurt? What if you are really too high? What if you find someone who is dangerously out of sorts? What if you just can’t even?

Go to a BLACK ROCK RANGER or to an ESD VOLUNTEER. The Rangers or ESD will help deal with the situation, and if the cops are actually needed, the Rangers or ESD can summon the cops and can deal with the cops. If the cops are not needed, then the Rangers or ESD can summon the right help for you.

Know what the Black Rock Ranger uniform is, and how it’s different from the cop uniforms. Rangers wear khaki shirts and khaki hats with the Burning Man logo on their hats, and on their chests, and on their backs, and on their vehicles. ESD have yellow shirts that say “Emergency Services” on them.

Have a great Burn!

I mentioned these characters in CryptoBeast episode #2 and Short Bus Physics With Quinn and J.Go. Jason Goodman is in cahoots with the one-eyebrowed Sith Lord Quinn Michaels, who says that there is a giant underground city under Burning Man and the weight of the people on the earth is causing the planet to change its rotation. He is playing a LARP called #tyler, and Jason is most likely part of Project UAREHERE – as I discussed in Shadow History part 7.

Since then I am firmly on Team @DaveActon (he did apologize publicly for cyber-harrassing Nathan from Lift The Veil). Dave has just sued cinema verité pseudo-journalist Jason Goodman over the worst thing that has ever happened on YouTube, which is when LARPers caused one of the busiest seaports in the world to be shut down for 8 hours over the threat of a “dirty bomb made from uranium” – which is not possible, according to the Wikipedia page on dirty bombs.

Here are the public court documents from PACER:

If you don’t know about this case, you can read about it in the New York Times or watch it on CNN. You can also see it as it unfolded live on their stream, which for some reason is still permitted to be up on YouTube.

We wish Dave every success in his endeavor, and thank him for doing this to help protect US cyber security and the integrity of the YouTube #truth community.

[Update 6/18/18]

Secret Shopper made a great comment here:

Pro Se and RICO….hahahahhahahah https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-dammit/

I really enjoyed that link, thanks. I agree that RICO gets overused on the Interwebz. From the article:

“To win, a plaintiff would have to prove (1) conduct, (2) of an enterprise, (3) through a pattern, (4) of racketeering activity called “predicate acts,” (5) causing injury to the plaintiff’s “business or property.””

I am pretty sure Dave is aware of all this, he has been involved in a number of Federal pro se lawsuits before and he wrote a book and a cybersecurity case study about this incident, which involved his brother George Webb. From his book and videos I think he has evidence that would hit all 5 of these points.

Goodman’s legal troubles are mounting. He is already the subject of a $23.5 million defamation lawsuit from ex(?)-CIA agent Robert David Steele. Steele is the guy who recruited the late John Perry Barlow, according to Barlow in his 2002 Forbes article Why Spy . A year ago RDS was Crowdsourcing $15,000 of “the truth” from Jason’s channel so that he could tour the country in an RV promoting his hashtag #unrig to black churches, and at the same time saying on Alex Jones that there is child sex trafficking on Mars; now he seems to be LARPing as an anti-pedophile judge.

Goodman was thanked by Pakistani spy Imran Awan’s lawyer for his inadvertent disclosure that led to potential criminally incriminating evidence ending up with the defendant thanks to Jason’s interference with the case.