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headers Kevin Donovan | 8 Aug 07:52

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Writes sarterus on our blog:

[Free Culture News][1] is a short form news blog. The format is simple:
brief summary, quotes, 2cents of commentary, links to other sources -
similar to Boing Boing or Slashdot. Reading it is an easy way to keep up
on FC related issues. It was started by [Conely][2] of [Free Culture at
Virginia Tech][3]. Their chapter use to post news up on their wiki every
week, and use these stories as starters for chapter discussion. The blog
is an out growth of their wiki, with a focus on sharing those stories
with the larger Free Culture community. The stories are not student
specific and cover everything from net neutrality and OLPC to fair use
and open access scholarly publishing.  I recommend giving it a try.

## Sample Post:

## [No Punishment for Comcast.][4]

August 1st, 2008

The FCC has voted to not punish Comast.  There will be (some) penalty
(maybe) next time.

> In a precedent-setting decision, the five-member Federal
Communications Commission voted 3-2 to uphold a complaint accusing
Comcast of violating the FCC’s open-Internet principles by improperly
hindering peer-to-peer traffic.

>

> “Subscribers should be able to go where they want, when they want, and
generally use the Internet in any legal means,” FCC Chairman Kevin
Martin said in a statement.

>

> Comcast said in a statement that it was disappointed by the decision
and was considering all its “legal options.”

>

> The measure adopted by the FCC does not include any fines against
Comcast. But it requires the company to cease impeding peer-to-peer
applications, to tell the FCC how the practice has been used, and to
notify customers about other network management practices it adopts in
the future.

Did we really expect anything different?

Disclaimer: I sometimes post to [FreeCultureNews.com][1] . There was an
open call on the SFFC list looking for writers a few months back. They
may still be looking.

   [1]: http://Freeculturenews.com

   [2]: http://wiki.freeculture.org/User:Conley

   [3]: http://vt.freeculture.org/

   [4]: http://freeculturenews.com/2008/08/01/no-punishment-for-comcast/
(Permanent Link to No Punishment for Comcast.)

URL: http://freeculture.org/blog/2008/08/06/freeculturenewscom-bite-sized-fc-bits/
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Paola from Peru and I were just talking about the on-going problem of
fragmentation among our organization. She and I agreed that we need
some shared projects to which various chapters can contribute
independently. Free Culture TV (and/or Radio?) might be interesting
places to start.

It would be great if during the course of the year, every chapter was
able to submit a video or a bit of audio about their local experience
to share with everyone else. I'm not talking about the BBC, just a
minute or two to let everyone else hear your voices and see your
faces.

I'm going to set up some media-making events at the conference in
order to kick this off but you could start at anytime, of course.

What are some other simple activities we could do together?

I am always happy to participate in collaborative translation projects
to practice Spanish. Anyone have Free Culture-related material they'd
like in multiple languages?

Kevin
--

-- 
)_)_)_)_)_)_

> http://kenzoid.com/blog/archive/849/

> Steal This Film's raw footage available and excellent
> 
> I heard about Steal This Film II when it was originally released, and I meant to watch it early on...but never
> got around to it. Shame on me...I recently finished it, and it was outstanding.
> 
> And I'm even more excited now, b/c I'm in the middle of exploring the raw footage that the film was based on. 
> 
> Wow...this is truly awesome!! The film was great, but as in the case of every documentary, there's far more raw
> footage than made it into the finished work. All this footage is now available for viewing, and it's an deep,
>  engaging dive into the concepts and questions brought up by the film (copyright, intellectual property,
> creativity, and the future of distribution, for starters). It gets better...the footage is all under Creative
> Commons, and most of it is under the Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license, which allows for
derivative reuse.
> It's mind-boggling, really.
> 
> Some of my favorite thinkers in this space are represented, including Eben Moglen, Yochai Benkler, and
Fred von
> Lohmann (though not limited to them by any means). Regardless of your
> knowledge level on these topics, there's probably more than one interview you'll enjoy and learn from here.
> 
> posted by Ken Kennedy at Aug 6th 2008 1:01 a.m.

Somebody has asked about WTO licensing issues? Here's the email I got.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: Licensing Issues
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2008 09:50:49 +0200
From: Sapey-Pertin, Heather <Heather.Sapey-Pertin <at> wto.org>
To: Ringo Kamens <2600denver <at> gmail.com>

The WTO encourages the broadest possible dissemination of its
information, particularly for educational purposes. You are welcome to
use photos from the WTO website provided the WTO is credited.

Kind Regards,
WTO Publications
Information and Media Relations Division (IMRD)
World Trade Organization
Centre William Rappard
Rue de Lausanne 154
CH-1211 Geneva 21
Switzerland

-----Original Message-----
From: Ringo Kamens [mailto:2600denver <at> gmail.com]
Sent: 03 August 2008 04:13
To: Publications, WTO
Subject: Licensing Issues

Dear WTO Publications,

I am doing some research on the WTO and I would like to use some of your
pictures. Do you have any available under the public domain or some
other type of alternative licensing? My work will be published under a
creative commons license, I need to make sure everything included in it
allows for it to be redistributed and built off.

Thanks!
Ringo Kamens

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On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 1:38 PM,  <peabo <at> peabo.com> wrote:
> At 11:24 AM -0500 8/3/08, Kevin Donovan wrote:
>>Patry deleted his archives on his blog. That really sucks.
>
> The Wayback machine has some of it (but nothing more recent than last
> October):
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://williampatry.blogspot.com/

There is a delay of several months between the time that archive.org
crawls a site and the time that it appears in the Wayback machine.  So
it is likely that most of Patry's posts will eventually be available
this way.

Denver

Writes Clifford Owens on our blog:

The first ever Free Culture Gaming Night went well.  You can probably
tell how much fun we had from the map!  Click on the image to see more.

[![Map of Wesnoth][1]][2]

Map of Wesnoth

Bonus points to whoever gets all the references in the map labels.  They
will be redeemable at the next meeting of Free Culture Gaming.

Wesnoth is a pretty neat turn-based strategy game with retro graphics. 
It was my first time playing, and I really enjoyed it (except for the
getting my butt kicked part).  One of these days I might actually be
good at it and beat Karen and Nelson.

We'll probably be doing another game night next week, so head over to
[Free Culture Gaming][3] to keep an eye out for more free video game
fun.

   [1]: http://freeculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/map_small.png
(map_small)

   [2]: http://freeculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/map.png (Map
of Wesnoth)

   [3]: http://game.freeculture.org/ (Free Culture Gaming!)

URL: http://freeculture.org/blog/2008/08/03/the-results-of-free-culture-gaming/

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Writes Frank Tobia on our blog:

Turning our attention now from the problems [HR 4137][1] raises for
college students at home, we see that our government is making life more
difficult for developing nations as well. There's been some talk lately
on the FC discussion list that we should broaden our focus on freedom to
include issues relevant to developing nations. This is my first attempt
to broach the issue.

The Doha Development Round of trade negotiations originated to directly
address issues of trade impeding the world's poorest nations. These
include intellectual property issues like access to patented medicine,
as well as other issues, like agricultural subsidies. Just last week,
talks at the Doha Round collapsed, leaving me to wonder how long it will
be until the United States starts doing what's right with regard to
these critical issues.

I rediscovered Doha by hanging around on [Wikipedia][2]: a few weeks ago
I noticed a bunch of work happening on the [Doha Round article][3]. I'm
a sucker for participatory culture after all. But check out the article.
See anything missing? I see a [dearth of images][4] that would be nice
if we rectified (the one image on there today was added just yesterday).
And look, the WTO is kind enough to make a [photo gallery][5] publicly
available. It would be so great if we could include those pictures on
Wikipedia.

So, Free Culturites, I have a call to action:

Email [publications <at> wto.org][6] and ask if they would be so kind as to
release some or all of their photos under a free copyright license
(something like [CC-BY][7] would be fantastic). After all, it's not like
the WTO exists to make money off of its photo gallery somehow. Myself
and a fellow editor are waiting to hear back from them, and I figure
some support couldn't hurt.

Oh, and if you feel like it, jump in and help improve the article. Long
live participatory culture!

   [1]: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-4137

   [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/

   [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Development_Round

   [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doha_Development_Round
&oldid=229476744

   [5]:
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/meet08_photo_gallery_e.htm

   [6]: mailto:publications <at> wto.org

   [7]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

URL: http://freeculture.org/blog/2008/08/02/freedom-fairness-and-the-doha-round/

Writes rich on our blog:

Well, crap, guys. How did we let this one slip by?

[HR 4137][1], the College Opportunity and Affordability Act just passed
Congress and is expected to be signed into law very soon.

Inside the bill is the Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention act, a
provision which requires colleges to subscribe to RIAA-approved services
like the new Napster and to install software on the network which
monitors and interrupt transfers which they decide they don't like. This
is a mandate for a non-neutral internet on college campuses. Students
are being targeted by a cooperation between the government and the
intellectual property industry to spy on us, filter our internet and the
resources of our schools by spending our tuition costs on their DRM'd
service. And unfortunately, we let this slip under the radar.

For the full story about the passing is available on [Ars Technica][2],
who have done a better write up than I could do. I also wrote about this
[on my personal site][3] just over one year ago. It seems the bill has
been watered down slightly from the original amendment, but the effect
is the same.

But where was the opposition from Free Culture? I'm not trying to blame
anyone but myself, but I think that **we must develop a way to
constantly monitor and publicly oppose this type of legislation.**
Otherwise, what is the point of our organization if we continue to allow
things like this to happen?! We're going to be an absolute laughing
stock if we have [silly events][4] which celebrate the death of DRM when
we don't make a sound about federal legislation which requires all of
our schools to purchase products which use it. There was only [one blog
post][5] about the bill, 8 months ago. Not a peep since then, no page on
the front page about pending legislation. So I can't say that we missed
this entirely, but a single blog post doesn't affect anything outside of
our own community, which is where the problem lies. It isn't working
because it isn't enough.

So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?

First, I think we should develop a page (perhaps on the wiki?) and a
squad to monitor the progress of legislation which could be a threat to
us.

Second, we should be supporting Lawrence Lessig's [Change-Congress
Movement][6] which will stop corporations from having so much influence
over Congressmen. Particularly Democratic congressmen from California.

Third, I would personally recommend that any student should be using
secure protocols for all of their data transfers to prevent their being
snooped on and tampered with. One such upcoming protocol is [Anomos][7],
a secure and anonymous multi-peer-to-peer file distribution platform.
I'm a lead developer on this project and I will write a post on this
blog about it once our alpha release candidate is announced.

Does anybody else have any ideas about steps we can take from things
like this going unnoticed again? Let's gets some discussion going in the
comments.

Rich, [Boston University Free Culture][8]

   [1]: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-4137

   [2]: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080801-college-funding-
bill-passed-with-anti-p2p-provisions-intact.html

   [3]: http://www.thenewfreedom.net/wp/2007/07/24/harry-reid-d-nvs-
corrupt-campus-based-digital-theft-prevention-amendment/

   [4]: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/zuneral

   [5]: http://freeculture.org/blog/2007/12/14/students-open-response-
to-hr-4137-and-hr/

   [6]: http://change-congress.org/

   [7]: http://www.anomos.info

   [8]: http://bu.freeculture.org

URL: http://freeculture.org/blog/2008/08/02/a-free-culture-failure-campus-based-digital-theft-prevention-passes-congress/

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NYTimes on Girl Talk

FreeCultureNews.Com Bite sized FC Bits

Random thoughts after talking to Paola

Steal This Film's raw footage available and excellent

Re: WTO Licensing

New Lessig Book

Re: End of the Patry Copyright Blog

The Results of Free Culture Gaming

End of the Patry Copyright Blog

Freedom, fairness, and the Doha Round

A Free Culture Failure: Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention Passes Congress