BRB.

• FreeCulture.org : This is the “National Organization” as we refer to it. It’s basically a good place to see who is doing what else in the Free Culture world. I’m on the board, but it’s just a title — local chapters are really where the action is at.
• Free Culture Chapters Around the World : See all the other schools where chapters are located.
• FreeCulture.org has a discussion e-mail list, and an announcements list.If you’re looking to debate and talk about Free Culture and these issues on campus, the discussion list is probably the best place in the world for that. Sign up for the announcements list as it’s a good place to learn about Free Culture news before it hits the media.
• Creative Commons, EFF, The Free Software Foundation, and Public Knowledge are the big institutional players in our world, and many people working in the free culture movement either work with them, for them, or around them. Check out their sites for more information about what they do.

More readings, and blogs after the Jump!
Some Readings:

These are all short articles that you should be familiar with if you’re getting into this world (they’re all free to download and share):

(in vague chronological order)

• John Perry Barlow. The Economy of Ideas. 2.03 WIRED 84 (March 1994)
• Samuelson, Pam “The Copyright Grab”
• Boyle, Jamie “The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain”
• Moglen, Eben “Dotcommunist Manifesto”
  
• Docotorw, Cory “DRM Talk @ Micrsoft”
  
• Stallman, Richard “Free Software, Free Society”
  

Things happen quick in this world (though, as a lawyer I once knew likes to say, “There’s never an emergency in copyright.”) so the best place to read about news is usually blogs.

• Slashdot
• BoingBoing
• Lessig Blog
• IPac Blog
• EFF DeepLinks
• Against Monopoly
• Creative Commons Blog
• The William Patry Copyright Blog
• Tech Dirt

The best way to read all of these blogs is to use a RSS reader. I recommend Google’s Reader, but you can also use Bloglines, or the reader in Safari.

This list is in now ways complete, so please add your suggestions in the comments. Thanks!

Guy had the idea of having a “let the next generation not be evil” project with the Stern-Tisch Entertainment Business Association @NYU. The goal is to educate these people now about copyright issues and Free Culture so they do NOT become the RIAA/MPAA of the next generation. We’re going to have a talk with a ppt presentation the week after Thanksgiving, exact date not pinned down yet, in Warren Weaver Hall.

This year’s CC Art Show is tentatively taking place on Thurs, Jan 18 on the 7th Floor of Kimmel; from 6 – 9PM. We’re trying to get the word out by flyer more than by word-of-mouth this year, to get a larger turnout. We’re considering making a YouTube video short of some kind, too; if you know talented ppl (TSOA or otherwise), let them know!
We may be soliciting remixes of last year’s works, but most probably we’re going to be looking for some more original stuff. We’re going be accepting the GFDL and FreeBSD art licenses as alternatives to the CC license, though we don’t really anticipate that to be a major issue.

cheers, and happy halloween!

-eli b.

Link to SecondLife Event page

We launched the Film REmix Contest right at the outset of spring break, and since we didn’t meet during that week of revelry, we now have a ton to catch up about.
There are a lot of interesting collaboration efforts in the air, a lot of support coming in from various outlets, and most urgently, a lot of work to be done with the Film contest.

Even though we’ll be revealing the names and newsbites of our potential new collaborators, we’ll primarily be discussing the film contest, so if you have any friends or acquaintances who are interested in the contest and have questions, tell them to drop by.

Again, I urge you (all) to stop by the meeting; we’ll be there from 5:30 to 7pm.

Hope to see your sunned and smiling faces soon!

Lessig’s blog has a great comment string discussing the various positions, both moral and juridical that can be taken on this case.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, who is offering a class this Spring called Copyright, Commerce, and Culture (E59.1405, call # 42699), wrote a really interesting paper discussing his thoughts on what he calls “The Risky Gamble” Google is taking.

The U Chic Faculty blog presents some interesting thoughts on the revenue stream that copyright holders are (or are not) entitled to.

Andrew Raff’s Blog provides a pretty comprehensive list (with links) of the people and presses currently covering the topic–a couple of the above are included.

I highly recommend that you guys read these; I’m not sure yet what FC @NYU can do with this whole thing, but you can bet that as soon as I think of it, we are going to do something.

“Under the semblance of fairness, it is difficult to oppose a measure that is presented to enhance consumer rights and provide individuals with greater access to media technology. However, “fair use,” the term often identified with the right to use certain copyrighted intellectual property without permission from or payment to the patent holder, is deceptive rhetoric that masks the real effects of this term. Fair use is inherently perverse to patent holders, intellectual property corporations, and most importantly, to the American consumer.”

.
I assume this “policy brief” is meant to be presented as some kind of executive summary to politicians who are looking at HR 1201. I’m not really sure if we should be scared or elated about this — the brief gets fair-use so wrong its almost funny, but you have to worry that the politicians who aren’t immediately familiar with fair-use (probably most of them, right?) will take this PRA brief seriously. Just keeping an eye on the other side…

Richard Stallman Protests DRM With NYU Students @ Tower Records

Also, it seems that Sony has published its own list of 52 CD’s it released with the XCP2 software, with a special note that two discs (including the Ricky Martin album we found) are incorrectly labeled as having the XCP software (glad I bought Van Zant)!

CD’s Containing XCP Content Protection Technology

-Tom

Update: See links to all press coverage on our wiki.