U.S.: Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research

March 14th, 2007 by Gavin Baker

FreeCulture.org is a lead sponsor of the new Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States, along with the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and several library and consumer groups. The petition specifically calls for the reintroduction and passage of the Federal Research Public Access Act in the 110th Congress.

Please show your support by adding your signature.

P.S. I don’t think I ever blogged my letter to the editor in response to the Washington Post’s article about the National Day of Action for Open Access, but it was published and is available here.

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FAIR USE Act of 2007

March 1st, 2007 by Nicholas LaRacuente

The FAIR USE Act of 2007 is a bill that would reform the DMCA, restoring traditional fair use as one of 12 major exemptions to the DMCA and codifying the Betamax Doctrine that protects the creators of tools with significant non-infringing purposes should their tools be abused for copyright violations. This bill seems like something we have been awaiting for a long time, so I recommend that we move quickly with our support.

EFF info with link to full text.

UPDATE: One of our UPenn alumns, Bill Herman, writes in support of the FAIR USE Act of 2007, despite some reservations because it is a bit less awesome than the DMCA reform bill Boucher sponsored in 2005.

UPDATE 2: Check out the OpenCongress page for H.R. 1201.

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Events for National Day of Action for Open Access

February 15th, 2007 by Gavin Baker

Get ready! Thursday, Feb. 15 is the National Day of Action for Open Access. Several of our chapters across the country will be hosting events — here they are:

The following chapters have also said they’d be participating — contact them for details:

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“From the trenches”

February 9th, 2007 by Asheesh Laroia

This past Monday, I had a chance a chance to give academic publishers a piece of my mind.

The Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of AAP held a pre-conference meeting that Monday to talk about the way technology, specifically “Web 2.0″, was affecting the way students consume and use academic content. They asked Sayeed Choudhury from the JHU libraries to find a few students who might be able to give them a student’s perspective; he brought me, a history post-doctoral student, and another computer science grad student. The event’s name was “From the trenches”.

We each had a few minutes to talk before we would each be inundated with questions. It was a very active, interested group attending our panel, and I really appreciated that. I made a couple of points, but I want to first highlight one thing that we at FreeCulture.org have been thinking a lot about lately.

That is, of course, Open Access. I believe that the public has a right to read the research it pays for with tax dollars. I further believe that as we start to taste what open access is like, pressure will come from the demand side. At lunch, I talked with an editor of a smallish journal on clinical oncology, and he said that neither he nor the people whose work he was publishing cared much about the access model, so they just did it the way the usually do it: charge for copies.

That’s why I think the demand-side change is so important. When academics realize that they’re cutting readers away from their work, they will demand to be published in an open access model.

I heard a presentation this summer from Science Commons about the work they were doing in analyzing and revisualizing a corpus of neuroscience papers, I was deeply impressed; I saw natural language processing technology being used to make the progress science more comprehensible. But most libraries aren’t allowed to let their students do such analysis because of the contracts they sign with publishers. Open Access has the power to do away with these restrictions; as always, it’s not just about getting it free of cost, it’s about freedom.

Read the rest of this entry »

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“…If it wasn’t for those darn kids”

February 9th, 2007 by Gavin Baker

Hi.

We are not radicals. Sorry Washington Post, you’ve just got us pegged wrong.

Our philosophy is founded in decades of legal scholarship. That’s why people like Larry Lessig support us. We may dramatize the issues to help them connect with students, but we are far from radical.

On the contrary, this demonstrates the breadth of the consensus in favor of public access. From the staid librarians to kooky little us. It is the publishing companies, who want something for nothing, that are the special interest, as Peter Suber points out:

Do supporters of national OA mandates like FRPAA want something for nothing? No. We want something for something. Crawford is forgetting that taxpayers have already paid for the underlying research and that publishers pay nothing to receive the written results. Yes, publishers add value to those results. But if publishers and taxpayers both make a contribution to the value of peer-reviewed articles arising from publicly-funded research, then what’s the best way to split this baby? The FRPAA solution is a reasonable compromise: a period of exclusivity for the publisher followed by free online access for the public. If the AAP wants to block OA mandates per se, rather than just negotiate the embargo period, then it’s saying that it wants no compromise, that the public should get nothing for its investment, and that publishers should control access to research conducted by others, written up by others, and funded by taxpayers. I’d call that getting something for nothing.

All Scooby Doo references aside: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

UPDATE: Note that this is exactly in line with the strategy the publishers bought from the “pit bull,” i.e. “if the other side is on the defensive, it doesn’t matter if they can discredit your statements.” It is my intent to remain on the offensive and to discredit their statements.

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Announcing the National Day of Action for Open Access: Feb. 15

February 2nd, 2007 by Gavin Baker

I am proud to announce FreeCulture.org’s participation in the National Day of Action for Open Access on Feb. 15.

Together with the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, we are organizing the day to highlight students’ stake in the debate about access to research. We’re encouraging our chapters to take action on their campus to raise awareness at their school.

Read the press release here.

(FreeCulture.org is a member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.)

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Creative Commons internship: FreeCulture.org members please apply!

January 23rd, 2007 by Nelson Pavlosky

If you would like a full-time, paid internship this summer in sunny San Francisco, look no further! Creative Commons is offering an internship for students in their San Fran office, and they want you to apply (by March 1st). It’s worth noting that they especially prefer members of FreeCulture.org chapters, but they can’t pick you if you don’t apply! See the description of the internship:

Community + Media Development Internship

This internship is for an eager student who is interested in building Creative Commons and Free Culture communities. The internship will focus on a grass roots effort, and/or media development to encourage the reuse of content. While FreeCulture.org club participation is encouraged for this position, a practical enthusiasm is a requirement. This position will be offered to a non-law student. Particular skills in media creation (video, audio, software) are desired, as well as demonstrated community involvement in and around Creative Commons and FreeCulture.org

Help us help Creative Commons help you!

UPDATE: Heh, some people apparently thought that leaving comments on this post was the correct way to apply for the Creative Commons internship. That is incorrect, unfortunately. The correct way is mentioned on the opportunities at Creative Commons page:

How to apply

If you are a college or graduate student interested in our internship program, send us your:

* Cover Letter explaining your relevant interest in Creative Commons and in the position.
* Resumé
* Two References; please include email and phone number.

Applications and questions can be sent to:

Jennifer Yip
Office Manager
fax: 415.946.3001

Thank you for your interest in our organization. Please no phone calls.

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Antenna Alliance: A CC Recording Collective

January 21st, 2007 by Dani Probably

Antenna Alliance (AA) is a “no-profit record label/recording collective” put together by students, musicians and DJ’s in the Boston/Cambridge area. Their deal? They give bands FREE recording time and space, with one stipulation: the music must be liberally licensed.

Not such a bad trade. And once tracks are down, they’re sent to affiliate stations in the region for airplay. The kids at AA even claim “[i]f it’s really, really good we sit around making nice CD cases with construction paper and glue.”

The project’s roots are deep in free culture, and it only makes sense for chapters outside Boston/Cambridge to participate. If you’re interested in helping to expand the scope of AA, check us out and let us know!

-The Boston Phoenix on AA
- AA on MySpace
- A Free Sound: my (closed-source, I know) blog on the label’s progress, and relevant issues of free culture and music

UPDATE: Antenna Alliance was recently covered on public radio, on the show Here and Now on WBUR:
Music Sharing Program For Musicians.

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Free Culture Labs

January 20th, 2007 by Nicholas LaRacuente

I, Nicholas LaRacuente, am a current Swarthmore freshman (class of 2010). My initial interest in the Free Culture movement came from the open source software that has allowed me to grow as a hacker and developer. I am proud to announce that I will be leading a new project on FreeCulture.org, Free Culture Labs.

Free Culture Labs will be a network for open source hackers interested in assisting development of open source, Free Culture-related software. Free Culture Labs will work to recruit interested programmers, primarily (but not exclusively) from college campuses. We will provide resources for entering members and suggest projects for experienced developers. These projects will include both those directly maintained by FreeCulture.org and some from external organizations that relate to our mission.

We are interested in suggestions as to what specific software we should use for the project, including bug trackers, repositories, blogs, wikis, forums, and version control. We are currently considering Wordpress and bbPress for the blog/forums and expect to host projects externally. The current wiki page is at http://wiki.freeculture.org/Free_Culture_Labs.

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Free Culture Discussion list

January 18th, 2007 by Asheesh Laroia

One of the most active parts of the FreeCulture.org community over the years has been the discuss@freeculture.org mailing list. Students, faculty, and non-academics have long discussed Free Culture, software freedom, and related issues there, as well as highlighted web links of interest. We’ve seen subjects range from the Pirate Party through copyrighted laws to Open Access policies for scientific publication.

Three months ago, our old web hosting provider (Leafyhost) suffered a disk failure and didn’t have backups of our data, so we lost our subscribers list. So we want to take this chance to re-invite you all to discuss Free Culture!

Visit our list information page to sign up (or unsubscribe, if you choose). You can read the archives on the web, too.

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