Archive:2005-04-10

Meetings

Newcomers?
Introduce yourself if you're new.

Conference call time
Is there anything to be done about the Sunday time, since a number of people can't make this call? Post your suggestions here: conference call times

What does it mean to be a FreeCulture.org chapter?

 * 1) Possibility of "affiliate" groups? E.g., BUCS www.belmontcopyright.com
 * 2) IP-SJ, should they be a chapter?

Future Campaign to unban P2P in colleges?

 * 1) See my opinon piece in my college newspaper, on BitTorrent as Free Speech   -Benjamin from Umiami
 * Campaign to get P2P unbanned on college networks that ban it
 * Provide materials, ideas, general help, act as central clearing house, for students who want to get P2P unbanned on campus
 * /. Discussion:

Minutes
Attendance: Asheesh, Andy, Nick, Eric, Luke from Rochester, Benjamin, Nelson, Fred, Rebekah, David from Swarthmore

Conference Call Time

 * Most everyone on the call was fine with Wednesday, 10:45 PM EST

What does it mean to be a FreeCulture.org chapter?

 * Eric at UC Davis law
 * Started group called "Intellectual Property and Social Justice" (IP-SJ)
 * Focus on the edge cases of IP/copyright law, especially in international environments
 * e.g. if a local tribe discovers medicinal use of a certain indigenous plant, an outside researcher or corporation could take that plant and patent it and market it while denying the ability of the local residents of that area the ability to use and profit from their own natural resources
 * would require a more specific sui generis right that would help protect the
 * another example: an aboriginal indigenous group has a visually-depicted creation myth, which a rug maker in Asia took their paintings and created them into a rug pattern. The group was horrified by the religious and moral offense, and asked for an injunction from the Australian government. The Australian court not only stopped the rug maker, but also began to compensate the tribe for their losses as the court felt the culture of the tribe contributed to the whole work
 * a very interesting but controversial fringe case that resulted in Australian legislation that affects group copyright and could have implications on remix culture or the ability re purpose common cultural themes and ideas
 * has implications on preferential treatment and social justice
 * "intangible harms" - how can we measure them under the law,
 * As an organization, social justice is not an aspect of freeculture.org, but it could perhaps be productive to keep in contact between FC and IP-SJ when our issues intersect and keep a dialog going -- Eric should remain affiliated with our core team and promote dialog on these issues, won't become part of our blog aggregator, but maybe part of our blog roll, and is classified as a "related group" -- we have a common thread of interest, but don't support each other monetarily like affiliate groups do
 * Fits in with school's culture of activism and justice

Related Groups
Staring the Related Groups page to show which groups hold similar ideals and are affiliated with our group activities

Network Freedom campaign

 * Not just about P2P: encourages the ability of groups to set up their own servers, allow outgoing connection on the network, etc.
 * Emphasize technologies that are important to participatory culture
 * Tabled as an official effort until we can launch it in the Fall; in the meantime work on the Network Freedom page to develop materials for the campaign

Local group issues

 * multi-school groups are tentatively OK but could create issues with school policy (funding events at another school, etc.) and may lack a home base
 * Rochester will move its page off of the main fc.o wiki to better separate local content:
 * avoid cluttering up main wiki
 * no webmaster for fc.o so we want to minimize work needed for it
 * encourage decentralization
 * rochester.freeculture.org and rit.freeculture.org will be set up to forward to Rochester's site