Archive:2007 chapter reports

Christina Xu timekeeping. Short unscripted comments from each chapter.

Harvard : Elizabeth

 * The national conference...
 * Open Access project @ libraries (MIT, Harvard journal price-tagging)
 * Senior Thesis Project - getting seniors to freely license their thesis work
 * Free Music Project --> OLPC and more
 * Upcoming unlegal art event in the fall: TBD

Brown : Zack and Christina

 * Responding to lawsuits against students with DIY Dance Mix, hand-to-hand p2p project.
 * Let Freedom Spin party
 * Fundraising to support student RIAA settlements

NYU : Fred

 * Moving from DRM to Open Access
 * Brought Gavin Yamey to campus twice
 * NYU mini-conference on Jan 13 on Open Access
 * PLoS
 * Sparc
 * Science Commons
 * Talking to many librarians, administrators, Dean of Libraries at Bobst
 * Generally positive feedback but no plans to implement institutional policy
 * Op/ed publishing
 * Hazmat suits / Def by design pressure
 * iTunes Protest

Six months later... EMI's dropping drm from iTunes, I like to think it's because Steve Jobs has NYU on his bloglines. Finally, Ray Beckerman is awesome -- defending RIAA victims in nyc; picking half a dozen cases, increasing day by day. It's a david and goliath thing, but he's doing really good work. There are lots of good (c) implications...

Swarthmore
We're doing outreach to groups that wouldn't normally do free culture. I did a project with the fc music campaign. We have a few different ways to record bands; they only had analog recording, so we got funding and a digital recorder, and a lot of people were interested in doing record production who didn't feel like going and getting that technology; there's been a huge interest since then, with two EPs and a slew of live shows from student and indie bands who are getting paid to come; we're building a media server over the summer to house the digital copies and distribute for free; pressing CDs too.

We're also running an info campaign about where to access free music on the web; cc licensed or ... otherwise archive.org was a big things. We got some really nice feedback from that.

The other unrelated campaign we're doing is: textbook availability; making sure libraries have every text for all courses.

Free_Culture_Labs: getting more coders to work on open source projects. Some contact with people from other schools, trying to get critical mass at Swarthmore.

Columbia
Like pretty much everyone we were concerned about textbook costs. We got started in February. We got a grant to buy 100 flash drives, 250M with our club free culture logo. We filled them with pd versions of all the contemporary civ texts; over $300 in books every year. We gave them out; it got a lot of buzz on campjus, 200-300 kids showed up for only 100 drives. It also got lots of buzz onloine, around campus community, got people talking about the public domain. Some people didn't know what this was, and thought we had illegally stolen copies of the Bible. It was ... hopefully next year we'll get more funding, expand this scope,. Our theory is that if kids only use 1/3 of those books, that's $10k in total savings.

RIAA got freaked out... the amout of info columbia had about us as an ISP. We modified TOR... the problem there is you're hopping b/t nodes in switzerland and russia &c. Programmers in the club rewrote it to only accept ip addresses on columbia's net, which sped it up 5x and worked fantastically. We're now talking with EFF to create a more deployable system so any collegel campus could do it. Ours was the 'CULA' Tor, but we want to make more of a Uni Tor.

If youre campus is part of the Internet 2 network, Tor runs really quickly over that.

Northeastern : Chris
A nice thing about this conf is, I didn't know anythihng about columbia's work on Tor. We've been doing a cheap version, spoofing mac addresses and sharing those; it's not as easy to pass out or deploy over a lot of people... one thing we're doing at NE ois improving our IT dept. We wanted to make it so that P2P wasn't really restricted. When you enrol in the university, you say you won't use the netowrk for any p2p usage. It says 'any'. So the first thing we did was really change that. Oour it dept was so bad that our school was where Napster was developed, just because it was so difficult to [otherwise] share files over the net.

As we shaped our own it dept, we had it so our school no longer forwards DMCA notices, so the yjust get sent to /null and don't go anywhere.

Now we're working on the library ;so people who publish books or journals retain their own copyright; and all are put into IRIS, our open access to all repository. Concurrent with / separate from the harvard senior thesis project, we have our own; so it's put into IRIS immediately. The licensing is unclear, but that's what we're lookiung to improve. We're pushing for this to become a creativity center, where people are encouraged not only to find knowledge, but to put it back in. A remix spot... [a creation and writing spot?] and opening it to the community at large so that not only students can access it. We know have some funding for these creative spaces and work -- it came from the library. And we're doing some fun things with open source games which I can't talk about.

We've been working with Lewis Hyde at Berkman to improve fair use in classrooms, so profs know what they caon use; and so documentary makers know what they expect to be done with it. For instance, if a work isn't available freely and the only way to teach or criticize it is to excerpt it, our profs are encouraged to do that and let the uni worry abou tit, not them.

Media: We're also working on our newpaper now so that lal the material starting with cartoons is CC licensed, to be published elsewhere, same deal with radio. And we helped form the Antenna Alliance, see working group later, to promote free licensing of recorded music.

Reed: Max
You'll have to forgive the brevity of my remarks. I'm from Reed in Portland, OR. This was our first semester as a group. We enterd a funding pool? a lot of kids ame out. we had 3 main projects. 1) cool speakers came, nelson include; ;jimmy wales was in portland, and is buddies with a wikipedian editor at Reed; that generated a ton of interest on campus. We found really helpful in that this appealed for funding to depts that might find speakers interesting.  nelson came under poli sci to talk about his work.

We're also starting a senior thesis project; using DSpace as a foundation for netting our theses.

U Florida: Gavin Baker
We had a cc art show, blatantly pirated from nyu and harvard; "open art" where students, faculty, &c sumbitted, and had an art show and gallery on campus. we started a project to build a community network in town; using Freifunk's software and protocol. This little white gy up here in the corner is one of the buffalos we're running; I don't think he's connected to the net, you can connect to him and be on the mesh but not online [alacloud.net].

We had some speakers in the area, and brought in Nelson from out of the area. We had a grad student, Iran's first female blogger; gave a talkj about what it's like to be from a place where you could disappear for just having a blog. We had groupshark, a p2p company, come by; they have a deal with record companies to get everyone's content on th enetowrk; you could pay and earn credits to dl songs from ther. We had an econ pro ffrom the us talk about net neutrality.

[...]

We've been involved with a number of tech policies on FOSS and software; gave presentations at a sustainability conf, local tech conf, faculty IT showcase. A couple of us went to the nat'l conf on media reform. Then we started a state listserv with people from florida. We've been engaged in state policy as well.

Karen
Fall semester I was abroad, and wasn't really there. So I don't really know what people did b/c they didn't tell me. Last semester: we showed a reenvisioning of the first harry potter movie; with a different audio track that he narrated himself. We also did a mix/trade/flashmob thing where people exchanged mix CDs, f2f p2p. That went really well, we hope to repeat that next year, perhaps on a monthly asis.

Our major political thing was internet radio. Table-tent flyering; we got people to sign letters to send to their representatives. A bill currently considered to relieve changes that would kill most internet radio was sponsored by one of our members' representatives; we'd like to think we had something to do with that.

Next year, we'd like to make the mix/trade thing regular; part of that is: next year I'll be a liaison to the 5c media studies dept. I'm really ecited about this, b/c they have money and like some of the suggestions I've been getting for events - a copyright law in documentaries...

USC (by phone)
Hey guys, sorry I can't be there. In the midst of moving; I guess everyone's just going around talkinga bout their chapters and what they've worked on. We've bene pretty productive this first year. first sem our only real noteworthy event was a 'this film is not yet rated' talk. We also held some pretty successful panels. The first one had actual decisionmakers from many schools within USC. Film, comm/journalism, and just getting them on the same panel to discuss (c), content ownership, creation was really cool. We had another panel that was pretty good but ew didn't do quite as much promotion.

... Cory Doctorow ... Advising was great for us; went above and beyond what any faculty advisor might do. We were lucky for that. I hope everything goes well and everybody has a good time.

Binary Freedom : Chris
The idea of ... one similar vision. To set up a user group about progressive politics and links to free software foundation... most of thhe time work was related to free software and digital freedom. Integrating a grassroots group with fighting today in the digital world. Raising the social and tech. values of f.s.

Antenna Alliance : Tim, Christopher
Offer: recording space, air time, web distribution, work with olpc for artists releasing their music under free licenses. A project we're looking to expand in the coming months. One of our members is going to Jamaica where they're installing recording studios in the prisons, to produce content that we'll help distribute.

Artists and listeners rely far too much on record labe3ls; actually quite outdated. We o to local radio stations, at northeastern, harvard; work with dj's and technicians to provide free recording space to be able to produce their works without any recoup costs or giving exclusive permissions to the recording facility. In exchange, all material we do prouduce is licensed freely. We think this model is important: use community media to assist producers more generally. We want to expand this model to other forms like film. If you want to speak about that, let us know.

Cloud City : Ben
A project I'm starting. v 2.0 of a company I used to run, honeypug, did DIY event production. A record label that put out everything on vinyl and cc-by-sa. still a for-profit operating with non-profit train of thought. b/c most people I know operate as for profits, tis better to be for profit, to show if you do it openly and honestly you can get a lot done. one of the drawbacks is you're not eligible for as much grant money. I'm trying to keep throwing events, and to prefund artists for the public domain. the current model for how artists produce art and expect to make a living off of it... is 'I'll make it now, I'll hope someone will like it and it makes money'. I feel everyone in this room wants more art and music in the public domain -- all of us could put money in a pool and find an artist we want to fund.

It's reversing the way people make money off art, hopefully.

Earlier someone mentioned the idea of how can we start convincing people who might not understand DRM why they should pay attention, how to convince peoplet aht putting their images online under a progressive license is a good idea. For me while all theoretical talkinga obut it is good, th best thinkg to do is make as much art and music as you can and incorporate cc in your own everyday life. and when you produce something people are impressed by, for example if you have to make a lot of event posters --- I'll only used cc-by-sa photos, and someone will come up and say you have no money, why do all your photos have such great work? it encourages this cyclical giving back.

Elizabeth and Kevin are part of the committee including john wilbanks. I"m curious what people have to say including the tech aspects of legality; I'm approaching this from the standpoint of someone who just likes to thro wparties, but don't want them to be escapist and not cut to core issues that the lcoal creative community is centered around, such as needing basic funding.

Free Thesis Project : Greg
"Open Access" [Ed. note -- used here only to mean journals and literature... not the general sense of open access]. The basic idea [for journals and academic literature] is that the research is supported by universities; and yet the results of the work is still only available to people who pay a great deal.

Free Culture Spaces : SJ & Elizabeth
Trying to define what it means to set up a free culture space. There are many things you can do in a space where you can create and share. At Wikimania we're looking for people to help set up free culture spaces. have a centralized cultural, community center so artists can come together to work. Free wifi, art exhibitions, film screenings, meet up with other people. Help out by suggesting a good space with an active cultural movement. Convince people to help set up a space to facilitate this type of dynamic.

Nate : Plone 4 Artists
I both code and make music for food.. here's [a plone installation set up for artists -- calendar tracking for gigs, other site tools for musicians and performing]
 * http://plone.org/events/sprints/plone4artists

Dean & Nick : Democracy Player
We thought there was a space for open source stuff to get out ahead... that's how Democracy Player got started. Dean's going to talk about something else... Do check it out. I'm really excited about the progress being made here on campuses. One pitch for an organizing strategy that worked really well for anti-sweatshop movement. Build on successes at other schools - moe increments of commitment from the university, including joining a moniotring org.

MakeInternetTV.org : let anyone learn how to make video internet feeds. everything from getting equipment, shooting/publishing and promoting it. the entire site is released as cc; it's easy to follow stuff, a cool resource. Sort of the next part of that is to get videos of people who are experienced vid makers onto the site, talking about the ways they make vids; 1 minute tips from established vid makers. that's -- let's see. It's on our blog right now. If there's anyone interested in contributring, come find me afterwards.