Archive:2005-06-12

Conference call on 6 p.m. EST, 12 June 2005.

Week in review

 * conference call with lawyer
 * bank accounts - approved Wachovia, Gavin will call next week
 * merchandise design & licensing - what do we think of the submitted design? have we gotten any others yet?
 * budget - done for AU grant
 * AU grant app - done, submitted
 * trademarking FreeCulture.org
 * domain names
 * org. structure, board of directors, bylaws

Time for conf. calls
Should we move the call from 3 p.m. to another time for the rest of the summer?

Domain names

 * savetheipod.com & savethe.org expire June 25
 * barbieinablender.org & .com expire July 5
 * Which of these do we want to renew?

Fiscal agent
Nelson learned something from PK that's different from how we thought the fiscal agent thing would work. We ought to talk about this and decide on our approach to fundraising for the next months.

Paypal
Quick decision: once we have a bank account, should we open a Paypal account as well?

Org structure, etc.
We have to answer some basic questions to provide a framework for future discussion. I think we should try to answer the following questions either on this call, or within 2 days.


 * Are campus groups part of FreeCulture.org, Inc. or independent entities?
 * Are there "grown-ups" on the board of directors?
 * Are there alumni on the board? If so, are they "phased off" the board, or should there be seats for alumni who graduated long ago?
 * Do we keep a Core Team? If so, how is its role affected by the existance of a board of directors?
 * Do we have an advisory board?

Attendance

 * Asheesh, Nelson, Elizabeth, Gavin, Stephen, Cameron

Wachovia

 * Gavin will call them on Monday. (Will Nelson or Nick need to sign anything?  "It will be revealed to me on Monday.")

Conference call with laywer

 * on Trademarking, charitable limitations statute
 * When Elizabth and he met at EFF (and they also went to another talk), they briefly discussed trademarking stuff. "He'll probably get back on trademarking stuff on Monday."

Merchandise design

 * What did she had in mind? "She's a graphic design student, and she's not real familiar with all our ideas."
 * Elizabeth points out that a t-shirt design need not have a single interpretation, but what we want is something that, When we look at it, we connect with it.
 * Elizabeth has a promise from someone who will give it to her later Sunday.
 * Gavin (I think)'s friend who made the design would do well with more information. Nelson will talk to her to better-inform her about what we want for that.
 * Fred said that he might be able to do a design.

AU Grant budget

 * Let's go on the assumption that Nelson needs to give very specific price documentation.
 * Anything we earn or spend from this point needs to meticulously documented. We don't have a treasurer, so each person who handles money must be vewwy caweful, especially with 501(c)3 in mind.  (The idea is to show that it's not money coming just from members.)
 * Nelson is a consultant being paid by AU to do these tasks, legally. It's essential that it be spent the way that he says it would be.  Nelson will put the grant money in the FC.o bank account, pending asking his AU contact.
 * If we get money in account, it's like he donates funds. If he spends it and gives us the stuff, then he's donating to the group.  He'll talk to his AU contact.

General budget

 * We don't have global idea of a budget, yet; we can't decide that today, but we need to start talking about these things.
 * Nelson proposes, "Why not just let money come in, and then decide how to spend it?" Gavin says, "That's a horrible idea."
 * Gavin points out there are minimum expenses we have, and we have to plan for those.
 * We'll chat about this over the future.

Trademarking

 * Should we trademark FC.o? Lessig says, "Trademark widely, license liberally."  The idea is to trademark FC.o and the image.
 * Elizabeth says, I don't think this a high priority. Officializing the organization is higher-priority, says Nelson.
 * Official decision: "We should look into trademarking FC.o and the logo, but it's not a priority right now." We should look into fees and pro bono trademark lawyers.
 * Nelson suggests asking CC for "best practices" for "granting use liberally." Nelson will talk to someone at CC about this.  Asheesh points out that we might be able to get this document published in the new CC-based Open Access law journal.  Elizabeth will talk to friends to see if anyone wants to publish this.
 * Elizabeth finds price: $325 for electronic filing of application. International adds $100 for certification, perhaps.  Trademarks have to be renewed every ten years.

Time for conference calls

 * Permanently 7 p.m. for the summer. "If you are eating before 7, it's lunch."

Domain names

 * Decision: Let's make a commitment: "Any time we use a domain name, we have to keep it." Let's drop barbieinablender.com and renew all of them.  In the future, we'll only buy canonical domains ("unless there's some legitimate reason").  We table non-canonical domain name renewal discussion.
 * freeculture.net may be an exception to our general rule, which is to buy as few domain names as reasonable.
 * Downhill Battle buys lots of domain names. Other groups can sign on to subprojects, for example.  Also, remembering the URL becomes easier.
 * Nelson proposes that things other people will work with us on get their own domain names. freeculture.org/whatever should be things that are "only us forever" tasks.  Let's eschew strict policies for now, so consider these suggestions.
 * Decision: FC.o should formally own the domain names. The human contact for the domain should be "some sort of permanent webmaster."
 * Tabled: We should spread our $150 in the Budget for undeadart and the other ones.
 * What about "freeculture.net"? Is it worth paying "cybersquatters" rent?  Or, we could widely-offer "freeculture.net" as a general service, in addition to chapters.  If someone wants to do something with freeculture.net, they can ask us.  Asheesh points out that domain names are scarce resources.
 * When Nelson gets the money for the grant, we'll return.

Money questions

 * Public Knowledge's fiduciary agentness - they will do it for free for a few large transactions, but they would take processing fees for small web-based transactions. Nelson says, "We should use them for large transactions" until we're a 501(c)3.
 * Decision: We should get a PayPal account.

Defcon talk

 * We'll hopefully have space at the EFF table and possibly at the Thursday night EFF fundraiser at Defcon.
 * Elizabeth and Fred proposed a talk and we were accepted. The talk is not yet written, though the outline is.  The idea is to compare "free culture" from an artistic standpoint to the code standpoint that hackers have.
 * Elizabeth will blog it and put the abstract on the blog.

Organizational structure

 * We are going to have a meeting for this on Wed. We're going send out an email to determine whether it will an online meeting or conference call.