Archive:2005-04-03

Meetings

New people introduce yourselves
Everyone say a few words about who you are and how you got involved with free culture issues. We're expecting people from:
 * Princeton
 * Duke
 * Middlebury
 * RIT (Rochester)
 * UIowa Law
 * UC Davis Law

Welcome!

Conference call time
Is there anything to be done about the Sunday time, since a number of people can't make this call? Maybe we need to make a wiki page where people can vote on times that are good for them. How about conference call times?

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

 * 1) You need to stay in contact with the (inter)national organization.
 * 2) * Be on the mailing lists
 * 3) * Send someone to the conference calls
 * 4) You need to agree with the principles laid out in Lessig's "Free Culture" book, at least at a basic level if not in every detail.  This gives us some common ground to work from.
 * 5) * If you haven't finished reading "Free Culture" yet, don't worry, we started FreeCulture.org well before we finished reading the book. In the meantime, watching the OSCON 2002 flash presentation is a good substitute. But you really ought to finish reading the book someday, it will make you better at responding to skeptics and critics.
 * 6) In return, you and your group get a say in national decisions.
 * 7) * We currently operate by consensus, rather than voting. It is possible that this organization may someday be too big/diverse to quickly/easily reach consensus... consensus generally requires the ability to interact and discuss issues on a personal level.  If that happens, we may need to either split up into smaller, more manageable groups (perhaps by geography), or change our decision-making methods, but neither is expected to happen in the near future.

How can you get your chapter going at your school?
We'll discuss what established chapters did to get their chapters running at their schools.
 * Show Lessig's flash presentation, the Creative Commons Get Creative video, and other presentations that introduce people to the fundamentals.
 * Show a movie which is related to free culture somehow, such as Night of the Living Dead, which is in the public domain, or Eyes on the Prize, which is unavailable due to copyright problems. Use this as an opportunity to talk about free culture issues before or after the film.
 * Throw a party. Everyone likes a good party.  FC Swarthmore did a LAN party their first year, and it was a smashing success.

Activist Packet
The activist packet is something we've been meaning to finish for a while... it's supposed to be a "care package" for new groups that are trying to get started. It should contain everything that you need to advertise your meetings, operate a booth at your activities fair, or run your first meeting. It should also contain generally useful and cool stuff that even an established chapter should find useful.

Sadly, we failed to finish it over winter break, so it looks like you might have to wait until next semester to see it completed.

Mounds Park Academy, our first high school chapter
I'm not sure what we have to talk about here.

Can we accept IP-SJ as an FC.o chapter?
We're going to have to leave this question for last, because I sense that this will produce a lot of discussion and debate. This is really a philosophical issue... does IP-SJ hold too many differing beliefs for us to work with them as a chapter? What is an acceptable level of divergence? Eric Nguyen will begin by briefly introducing the areas where our beliefs may potentially conflict with theirs. Then we'll open the floor up for questions, comments, and rocket launchers.
 * Outer boundaries?

Minutes
Attendance: Nelson, Asheesh, Rebekah, Andy, Nick, Ben, Fred, Njeri from Duke, Stephanie and Harlan from Princeton, Pedro from UFlorida, Andrew, Ari from Middlebury, Eric from IP-SJ (Eric was late, so most people missed him)

New people

 * Princeton: looking to get the ball rolling for next year
 * Stephanie: 1st year grad student
 * Harlan: interned at EFF last
 * Duke
 * Njeri, music major, saw the Free Culture tour,
 * Middlebury
 * Ari, read Lessig's book,
 * RIT (Rochester)
 * UIowa Law
 * University of California, Davis, School of Law
 * Eric: 1st Year Law Student, former programmer, interned at the EFF back in 2003.
 * Pedro: Linguistics major at U Florida, saw Florida had a chapter online

Conference Call Time
Post a time that you can come on the conference call times page, and then comment on them to add your favor.

What Does it Mean to be a Chapter

 * Baseline
 * Generally understand and agree with the principles in Lessig's book
 * Outer limits: haven't established, generally designed to help
 * Not focused on physical property law, but follows some analogies such as the right to do what you want "in the privacy of your own home"
 * Mostly interested when it affects copyright issues
 * Not communism
 * Making digital copies is different from physical properties
 * We should be sure to show the distinction between the two and avoid "intellectual property" language
 * We're talking about the regulation of culture, not property
 * Non-profit, not campaigning/supporting particular candidates
 * Questions on what it means?
 * 
 * How to get started
 * Show videos
 * E.g. one of Lessig's talks/powerpoints, the Creative Commons "Get Creative" animation, Night of the Living Dead and Undead Art, Eyes on the Prize (unavailable due to licensing/copyright)
 * Throw a party: LAN party,
 * Provide free software
 * Firefox, Thunderbird, GAIM, Linux distributions/live CDs
 * Find your allies
 * Librarians, Linux fans (computer science department)
 * Discussion sessions: invite faculty, provide food, hold during the day when faculty are available, get them interested in Open Access
 * Put research information online for free instead of being confined to print journals with limited distribution, and the ability to redistribute information, e.g. Creative Commons Science Commons
 * Use word of mouth, talk to people, make announcements before/after class, take advantage of other events

Activist Packet
Need to get to work on it, probably have to wait until summer
 * What would be useful to find in a care package?
 * Provide suggested activities, speakers, talking points
 * General flier layouts: put source files on ourmedia.org or archive.org
 * "Packaged" events
 * Flash presentations, videos, etc. on a CD or linked to archive.org downloads
 * Care package: propaganda, buttons, t-shirts, etc.

Long Term Projects

 * FreeCulture.org National Conference
 * Need to work out funding issues
 * DC Lobbying Day
 * May or June

Mounds Park Academy
Wants to compile an ebook of public domain works that are used in classes as a cheap, convenient resource