Archive:Activist Links

Organizations

A list organizations that work in the areas of of free culture and open access.

• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit group of lawyers, technologists, and everyday people working to protect our digital rights.
• Public Knowledge is an advocacy group working to defend our rights in the emerging digital culture.
• Creative Commons presents an voluntary licensing system for copyright, the Creative Commons licences, which allow collobaration among artists across the world.
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• Downhill Battle works to end the major label monopoly on music.
• IPac is a political action committee dedicated to preserving individual freedom through balanced intellectual property policy.
• Wikimedia's various projects focus on citizen journalism.
• Teleread advocates "Well-Stocked National Digital Libraries".
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• Click the Vote is an independent grassroots non-profit group fighting for new technology user rights.

Free Software

• Free Software Foundation (FSF) is the birthplace of the free software movement. Approaches the issue of software from the perspective of freedom.
• Open Source Iniative maintains the Open Source Definition. Approaches the issue of software from a more practical perspective.

Other Student Groups

Other student groups who touch on the free culture sphere of issues, whether activist groups or pre-professional clubs.

• Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) lobby research universities to license their medical patents for free use in poor countries.
• Intellectual Property & Social Justice (IPSJ) at the University of California-Davis Law School discusses the links between their namesakes.
• Belmont University Copyright Society at Belmont University discusses copyright.
• Information Technology Law Society (ITLS) at the University of Ottawa (Canada) Law School discussed information technology law.

Blogs and News

• Copyfight is a copyright issues news blog.
• Slashdot is a general technology blog ("News for Nerds") which often touches on copyright and patent issues.
• LawMeme is a "law and technology weblog affiliated with Yale Law School".
• boing boing is an enigma which sometimes covers copyright issues, updates about a thousand times a day, and runs (clean) ads for pornography. But some people like it.

Individuals

Here are some people who often make headlines regarding free culture issues.

• Lawrence Lessig is the author of Free Culture, a professor at Stanford Law School, chair of Creative Commons and a boardmember of the EFF.
• Richard Stallman is president of the Free Software Foundation and founder of the GNU Project.

Lectures and Presentations

• Lessig at Swarthmore
• Moglen at Swarthmore

Groups to Watch

• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is an agency of the United Nations "dedicated to promoting the use and protection of works of the human spirit."
• Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
• Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
• Business Software Alliance (BSA)
• National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)

Resources

Open Content

• Internet Archive is a digital library of various medias available to the general public.
• Project Gutenberg produces and hosts over 13,000 freely available eBooks, most digital versions of works in the public domain.
• ibiblio is a "conservancy of freely available information".
• Sourceforge is "the world's largest Open Source software development website."
• United States Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS-21 A searchable index of digitized USGS photos in the public domain from 1872 to 1991.

Copyright Law

• Stanford Fair Use & Copyright Center is a guide to copyright, fair use, and current copyright issues.
• BitLaw is a resource on technology law.

Academic Centers

These are programs at universities which study topics related to free culture.

• Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School is a "public interest technology law and policy program."
• Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is a "research program founded to explore cyberspace ... and help pioneer its development."
• Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School is "the first university center in the world devoted to the other side of the (copyright protection) picture."
• Center for Social Media at American University's School of Communication "showcases and analyzes strategies to use media as creative tools for public knowledge and action."
• Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications studies media law and open government.
• Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism studies media law and open government.