The mission of the Free Culture Foundation is to undo the exploitation enabled by private ownership of technology, media, and communication networks. Our members work locally and globally through targeted campaigns, public education, and policy advocacy in areas including:

• Promote the advancement free software, free formats, & free cultural works
• Raise critical consciousness around technology and intellectual property
• Campaign and defend against significant technological and legal threats to privacy and autonomy
• Network within the free culture movement and build coalitions with other anti-oppression groups
• Organize the development of high-priority projects that support our mission

The organization brings a wide range of stakeholders into the essential conversation about our collective digital futures. We believe in a bottom-up participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down proprietary one. Through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet, we seek to place the tools of creation, collaboration, and learning in the hands of citizens. FCF chapters exist at over 40 colleges and universities around the world.

The Free Culture Foundation, previously known as Students for Free Culture, was founded by two Swarthmore students after they sued voting machine manufacturer Diebold for abusing copyright law in 2003. Since our beginnings, SFC has collaborated with the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, Public Knowledge and other free software and media reform groups.

To contact us, e-mail us at board@freeculture.org, or visit the Contact page.

Board of Directors

• Adelaida McIntire:

  Outreach & Campaign Coordinator | Email

  Adelaida is a feminist theorist as well as a free software and free culture advocate. She’s interested in examining issues of oppression and violence in order to imagine new frameworks of embodiment and subjectivity. One area of specific interest to Adelaida is thinking about how technology influences notions of identity and communication from a critical feminist perspective. Adelaida has worked for many years advocating for feminism, free cultural works, free software, and many related issues since completing her internship at the Free Software Foundation in 2009 and Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2010.

• Jennifer Baek:

  Conference Coordinator | Email

  Jennifer is a 3rd year student at New York Law School affiliated with the Justice Action Center and Institute of Information Law and Policy. She is the Executive Online Editor of the New York Law School Law Review and co-president of the NYLS Chapters of SFC and the American Constitution Society. She is interested in privacy and telecommunications law and policy and hopes to pursue a career advocating for digital civil liberties.

• Kẏra:

  Technology Director and Webmaster | Email

  Kẏra views the importance of the free culture movement through a critical intersectional analysis of oppression, hierarchy, and domination as a way to work against ableism, racism, cissexism, heterosexism, sexism, and classism. They are a student at Hampshire College concentrating on free software and free culture in relation to contemporary feminist, queer, critical race, and cyborg theory. They’ve worked for many years on the advocacy of free software, free cultural works, and many related issues since having been an intern at the Free Software Foundation in 2010.

• Firas Al Kafri:

  Chapter & New Member Coordination | Email

  Firas is currently a software and web developer, studying Computer Science in BAU. He is the Fedora Ambassador in Jordan and works to promote free software and free culture across these activities.

• Preston Bennett:

  Treasurer | Email

  Preston is a Computer Science/Physics double major and a Computer Security minor at the University of Southern California. He is currently working as an assistant director for a summer camp in Texas for teaching kids of all ages how to design various video games or programming languages as well as a music teacher in the Houston area as I have for the past 5 years.

Other officers/volunteers

• Web Team Leader: Alec Story (Cornell University) Email

  Alec is a junior at Cornell, double majoring in Computer Science and Biology. He is a founding member and president of Cornell SFC, and has worked at Google as a software engineer.

• Sysadmin of Last Resort: Asheesh Laroia (Johns Hopkins University alumnus) Email

  Asheesh Laroia received a M.S. in computer science at the Johns Hopkins University in 2007. He received his B.A. in cognitive science from JHU. In 2004, he filed a deposition in the Diebold lawsuit that first earned the student free culture movement coverage in the national media. A long-time participant in free software and free culture, he interned at Creative Commons in 2006.

Alumni Advisory Board

• Ben Moskowitz (UC Berkeley) Email

  Ben Moskowitz co-founded the SFC@Berkeley chapter of Students for Free Culture and created a seminar on the cultural dimensions of piracy. He also co-organized the Free Culture 2008 Conference and the Open Video Conference in NYC. He is currently a student of Mandarin at NYU SCPS and serves as the general coordinator of the Open Video Alliance.

• Kevin Donovan (Georgetown) Email

  Kevin Donovan is a rising junior at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, majoring in Science, Technology & International Affairs with a certificate in International Development. He started the Georgetown chapter of SFC and has worked on technology policy issues at the World Bank’s infoDev program and is currently working on an OpenCourseWare pilot program. He writes about technology policy at Techdirt, his personal blog, and on Twitter.

• Elizabeth Stark is the founder of the Harvard University chapter of Students for Free Culture. She went to Brown University and is currently a lecturer at Yale University, teaching courses on law and technology. She is also a founder of the Open Video Alliance. At Harvard, she conducted research for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, was an Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law Technology, and has worked as Teaching Fellow for courses in Cyberlaw, Electronic Music, and Internet and Society. She has collaborated with organizations such as the EFF, Creative Commons, and iCommons. She is highly interested in the impact of technology on digital culture, and is (semi-)obsessed with electronic music.

• Gavin Baker
• Brendan Ballou
• Fred Benenson
• Nelson Pavlosky
• Karen Rustad

Faculty Advisory Board

• Pat Aufderheide, University Professor @ American University; Director, Center for Social Media
• James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law @ Duke Law School; Co-founder, Center for the Study of the Public Domain
• Gabriella Coleman, Assistant Professor of Media, Culture and Communication @ NYU
• Stephen Duncombe, Associate Professor, Gallatin School, New York University
• Edward Felten, Professor of Computer Science & Public Affairs @ Princeton University; Director, Center for Information Technology Policy
• Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts @ the University of Southern California;
• Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law @ Harvard Law School; Director, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics
• Rebecca MacKinnon, Bernard Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation; co-founder, Global Voices Online
• Kembrew McLeod, Associate Professor, University of Iowa
• Michael R. Nelson, Visiting Professor @ Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology Program
• Brian Rowe, Adjunct Professor at University of Washington’s Information School and Seattle University Law
• Wendy Seltzer, Fellow, Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship; Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

promote the advancement free software, free formats, & free cultural works