Are you starting a Free Culture group on your campus? If so, register your chapter, and we will ship you goodies to give to your members and people at activities fairs. (Our apologies to anyone who has previously slipped through the cracks when shipping, this registration form should help prevent that from happening again.) Also, you will be officially recognized as a Free Culture chapter and listed on our website. Sign up your group today!

Many of you would probably agree that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which criminalizes (among other things) circumvention of copyright protection measures, is a flawed piece of legislation that stifles innovation and tramples on people’s digital rights. Well, starting November 2, you can let the US Copyright Office know what you think.

Every three years, as mandated by the DMCA, the US Copyright Office decides whether there are “particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention” (see this notice of inquiry). In other words, between November 2 and December 1, 2005, the Copyright Office will solicit comments from the public about what sort of exemptions should be made in the DMCA.

Of course, there are a number of limitations that can prevent an exemption from being granted, including the following (as discussed by the EFF):

• Exemptions can’t be granted for the distribution of tools of circumvention.
• The activity for which the exemption is being granted can’t infringe copyright.
• The exemption would have to apply to a “class” of copyrighted works, not particular non-infringing uses. You can’t, for example, get an exemption for “classroom uses” of DVDs.

The EFF DeepLinks post also contains links to some good guides about understanding the requirements, like Seth Finkelstein’s guide to winning DMCA exemptions. So start thinking about what to say to the Copyright Office and other ways to reform the DMCA.

On Thursday, Oct. 27 there’s a talk on Parliament Hill in Ottawa about Bill C-60, Canada’s proposed copyright bill. Russell McOrmond has a set of instructions on how to invite your MP.

Thursday, October 27
7:45 – 9 am
Parliamentary Restaurant, 6th Floor, Centre Block
more details here

Our fearless leader recently matched wits with three lawyers on Law Journal TV. FreeCulture.org co-founder Nelson Pavlosky, Temple University law professor Donald Harris, Stephen Meyers from the law firm Drinker Biddle, and Dorothy Bollinger from Fox Rothschild discussed cyberlaw and the Grokster decision in “Downloading Music & Movies Off the Internet: No Free Lunch”.

Video of the show is available online here (streaming Real or Windows Media format only — sorry, it’s not our show!). It’s a pretty intelligent and balanced discussion of the legal issues surrounding free culture. It includes both Nelson and Professor Harris’ arguments for limiting copyright, and Meyers’ points in favor of owners having greater controls. After all, it’s difficult to defend free culture without knowing the arguments in opposition!

Our campaign to end business method patents, Cereal Solidarity, is picking up steam. After being covered on Boing Boing and in Public Knowledge‘s e-mail newsletter, it’s filtering its way into the public consciousness.

After only a few days, our online petition has over 200 signatures. Most of those come from the U.S., but a few originate abroad — from over a dozen other countries. This is a nice reminder that in most of the world, business method patents don’t exist — and rightly so!

Our message with Cereal Solidarity is that patents are not a God-given right, they are a government instrument obliged to serve the public interest. This theme is at the core of everything we do to combat the massive, unprecedented expansion of so-called “intellectual property protections”: that copyright, patents, et al. are not property at all, but rather limited state-granted monopolies to encourage creativity and innovation. That’s the view the U.S. Constituion takes, and it’s the only one that can protect individual freedoms and drive economic growth in the 21st century.

The IP maximalists don’t get it. They want a government hand-out; they’re aiming for a full-scale land grab, and so far, they’ve been pretty successful. But capitalism relies on the freedom to compete — and that’s exactly what the maximalists don’t want. If economies worldwide are to remain competitive in the next century, if new businesses are to have a fair chance against established corporations, and if individual user freedoms are to survive, we have to reject that worldview. We must keep the perspective that intellectual policy comes as part of the overall social contract between governors and the governed — that they must serve the public interest.

Right now, business method patents help neither consumers nor businesses. Just ask Bowls owner Rocco Monteleone. Or any of the other cereal bars popping up around the country. Or the Nonprofit Innovation Alliance, fighting to make sure that charities can do their work without having to navigate a patent minefield. For perspective, consider this piece from Business Week citing a recent survey that technology companies rank third in the average number of lawsuits faced — and that tech companies have the most in-house attorneys managing litigation.

Whether cereal bars or search engines, these are the vanguard of the future economy. These are the businesses lauded as the innovators, the movers and shakers, the wave of the future. But IP maximalism chills innovation, shuts it down, lock out newcomers and outsiders — it’s government protectionism of the lowest order. It discriminates precisely against the businesses who can move things forward — and it hurts our competitiveness as a society.

We know this. Now let’s make them listen. Sign the petition and tell Congress to make the law work for the public interest: end business method patents now.

Just when I was afraid IPac had gone dormant, they announce they’re looking to hire a campaign manager. See the job listing if you’re interested.

I think it’s just a fact of life in the U.S. that you need a PAC to make a major impact on electoral politics. We’re lucky to have IPac; hopefully they’ll have an even bigger effect in 2006 than they did in 2004. (Don’t forget about those mid-term elections, folks!)

Today I attended a panel at the annual Conference on Intellectual Property Law at Harvard Law School entitled “Grokster… So Who Won?” Speakers, including Harvard’s own Terry Fisher and U Chicago’s Doug Lichtman seemed to be in agreement: nobody won.

The Grokster case, involving the question of whether P2P company Grokster could be held liable for the copyright infringements of its users, established a new standard of inducement. In other words, if a company is found to encourage and induce its customers to violate copyright, then the company can be held responsible.

To put it succinctly, the sentiment of the panel was that everyone lost. The copyright holders did not want to win on a standard of intent, as Lichtman put it, because this could be easily ducked. What if I create a piece of software that enables millions of people to file share (possible example: BitTorrent), but never intended it for such a use? It still poses a threat to the content holders. The technologists also lost, though, in that they sought clearer delineation of what would and would not constitute secondary copyright infringement when developing new technologies. Developers wanted to have a better idea of what they could and could not do under the law, and this standard fails to provide much insight. Furthermore, the case put what people thought was a clear standard of “substantial non-infringing use” under the Sony Betamax case (i.e. if there are enough legitimate uses, the company would not be held liable) into a fuzzier category.

At the same time, this was not just a clear-cut case of the technology vs. the copyright. The panel made the point that technology was on both sides of the coin. On either side of the case there was a chance for some new technologies to be helped and others to be hurt.

The Grokster case engaged people on many ends— the entertainment industry, the news media, the technology community, college students, activists, and so on. While the court had a chance to make a clear-cut decision that would show the legal system at work, the consensus of the panel was that they failed to do so.

Our newest project, Cereal Solidarity, is ready for public launch!

Last month, I was reading the campus newspaper here at the University of Florida. I came across an article on a new restaurant — a restaurant whose focus is serving cereal. “That’s an interesting idea,” I said to myself. “I should check it out some time.”

Then I kept reading — and was shocked.

When (Bowls owner Rocco) Monteleone took the first steps toward making his novel little idea of a café a reality in October of last year, he never thought about competition.

Gainesville had never seen a cereal café.

Other states had though. (Cereality founder David) Roth and his business partner Rick Bacher were the first business owners to sell cereal in a restaurant setting in 2003 with Cereality locations in Arizona, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

While Cereality hasn’t patented selling cereal, it is pretty close.

Roth and Bacher have pending business-method patents for six specific elements of how they sell cereal, including “displaying and mixing competitively branded food products” and adding “a third portion of liquid.”

I was determined to find out more. When I did, I went into action mode. I knew we couldn’t stand by.

When a restaurant tries to patent concepts as simple as mixing two cereals and adding milk — when patent bullies real businesses and entrepreneurs — FreeCulture.org stands up to express our solidarity.

It’s not just “a bad patent”. It’s a structural failing of the whole system. Patents make sense for mechnical and technological inventions. They don’t make sense for business methods — and they don’t belong there.

Cereal Solidarity is our project to express support for those who suffer under the current system, and raise our voice to cry out for reform.

FreeCulture.org is collecting signatures through the end of the month. We’re asking Cereality to make nice and withdraw their application; if not, we’re asking the Patent Office to reject it. And we’re asking Congress to end business method patents for good.

Visit the Cereal Solidarity site for more information. We need your signature on the petition. We want to show the decision-makers in Washington that we mean business and that real people care about these issues.

You can also host a local event: throw a cereal party, invite your friends, mix as many cereals as you like. We have some materials on the site. (If you do a local event, let me know at gavin@freeculture.org.)

Please sign the petition — and pass it on.

Yes! It’s true! Today we held our first meeting of FreeCulture@Brown. Twas an intimate but energetic gathering of fresh souls. A roundtable discussion about the Free Culture movement, peppered with ideas about future events and directions, ensued at a brisk pace. (Attendees were in favor of sponsoring lectures and panels on various issues, from music downloading to open courseware to drug patents.) It can only be called a success.

A second meeting (next Tuesday at Tech House) is planned, the brains are storming, and the enthusiastic juices overfloweth.

I’m profoundly excited and optimistic about our chapter. Today’s meeting not only reinforced how groovy it is to connect with like-minded peers, but also reminded me that Free Culture is not just philosophically fascinating, not just fun to roll around with in the intellectual grass, not just a matter of hypotheticals and abstractions, but that it is also a matter of life-and-death. It is urgent. It is dire. It is so, so very real.

As FreeCulture@Brown proceeds, I hope to keep that in mind. It’s easy to relax back on a futon and mourn the demise and grotesque resurrection of Napster, but it’s exigent to stand up and rattle even one eardrum about injustice. Brunonians better get some hearing aids.

I’m always happy to announce the recently-established Web sites of some new Free Culture chapters:

• ohio.freeculture.org, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
• emory.freeculture.org, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.
• claremont.freeculture.org, Claremont Consortium, Claremont, Calif.

Also: Any students at North Carolina State University interested in starting a chapter should contact Karrie Peterson (karrie_peterson@ncsu.edu, 919-513-2614).

UPDATE: We are also pleased to welcome Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. to the movement! Check them out at harvard.freeculture.org. –Nelson