Apologies to everyone who is subscribed to our mailing lists, especially if you have tried to send an e-mail recently.  Our mailing lists have been down for a few days now, and we haven’t been able to fix it.  This is partially due to our lack of web volunteers, and partially due to our inability to manage the web volunteers that we have because our mailing lists are down.  We have some people working on it and hopefully it will be fixed soon.
We would like to extend yet another call for web volunteers, and especially for a webmaster who will take responsibility for making sure the site continues to operate and who can organize the web volunteers.  If you are interested, please e-mail freedom@freeculture.org, and we will pray that our webmail at least continues to work.

This could be a sign of greater things to come: Gavin Baker, one of our board members and co-founder of Florida Free Culture, is running for student government at the University of Florida, on a platform of free culture issues. This is almost certainly a first, in student government or in government at large, at least in the United States (although I’m not sure about more enlightened nations such as Brazil). This election is especially interesting because the University of Florida is the fourth-largest university in the United States, with over 48,000 students (according to Wikipedia), and the student government controls over $12 million of student fees. A position in student government there is at least as important as a government position in a small town, so this is no laughing matter. Keeping that in mind, take a look at Gavin’s platform, which I will reproduce in full here:

• Give students a voice. I will ensure students always have a voice in deciding information and technology policy at UF.

• Investigate ICARUS, the Department of Housing’s anti-filesharing software, and invite students into a public debate for the first time
• Work with the university to establish guidelines for the use of specialized proprietary software in classes, so students won’t be stung by expensive class software that they can’t re-sell

Openness. I will advocate to use technology to make SG and UF more open and transparent, making it easier for students to find out what officials are doing.

• Make the Student Government Web site more informative and useful
• Work with SG and UF to make more public records, information, and services available online, to make students’ lives easier

Sustainable technology. I will promote responsible technology purchasing and fight for sustainable tech policies.

• Expand the use of free and open source software on campus to improve sustainability and cost-effectiveness, including Firefox in all computer labs
• Advocate for open file formats to prevent against vendor lock-in
• Support open standards for UF Web sites, so students can use the software and operating system of their choice

Commitment to the community. I will challenge UF to live up to our commitment to the public interest by promoting access to knowledge.

• Advocate to make the results and data of all research conducted at UF and all journals published at UF open access and freely available online

• Work to expand digitization efforts of public domain materials in UF’s libraries so that content can be free online
• Promote adoption of the Equitable Access License to ensure medical research conducted at UF serves the public good
• Encourage UF to make its course materials freely available online, following the model of MIT’s OpenCourseWare

If only we had someone running for US senate with a similar platform! Perhaps someday you or somebody else reading this blog will…

Voting is on Tuesday and Wednesday, so if you attend the University of Florida or know people who do, I personally would encourage you to get out the vote for Gavin, even though FreeCulture.org cannot officially endorse candidates.

Marybeth Peters comes around: Boing Boing has video of the U.S. Copyright Office director saying copyright lasts too long.

I think [the term of copyright] is too long. I think that was probably a big mistake…

Along with recent concerns over Google Desktop, Google’s acquiescence to censorship in China has many people questioning whether Google is staying true to its unofficial motto, “don’t be evil“. As the New York Times reports in “Internet Lions Turn Paper Tiger in China“, Google has joined Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco in cooperating with the Chinese government, to the detriment of their public image. What is a good free culture activist to do? Clearly we should support Google in their efforts to make information more accessible (e.g. the library digitization project), but has Google become tainted enough that we should begin boycotting and avoiding them?

While a full boycott is probably premature (at least Google hasn’t put any bloggers in jail, unlike Yahoo!), I support Students for a Free Tibet’s No Luv 4 Google Valentine’s Day boycott, to show Google that if they aren’t careful they could begin losing business due to their ethical choices. If Google traffic goes down significantly today, perhaps they will sit up and pay attention. Because Google claims to be ethically responsible, I think that pressuring Google is more likely to have an effect than applying the same pressure to, say, Microsoft.

I also think it is valuable to draw attention to Google alternatives, so that if it does become ethically necessary to boycott Google, you won’t suffer from lock-in and you will be able to make a transition with minimal inconvenience to yourself.

As for what Google can do to stay in my good graces, I think that EFF’s Chinese New Year Resolutions for Google are excellent, and if Google took the EFF’s suggestions I could continue to have faith in Google’s “don’t be evil” policy.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to sign our pledge to boycott DRM. The deadline is 6 February, just a few days away.
In under 1 month, nearly 3,500 people have pledged to never buy a CD with DRM. We far surpassed our initial goal of 500, but the more signatures, the stronger the message to the music industry. Please join us and pledge to boycott DRM—and ask your friends to do the same.