The Swarthmore Phoenix ran a good article (Free Culture summit unites movement) in its last issue, but I am somewhat disappointed that the reporter was not able to attend any of the events. I suppose I shouldn’t be too upset, since the Phoenix did get to interview Lessig last time he came here, but the FC Swarthmore members quoted are really not the most interesting people who were at the conference.

Although we were not able to record video or audio of the various talks and workshops due to a technological comedy of errors, we did have a number of people who were taking notes, among them Justin from FC Carleton and Elisabeth from Florida FC. You can see their feedback on our mailing list, and you can read Justin’s notes and Elisabeth’s notes on the national and Florida FC wikis.

Finally, I’d like to link to a blog post by Tim Burke, a history professor here who is very supportive of free culture: Kaavya Viswanathan, Christopher Paolini, and Remixing. Tim Burke argues that while all creativity does build upon the past in some way, not all of it is best characterized as “remixing”: some works are more “original” than others in the mind of any ordinary person, and you ignore this common sense intuition at your own peril. He suggests that the free culture movement needs to recognize the difference between obviously derivative work and indirectly derivative work when communicating its message. What do you think?

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