NBC recently filed comments for the FCC recommending that ISPs be required to screen all the traffic passing over their network for copyright infringement. The social and economic costs of such a system would be enormous, and that’s on top of the concerns of technical feasibility!

Last week, FreeCulture.org signed a response statement along with Consumer Federation of America, EDUCAUSE, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Free Press, Knowledge Ecology International, Media Access Project, New America Foundation, Public Knowledge, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

NBC Universal (“NBC”) has asked the Commission to require that broadband providers “use readily available means to prevent the use of their broadband networks to transfer pirated content.” While we agree that there are appropriate ways to discourage copyright infringement on the Internet, NBC’s call to require that broadband providers use “bandwidth management tools” to effect this end is misguided. Any attempt to use this technology to control what may be done on the Internet will have serious unintended consequences. Particularly, these technologies limit First Amendment freedoms, stifle innovation, threaten personal privacy, and do little to address the underlying problem. Additionally, NBC’s proposal invites the FCC to exceed its jurisdiction.

You can read the full comments on Public Knowledge’s site or as a PDF.

Also check out NBC‘s original comments (PDF link) for a good laugh, and Public Knowledge’s coverage and commentary.

Are you interested in volunteering for FreeCulture.org and helping to bring free culture to campuses across the United States and around the world? Now is the time to join us and lend a hand!

Tonight, Sunday July 22nd, at 8pm EDT (calculate your time zone), we will be holding an online meeting to discuss the various ways that people can volunteer with FreeCulture.org and advance the cause of free culture among students everywhere. It will take place in our IRC channel at #freeculture in irc.freenode.net (more info on IRC), an internet chat room that anyone can join. You can see the agenda for the meeting on our wiki ahead of time, and after the meeting is over minutes should eventually appear there as well.

Whether you can make this meeting or not, if you are interested in volunteering please join the Volunteers mailing list, and we will send you information about future meetings and other relevant information.

There are plenty of opportunities for people who are not members of a chapter, so anybody who is interested in helping us out should feel free to attend this meeting and join the Volunteers mailing list.

FreeCulture.org now has a status blog for our website at fcostatus.wordpress.com (feed), where we will post news about problems with our website, downtime, emergencies, etc. This is in response to the bug about needing an off-site status blog. Check the status blog anytime FreeCulture.org’s website does not seem to be working, and hopefully you’ll find information there to calm your nerves (e.g. “We know about the problem, we’re working on it.”). If we haven’t posted anything indicating that we are aware of the problem, please contact us right away and let us know, as detailed at what to do if the site is down! For the lazy, the contents of that page are pasted here:

What to do if the site is down

Oh no! FreeCulture.org or some portion of it or its related services is broken/unavailable! What do you do now?

1. Check whether we have posted anything on this status blog indicating that we are aware of the problem.
2. If there is no indication that we know of the problem, then please tell us about the problem right away! Jot down a clear description of the problem, then contact FreeCulture.org’s web team in one or more of the following ways:

* E-mail our sysadmin, Asheesh, at asheesh@asheesh.org, and/or
* Pop into our IRC channel at #freeculture on irc.freenode.net, and mention it to people in that chat room. More info about our IRC channel is available on our wiki. If you don’t know what IRC is, skip this step, and/or
* File a bug on our bug tracker on Launchpad.net. (Unfortunately, this requires you to register an account on Launchpad.)

If it’s a real emergency, and you haven’t succeeded in reaching people in any other way, you may call Asheesh personally at +1 (585) 506-8865.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, one of our goals for this summer was to “solidify our organizational structure”, by writing bylaws and electing new leadership. We have written a draft of the bylaws, and all FreeCulture.org chapter members should read the bylaws and comment on them. But don’t wait too long, because the clock is ticking! Here is the timeline for accomplishing these tasks, which will give us both official bylaws and a new board of directors by the start of the school year.

* 2007-07-29 — Bylaws comment deadline / RC 2 release (voting opens). All comments on the proposed bylaws are due by Sunday, July 29th. That same day, we will have a meeting to discuss the changes and merge them into a second draft. Update: The bylaws RC2 meeting will take place at 5 pm EDT in #freeculture on irc.freenode.net (see this page for help with IRC) (see this page to convert to your time zone). Immediately upon completing the second draft of the bylaws, we will send it out to the chapters to be ratified, and begin accepting ratification votes.

* 2007-07-29 — Chapters re-registration opens. We will need the chapters to ratify the bylaws and vote in the board of directors election. Only chapters that re-register for the new school year will be allowed to vote in either case, ensuring that inactive chapters don’t hold up the voting process. We are currently overhauling our website, and we will have a new registration system up by Sunday, July 29th.

* 2007-08-05 — Voting closes on bylaws RC2 ratification. The deadline for the chapters voting on ratifying the bylaws is Sunday, August 5th. If we reach the required percentage of ratifications by that date, we can move on to the next step. (The bylaws will specify what that required percentage is.)

* 2007-08-06 — Nominations for the Board of Directors begin. Assuming that we have ratified the bylaws, the very next day we will begin accepting nominations for the board of directors from the chapters. Prospective board members should write up their bios and platforms and publish them on our wiki, so that chapters can start thinking about who to vote for.

* 2007-08-12 — Board of Directors voting opens. On Sunday, August 12, we will begin accepting votes from our chapters for the board of directors. (The bylaws will specify the voting method for the directors.)

* 2007-08-19 — Board of Directors voting closes. On Sunday, August 19, voting will end and the votes will be tallied. Once the board has been elected, the new board will schedule their first meeting ASAP.

So if you’re an FC.o chapter member, please be sure to go to the bylaws page on our wiki and leave your comments! That’s the first step.

After two and a half years of grey-on-grey, FreeCulture.org is moving to a new design…that is still mostly grey. Alas. In all seriousness, though, we’re very excited about the new look of FreeCulture.org.

Probably the most major change with the new site is that we’ve moved the entire site into open-source WordPress, which previously only ran our blog. This will make editing the site’s content and appearance in the future more accessible for non-geeks and much easier for everyone.

The new site, grey boxes notwithstanding, is a lot more dynamic and includes plenty of pictures and graphics, something the old site didn’t have very much of. It also makes it easier for visitors to learn about FreeCulture.org by putting information about the organization and the free culture movement generally right on the front page.

The site will see a few tweaks in the coming weeks, likely including a new mailing list signup, web IRC client, an ‘issues’ page, minor CSS hackery, and some new content and links. But overall, the web team is pretty proud of the new face of FC.o. Thanks to Matthew V., Asheesh, Karen, Nelson, Pascal, Nicholas L., Parker, Alex, and everybody else who helped code, draw, and debug the new design!

If you see a problem with the new site, please visit our bug tracker on Launchpad and file a bug report. (Please file separate bug reports for separate bugs, it makes it easier to keep track.) This is seriously easy, don’t worry if you don’t have any web design skills, just explain the problem explicitly and in as much detail as you can, including which browser/OS you are using.

We can also use help maintaining and improving our website, so if you’re interested in helping out just e-mail web@freeculture.org or swing our IRC channel, #freeculture on irc.freenode.net.