I read a Slashdot article a few moments ago that links to an NYTimes blog post by David Pogue discussing in stark terms a gap in how college students see copyright law when compared to the author. The discussion on the post is marvelous; one commenter brings up John Tehranian’s recent paper, “Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap” (PDF). This paper assesses the daily legal liability of everyday actions of a hypothetical law professor:

All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John’s activities.

The sharp commenter continues:

The point is that copyright law is way behind what is the norm in actual day-to-day life, and part of it is that “fair use” is not part of the law, it’s part of case law, which is far behind practice.

Pogue at the New York Times illustrates what we have long hoped: Many students already believe in some of the things Students for Free Culture does. We want a culture “where all members are free to participate in its transmission and evolution, without artificial limits on who can participate or in what way.” I personally think that the best way to pull people into the future of a culture based on sharing is not to simply take without asking, as in the “download a DVD without permission” example, but to both (1) make people understand the value of sharing their work, and (2) supporting those that do, like the growing numbers of people sharing their creative work under permissive licenses; many of our chapters agree.

We have dozens of active chapters today. Somehow the work we have done has often seemed distant or academic, perhaps deservedly so. But sometimes we’ve made our points in brutally obvious ways, from classic projects like Barbie in a Blender or Cereal Solidarity to newer projects like the Day of Action for Open Access to scholarly literature. Unified by a vision of sharing and openness, our students fight for their own rights to share their own work, argue that their universities and colleges could share more with the world, and explain why more access to knowledge and culture would be good public policy.

On more personal notes:

To all who have participated in chapters of Students for Free Culture, or worked with us on events, or helped organize other chapters (like me, our humble web team leader): Thanks. It’s refreshing to see our active members range from the pre-historic Nelson, whose first Free Culture chapter was founded before the name “Free Culture” described us, all the way to people like Tim who started his chapter this calendar year. I’m personally proud that we’re continuing the tradition of drawing from a broad group of students: filmmakers, technologists, law students, and artists, just to name a few labels.

To Downhill Battle: I miss your inspiring work and your amazing name.

To Jesus: Happy Birthday today (observed).

Last month, the U.S. chapters called our representatives to let them know about a flaw in H.R. 4137 and H.R.3746, two important education bills. We let people know that in its current form, the proposed legislation to renew the Higher Education Act of 1965 includes provisions that could unnecessarily burden networked computing in academic institutions. Despite our best efforts, however, the bills made it out of committee with the troubling language intact.

To emphasize our concern, we have drafted a Students for Free Culture Open Response to H.R. 4137 and H.R. 3746 that outlines the weaknesses embedded in the bills as written. Please take a moment to read the letter and share your thoughts in the comments section of this blog post. Please share it with your fellow students. We’d love to add more chapters to the list of supporters!

In addition, the XHTML/CSS version of the open response was designed very minimally so that you can easily adapt it to the needs on your campus. Perhaps you might re-use some of the text for an article in the newspaper? Perhaps it might provide the foundation for a letter to your administration?

There is still time to ensure that Higher Education Act is renewed without language that could hinder the use of technology on college campuses in the U.S.