As we mentioned in our introductory post, the five of us on the board are excited to help coordinate a great year for Students for Free Culture by working on the Open University Campaign, ensuring user-friendliness, promoting SFC, and planning the next Free Culture Conference. However, all that awesomeness is going to take some funding, so we wanted to remind the blog readers that a great way to support Students for Free Culture is to purchase the really great T-shirts we have available.

For only $20 (+S&H), you get a really high-quality shirt designed by Patrick Moberg and made by American Apparel. Mine (the colorful copyleft one) has been a great conversation starter for people who otherwise would not be at all familiar with the work we do with Students for Free Culture.

So, help promote free culture by purchasing one of the Students for Free Culture shirts!

As many of you know, following the Free Culture 2008 Conference, Students for Free Culture began the Open University Campaign – an initiative to increase collaboration, sharing, and openness at the level of higher education. With the academic year about to begin, we want to invite all interested parties to assist the with project; after all, we wouldn’t be very genuine if we didn’t do this in an open manner ourselves!

About the Open University Campaign

In October 2008, Students for Free Culture drafted and adopted the Wheeler Declaration which declared that:

“An open university is one in which:

1. The research produced is open access;
2. The course materials are open educational resources;
3. The university embraces free software and open standards;
4. The university’s patents are readily licensed for free software, essential medicine, and the public good;
5. The university’s network reflects the open nature of the Internet,

where “university” includes all parts of the community: students, faculty and administration.”

Out of this agreement has grown the Open University Campaign, of which a major goal is to produce objective, reliable indicators of individual universities’ levels of openness. A primary method through which this will be accomplished is through “report card” style profiles of leading institution of higher learning, similar to College Sustainability Report Cards. Students for Free Culture has already begun this work by defining principles of measurement, researching available resources, and developing surveys to be distributed to universities.

What Will the Open University Report Cards Entail?

Mirroring the Wheeler Declaration, the Open University Report Cards, as currently envisioned, will evaluate schools on five topics:

1. Open Access: Are faculty required to make their scholarship open access? Is the university press publish open access materials?
2. Open Educational Resources: Does the university create OERs? Does the university use OERs?
3. Free and Open Source Software and Standards: Does university computing use FOSS? Are students and faculty required to use proprietary software?
4. Intellectual Property: Is IP revenue transparent? Is IP used to promote innovation, or restrict knowledge?
5. Network Management: Is the network neutral? Is user privacy respected?

Establishing credible criteria under which schools will be assessed will be essential to creating a respected resource. For example, Which schools’ open access policies are currently lacking important criteria? Or, To what extent should a school actively support FOSS? The volunteers currently involved with the project are working through these questions on the wiki page, and we encourage you to join the conversation.

What the Open University Campaign Needs

In order to make this a successful endeavor, Students for Free Culture needs your involvement!

• Are you a student who can research official university open access policies?
• Are you passionate about FOSS and can develop a questionnaire for IT administrators about FOSS policy?
• Are you statistically-inclined and can handle data on universities?
• Are you a web developer who could create a public website for the Open University Report Cards?
• Are you a graphic designer who could create posters to raise awareness on campuses?

In Closing…

The Open University Campaign recognizes that scholastic advancement occurs most readily in an environment of sharing, openness and collaboration. By providing a cross-index of leading universities, the project will add important comparative measurements to encourage increased academic openness. Our hope is that these resources will provide a platform from which openness activists can endeavor to improve the scholastic environment.

Join us by jumping into the wiki, signing up for the Open University mailing list, or emailing board (at) freeculture (dot) org with suggestions or questions!

It’s that time of the year again—the third annual Sparky Awards invite contestants to submit videos under two minutes that imaginatively portray the benefits of open access.

The Grand Prize winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000 along with a Sparky Award statuette, a copy of Final Cut Studio, and an iPod Nano. The Runner Up and People’s Choice Award winners will each receive $500 cool ones.

Check out some previous years’ winners:

GrowUp from SPARC on Vimeo.

Brighter from SPARC on Vimeo.

Entries in the international Sparky Awards competition must be received before December 6, 2009. To be eligible, videos must be freely available on the Internet and available for use under a Creative Commons License.

The 2009 Sparky Awards are sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, Campus MovieFest, Penn Libraries, Students for Free Culture, and the Student PIRGs, and organized by SPARC. For details on the contest and tips on organizing a local competition, visit the Sparky Awards Web site at http://www.sparkyawards.org . For details on the contest and tips on organizing a local competition, visit the Sparky Awards Web site at http://www.sparkyawards.org .

IssueLab, which seeks to highlight the research that non-profits undertake, is hosting a remix contest. The challenge asks participants to remix one or more of the 300+ Creative Commons licensed reports available on their site with openly licensed video, images and/or music. Prizes include a netbook, flipcam, and more!

Says Gabi Fitz,

The contest is really unique in that it is focused so squarely on connecting students and working artists with the valuable research that nonprofits do… while spotlighting the critical importance of open licensing in the process of remixing for social change.

So, check out the contest website and give your creative side a whirl by Dec 31st.

Although it is being modified, in the interest of better informing students about the Google Books Settlement, Students for Free Culture has solicited the thoughts of a variety of experts who are providing guest posts reflecting on how the settlement will likely impact students.

In this guest post, Ryan Radia, an information policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argues that the privacy concerns raised by the settlement are not convincing.

Wonder why practically every student today uses Gmail, YouTube, or some other Google service? Chances are it’s because they’re free. Designing and running these services, however, is not.

So how does Google make enough money to fund its services when it doesn’t charge the vast majority of its users? Simple: Advertising, which accounts for 99% of Google’s revenue.

Online ads can be annoying – we’ve all encountered obtrusive pop-ups – but they play a crucial role in online commerce. In 2008, advertisers spent over $23 billion on Web ads. It’s no secret why so many firms buy ads – done properly, advertising can build brand reputation, spur sales, and inform potential customers. But perhaps the best part about advertising is that it sustains free Web services.

Google Book Search is no exception. While Google would sell digital books under the proposed settlement it’s reached with authors and publishers, advertising would still likely generate a large share of revenue for Google Books.

This is great news for authors and readers alike. Authors would earn the majority of ad revenues (63%, according to the latest version of the settlement). Users would also benefit, because the Google Book deal would allow anybody in the U.S. to freely search and browse tens of millions of currently unavailable books.

Yet not everyone is happy about the deal. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU, and others have called for strict limits on the data Google may collect from Book Search users. The groups argue that storing detailed information about what books individuals read and purchase would violate readers’ privacy.

These groups forget that data collection and strong privacy protections can and do coexist. Amazon’s Kindle, a portable reading device that has sold millions of digital books, stores extensive data on its users. ACLU and EFF haven’t identified a single actual harm that’s resulted from a breach involving Kindle, or any other digital book service for that matter.

Google’s business depends on user trust, so it has a huge incentive to keep user data as safe as possible.

Google’s critics should turn their attention to the real privacy threat: Government. To date, courts have refused to apply Fourth Amendment protections to data stored with “cloud” services like Google’s. Thus, a mere subpoena – civil or criminal – is all it takes to force Google to disclose user information to the feds.

ACLU and EFF argue that limiting Google’s data collection reduces the chances that courts will get a hold of personal data. Fair enough. But limiting data collection has serious downsides. Without individualized data, advertisers cannot target ads, meaning users are far more likely to see “dumb” ads. Because users don’t click on these ads as often, advertisers earn less revenue, and authors earn less money. Worse, dumb ads undercut Google’s revenue, reducing its incentive to invest in scanning orphan works.

Limiting government’s power to obtain personal data is a far better solution to privacy concerns than saddling Google with onerous data collection limits.

For its part, Google could help further privacy without endangering advertising by disclosing how many “enforceable requests” for user data it receives, and explaining how it decides whether to challenge court orders that demand user information.

Moreover, concerned users can always adopt privacy-enhancing technologies that protect anonymity and limit data collection on an individualized basis. And traditional libraries, which offer strong privacy protections, aren’t going anywhere.

But let’s not forget that the real privacy violator is the government, not Google.

– Ryan Radia

Previous Posts in This Series

• Introduction
• Derek Slater of Google
• Rebecca Jeschke of EFF
• James Grimmelmann of NYLS
• Brandon Butler of ARL
• Ed Van Gemert of UW-Wisconsin
• Jason Schultz of UC Berkeley

The first Year One movie of the semester is Be Kind Rewind by Michel Gondry, a sweet film that tells the story of a group of friends trying to save their neighborhood video store.

Below, I’ve offered some of my reflections on the film along with questions it raised for me. I hope this can be a useful guide to get conversations started in your chapters. Definitely leave a comment and let me know what came up for you!

Caution: spoilers ahead.

“Listen, kids. We need to simplify…”

After accidentally erasing all of the store’s cassettes, the friends start taking requests and producing bespoke versions of their customers’ favorite movies. Challenged to recreate everything from Ghostbusters to Boyz N Da Hood to Driving Miss Daisy, they cast their neighbors in supporting roles and craft fantastical costumes and special effects from materials found in a nearby junkyard. Business picks up quickly for the fictional filmmakers and soon they’ve drawn the attention of everyone from awetruck film buffs to stuffy MPAA representatives (portrayed in brutal parody.)

“Stockholders in their own happiness.”

Be Kind depicts one image of free culture in action. It raises many of the same questions that challenge real creators working outside of the conventional media industries. Who owns popular culture? What makes a film “good”? Where are the boundaries among inspiration, adaptation, tribute, and infringement?

“Taste has nothing to do with it.”

Outside the content of the film itself, the circumstances of its production, release, marketing, and distribution raise many issues of interest to free culture activists. First and foremost, Be Kind Rewind was produced by New Line Cinema which has been owned since 1996 by closed culture zealots, Time Warner. How do we read a film that seems to encourage remix culture when it is structurally supported by the same corporation that effected the YouTube massacre of January 2009?

Bootlegging device

When Be Kind was screen at MIT, the invitation included the following instructions:

This screening will be monitored for unauthorized recording. By attending, you agree not to bring any audio or video recording device into the theater and consent to a physical search of your belongings and person. A video cell phone is classified as a recording device and cannot be taken into the screening. Any attempted use of recording devices will result in immediate removal from the theater, forfeiture of the device, and may subject you to criminal and civil liability. Please allow additional time for heightened security.You can assist us by leaving all non-essential bags and cell phones at home or in your vehicle.

In response, MIT Free Culture brought a large pinhole camera to point at the screen (which drew a laugh from Gondry) and handed out ironic stickers to attendees with slogans like, “I am a recording device” and “I will recount this movie to my friends.” After the screening, Ana Domb wrote more about the contradictions in a “a movie about the fringe [...] that has chosen to play by the conventional rules.” Is it possible to play both sides?

“Maybe I am in Ghostbusters!”

In addition to its curious position relative to the film industry, Be Kind points to the inextricable relationship between free and pop culture. The characters’ familiarity and appreciation for Hollywood cinema is central to the development of their unusual films. When one character proclaims, “Maybe I am in Ghostbusters!” He calls into question the authority of a movie that is as much a beloved popular myth as it is an industrial commodity. How far outside of Ghostbusters is any fan? When someone maintains a Ghostbusters fan page on which he explain the physics of ectoplasm, isn’t there a measure by which he is more “in” Ghostbusters than actor Bill Murray, who merely played Dr. Peter Venkman for a paycheck back in ’84?

“We were supposed to remake Back to the Future instead of Ghostbusters.”

Both the characters in the fiction and the filmmakers themselves faced questions of copyright infringement in their productions. According to a promotional interview with Melonie Diaz, Gondry had to get permission for each movie that is remade within Be Kind Rewind and that Back to the Future had to be written out of the script because of legal constraints. In real fan production, the law rarely intervenes until after release.

Back to the Future (Sweded)

As Gondry hoped, Be Kind Rewind inspired numerous fans to create their own low-budget remakes of big-budget films. Jurassic Park, The Neverending Story, and – yes, even Back to the Future, got the Be Kind treatment.

Shot-by-shot remake of Journey’s “Separate Ways” music video with original inset

Of course, fan remakes long precede Be Kind Rewind. Lovingly crafted shot-by-shot productions abound on the web in parody and tribute to an enormous variety of music videos, TV shows, and films.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation

Perhaps the most well-known shot-by-shot remake is Raiders of the Lost Ark: the Adaptaion. Undertaken by three friends after seeing the film’s 1982 theatrical release, they used a bootleg audio cassette recording and as much reference material as they could gather from storybooks and magazines to construct their finely detailed recreation. The trio worked on the Adaptation for their entire adolesence, finally completing the remake seven years after they began. Despite the project’s considerable press attention, the legal tangle of copyright has restrained its widespread distribution and it is seldom screened.

Nollywood Babylon

Be Kind Rewind encourages viewers to reflect on our assumptions about Hollywood, authorship, ownership, and the creative possibilities in an age of accessible media technology. What other film industry paradigms might be possible? Nigeria’s “Nollywood” scene, a favorite documentary subject since its inclusion in 2007′s Good Copy, Bad Copy, reveals radically different models for financing, producing, distributing, and viewering films. If the Hollywood system is really falling apart, as we are lead to believe, how might the North American system be similarly re-imagined?

Gondry remakes his own trailer

How might Be Kind Rewind have proceeded differently? Are you satisfied by its conclusion? Could a culture of “sweded” remakes co-exist alongside conventional Hollywood cinema? Which Ghostbusters do you prefer?

Who’s going to be the first remix or remake Be Kind Rewind itself?

“Seed”, Manky Maxblack, BY-ND

Year One is a project to help new (and re-new-ing) chapters survive their first two semesters. It is loosely structured around a series of meetings and movie nights that will make connections among chapters and bring new members up to speed on the thornier issues of free culture past and present.

Year One is aimed at new chapters but is open to all who would like to participate. To get involved, drop me an email: kevin /at/ freeculture.org.

Here is a partial list of chapters being (re-)organized this semester:

• University of Alabama, Birmingham
• Case Western University
• University of Illinois/Urbana Champaign
• European University Institute, Florence
• Middle Tennessee State University
• University of Southern California
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Yale

For more information on the project, take a look at the (always in progress) Year One wiki page.