FreeCulture.org signs Philadelphia Consensus Statement

April 29th, 2007 by Gavin Baker

In light of their National Day of Action on April 18, FreeCulture.org has signed Universities Allied for Essential Medicines‘ Philadelphia Consensus Statement.

The statement calls on universities to adopt policies that will increase the impact of biomedical research, specifically to improve access to essential medicines in developing countries. These policies emphasize an approach to managing patents resulting from university research that serves the public interest and recognizes the benefit of the public domain.

The statement has been endorsed by intellectual property experts such as Lawrence Lessig, James Boyle, Pamela Samuelson, and Yochai Benkler, in addition to luminaries in science and medicine, public health, and civil society.

The Philadelphia Consensus Statement represents a sincere effort to advance intellectual property policy in the public interest, and FreeCulture.org is proud to support UAEM’s efforts on this important subject.

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U.S.: Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research

March 14th, 2007 by Gavin Baker

FreeCulture.org is a lead sponsor of the new Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States, along with the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and several library and consumer groups. The petition specifically calls for the reintroduction and passage of the Federal Research Public Access Act in the 110th Congress.

Please show your support by adding your signature.

P.S. I don’t think I ever blogged my letter to the editor in response to the Washington Post’s article about the National Day of Action for Open Access, but it was published and is available here.

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Events for National Day of Action for Open Access

February 15th, 2007 by Gavin Baker

Get ready! Thursday, Feb. 15 is the National Day of Action for Open Access. Several of our chapters across the country will be hosting events — here they are:

The following chapters have also said they’d be participating — contact them for details:

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“…If it wasn’t for those darn kids”

February 9th, 2007 by Gavin Baker

Hi.

We are not radicals. Sorry Washington Post, you’ve just got us pegged wrong.

Our philosophy is founded in decades of legal scholarship. That’s why people like Larry Lessig support us. We may dramatize the issues to help them connect with students, but we are far from radical.

On the contrary, this demonstrates the breadth of the consensus in favor of public access. From the staid librarians to kooky little us. It is the publishing companies, who want something for nothing, that are the special interest, as Peter Suber points out:

Do supporters of national OA mandates like FRPAA want something for nothing? No. We want something for something. Crawford is forgetting that taxpayers have already paid for the underlying research and that publishers pay nothing to receive the written results. Yes, publishers add value to those results. But if publishers and taxpayers both make a contribution to the value of peer-reviewed articles arising from publicly-funded research, then what’s the best way to split this baby? The FRPAA solution is a reasonable compromise: a period of exclusivity for the publisher followed by free online access for the public. If the AAP wants to block OA mandates per se, rather than just negotiate the embargo period, then it’s saying that it wants no compromise, that the public should get nothing for its investment, and that publishers should control access to research conducted by others, written up by others, and funded by taxpayers. I’d call that getting something for nothing.

All Scooby Doo references aside: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

UPDATE: Note that this is exactly in line with the strategy the publishers bought from the “pit bull,” i.e. “if the other side is on the defensive, it doesn’t matter if they can discredit your statements.” It is my intent to remain on the offensive and to discredit their statements.

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Announcing the National Day of Action for Open Access: Feb. 15

February 2nd, 2007 by Gavin Baker

I am proud to announce FreeCulture.org’s participation in the National Day of Action for Open Access on Feb. 15.

Together with the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, we are organizing the day to highlight students’ stake in the debate about access to research. We’re encouraging our chapters to take action on their campus to raise awareness at their school.

Read the press release here.

(FreeCulture.org is a member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.)

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Free culture caucus at National Conference on Media Reform

January 11th, 2007 by Gavin Baker

UPDATED: The meeting room is L6 at 6 pm on Saturday.

I’m organizing an informal “free culture” caucus at the National Conference on Media Reform this weekend in Memphis, Tenn. Since the conference is large and broad in scope, we want to create an opportunity for people with a particular interest in Internet policy and intellectual property to meet and socialize.

The tentative time of this meeting will be during dinner on Saturday night, 6-8 pm. I’ll ask the conference organizers for a room where everyone can meet at 6 pm, and we’ll move on to a restaurant from there. Details will be posted at the information desk throughout the conference, as well as updated on this post. If you would like me to email or call you when the details are finalized, email me at grbaker@ufl.edu (with your phone number, if applicable).

If you’ll be in Memphis, I hope you’ll join us!

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FC.o joins public access alliance

November 14th, 2006 by Gavin Baker
Alliance for Taxpayer Access

FreeCulture.org has joined the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, which supports open public access to taxpayer-funded research. We join other student groups such as Universities Allied for Essential Medicines and the American Medical Student Association as members, along with a long list of universities, libraries, patients, and public interest groups.

Our reasons for joining are two-fold:

  1. As the leading group of student advocates for the public interest in intellectual property and information & communications technology, we recognize access to research as a defining issue for our generation. Public access will lead to faster cures and treatments for disease, improve scholarship and research, and promote development. Whether it’s brilliant photos of space, GIS data, or scholarly journal articles, the people have a right to what they pay for. Access to publicly-funded research, and open access generally, is simply the right thing to do.
  2. As students, we work with academic research all the time. After all, who isn’t required to write a research paper at some time or another? Whether it’s a term paper or a doctoral dissertation, scholarship always builds on the past. That requires access to the work of those who’ve come before us.

FreeCulture.org is proud to support the alliance’s work on behalf of the Federal Research Public Access Act and other efforts. Here at the University of Florida, we worked with the Student Senate to pass a resolution supporting FRPAA and open access — and succeeded. We hope to work with ATA to provide more information and resources to engage students on the issue in the future.

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EFF spreads the blogshine

November 1st, 2006 by Gavin Baker

Last week, our pals at the EFF released the Bloggers’ FAQ on the Freedom of Information Act. The document is the latest addition to the EFF’s series of legal guides for bloggers. From the announcement:

“Online journalism makes a unique contribution to America’s vibrant culture of free speech,” said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. “Using the Freedom of Information Act is a powerful way to shed light on government activities and foster critical public debate about the discoveries.”

FreeCulture.org supports citizen journalism as part of a free and vibrant media landscape. We believe that all people have the right to open government.

Last March, we organized Blogshine Sunday to highlight bloggers’ experiences gaining access to government information. Efforts like the EFF’s guide will place bloggers and independent journalists on even better footing to hold governments accountable.

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Harvard’s Elizabeth on CCpod

August 3rd, 2006 by Gavin Baker

Elizabeth Stark of Harvard Free Culture is featured in an audio interview from the iCommons iSummit ‘06 in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Download the interview here (.ogg format, 5:56).

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Summer of Code applications due Monday

May 8th, 2006 by Gavin Baker

Google is running their Summer of Code project again this summer. (We wrote about the project last year.) For those who don’t know:

Summer of Code 2006 is a program that offers student developers stipends to create new open source programs or to help currently established projects. Google will be working with a variety of open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several hundred projects over a three-month period. The inaugural instance of the program, which took place last summer, brought together 400 students and 40 mentoring organizations from 49 countries. We’d like to include even more organizations and participants this year.

We may not always agree with the actions of Google (or anyone else, for that matter), but it’s hard to argue with paying students to work on free software. Each student accepted to the program will receive a $4,500 stipend for their work, with $500 going to their mentoring organization. Mentor projects include projects such as Apache, Creative Commons, LiveJournal, FreeBSD, the GNU Project, Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Needless to say, this is a great opportunity to help out free software projects and encourage young developers to code F/OSS. The applications are due by Monday at 5 pm Pacific time, so if you’re interested, hop on it!

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