Results of FreeCulture.org bylaws voting

October 1st, 2007 by Asheesh Laroia

I’m pleased to announce that the new FreeCulture.org bylaws have been approved by our beloved chapters. The bylaws require no quorum and simply that 3/4 of the votes given by registered chapters be in support of their approval. (Earlier today I misunderstood those bylaws and thought that 3/4 of the chapters must actually vote. I’d like to apologize again for that. That’s probably the first substantive misinterpretation of the bylaws, and I wonder if it will be the last.)

The votes are: 13 for, 1 against, and 4 votes I couldn’t count in the real total. This brings to a close a hard process that I dropped out of because it was so hard, and it should set the stage for more clarity in the role and activity of FreeCulture.org. Here are the votes I received in no particular order:

Chapters voting for the bylaws were: UNC Chapel Hill, Swarthmore College, Brown Free Culture, the American University in Cairo, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NYU, Virginia Tech, University of Southern California, Chadwick Free Culture, Seattle University Law Free Culture, Florida State University, Northeastern Free Culture, Free Culture 5C.

Chapters voting against the bylaws were: Harvard College.

Groups not yet registered with us but sending in votes (all were for ratification) claimed to represent: Northwestern University, Monterrey, University of Chicago.

Chapters voting late (all were for ratification): Columbia University.

It’s been a pleasure receiving your votes, even as I am now embarrassed that I urged some of you to vote under the misunderstanding that a quorum of 3/4 of the chapters was necessary.

(One thing I’ve learned from this, which I secretly already knew, is that the chapter registration system is confusing. Sorry about that, too.)

UPDATE: Nelson sez: If you’re wondering why passing the bylaws was good/important, you might want to check out Gavin Baker’s comments on the bylaws.

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Protect Your Students and Your Privacy: A New Project

June 21st, 2007 by Brendan Ballou

Hi Everyone-

My name is Brendan Ballou, and I’m from the Free Culture chapter at Columbia. Some of you may have already heard about EFF’s onion router (Tor, http://tor.eff.org/). Basically Tor is a program that prevents outside parties (your university, your ISP, the RIAA, etc) from tracking your movements on the web (all of it – including file sharing). It’s an incredibly useful tool - one in fact that Chinese dissidents use to keep information from the Chinese government.

Last semester we modified Tor to run only over the Columbia University intranet. Our modified program, the Columbia University Local Area Tor (CU-LATOR) ran much faster than the standard version, and now we want to expand to other universities that participate in Internet2 (to maintain network speed). If you would be interested in having your school participate in this larger, nation-wide uni-tor (we’re working on a name), please email me, because the more schools that participate, the faster the network will run and the safer all our information will be. You don’t need to be a coder to be involved, we just need boots on the ground to help publicize the program and get people to use it. You can check if your school participates in Internet2 here: http://members.internet2.edu/university/universities.cfm

However, if you are a coder we need your help too. Our version of Tor is shaky on windows boxes - so if you’re interested in improving the program for windows email Ron Gejman at rsg2119@columbia.edu.

This is a fun project, and an important one too. We hope we can get your help in keeping students’ data safe and private.

Best,

Brendan Ballou

bcb2114@columbia.edu

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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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FreeCulture.org at the University of Southern California

September 9th, 2006 by Jacob Lefton

More evidence that good things come in threes:

(1) The FreeCulture.org chapter at the University of Southern California is holding its inaugural meeting this Monday! If you look at our nifty map, you can see how we’re spreading across the country. Although the west coast is still underrepresented, USC will be joining the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, UC Santa Cruz and the five Claremont Colleges in hosting FreeCulture chapters this year. Welcome Free Culture USC!

(2) BoingBoing covered it, which probably resulted in:

(3) FreeCulture USC’s upcoming coverage on Digital Village, a weekly public radio program on KPFK (90.7fm) of Los Angeles. The show starts at 10:00AM PDT on Saturday mornings, and Cameron Parkins, founder of the new chapter, will be interviewed around 10:15. If you’re able to, tune in and cheer him on! (Even if he can’t hear you on the other side of the radio…)

If you’re in the area, try to make it to the event:
Where: University of Southern California, Annenberg School, lobby
When: Monday, September 11, 6:30PM
Who: Students, faculty, fellows and affiliates of the University of Southern California

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Waking up to copyright reform

January 20th, 2006 by Amanda

How do you get more than 1,000 students, faculty, and university visitors to become Free Culture advocates? Easy! Organize a mass serenade.

Free Culture’s Franklin & Marshall College chapter did just that, coordinating a massive (and officially sanctioned) sing-along rendition of “Happy Birthday” as part of the college’s recent 300th birthday celebration of founder Benjamin Franklin. This public performance actually broke the law — a perfect example of why we need copyright reform.

Read all about it on the F&M chapter blog. And then, for more exciting examples of Free Culture activism, check out what all our chapters are up to through the aggregated Chapter Blog on our website. Enjoy!

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