The SFC election is underway. This Sunday, May 9th at 9 PM EST, we are hosting a public Q/A session in IRC. This is your chance to meet and consult with nominees before voting. Voting tokens will be distributed Monday 10th morning via email.

Details:
Sunday, May 9th at 9 PM EST (GMT -5)
irc.freenode.net
#freeculture

For help with IRC, visit http://wiki.freeculture.org/IRC

To see the nominees for the 2010-2011 board of directors, visit http://wiki.freeculture.org/Board10/Nominations

Our friends at Public Knowledge write to let us know that they have a new job opening that would be a great opportunity for a recently graduated student excited about promoting free culture.

“The Web Content and New Media Associate will work with Public Knowledge (PK) outreach and legal staff to ensure that PK’s website is regularly updated, relevant, timely and widely dispersed through the use of social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube). Public Knowledge is a growing, internationally prominent consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. that works to defend citizens’ rights in the emerging digital culture.”

The job is an opportunity to promote free culture through “translating” legal issues into layperson’s terms, generating content for the general public, and assisting in the planning of public events and initiatives (such as their successful World’s Fair Use Day). PK is looking for a college graduate with a passion for technology, public policy, media reform and activism. Candidates should have strong communications skills, be a quick learner and able to produce high-quality results on tight deadlines. Basic web design (HTML/CSS), graphic design, video production, social media, Drupal, and web activism experience is a plus. Compensation is competitive with excellent benefits and opportunities for professional growth.

It’s a great time to be in D.C. so interested candidates should provide a cover letter, resume, and writing sample of less than 1,000 words to Mehan Jayasuriya (mehan [at] publicknowledge [dot] org).

The flyer is available here.

Students for Free Culture is voting on its new board of directors. Nominations have been extended through Friday, April 30.

Head over to the Nominations page to nominate someone you think will help advance the organization in 2010-2011. Candidates must accept nomination and offer biographical details no later than April 30.

Between April 30 and May 10, candidates will answer questions from the community and participate in one live Q/A session.

Chapters will receive e-vote tokens by email on Monday, May 10th, and must cast their votes by Friday, May 14. The results will be announced on Monday, May 17th.

Students interested in technology and information policy will likely be interested in two new opportunities for internships.

1. The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is the Executive Branch’s agency tasked with addressing telecommunications and information policy. Their work has been highlighted in recent months through the Broadband Grants program and the recent speech by Larry Strickling calling for Internet Policy 3.0. They are seeking interns for both the summer and during the school year and if you are interested, get in touch with Christopher Hemmerlein who coordinates their program [chemmerlein (at) ntia (d0t) doc (dot) gov]. Please note that they can only consider American citizens.
2. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is the UN agency that focused on the global IP regime. In recent years, they have been at the center for discussions over copyright exceptions and limitations and the Treaty for the Blind. The new division of economic research at WIPO is offering a couple internships to PhD or otherwise qualified students who are interested in spending 3-6 months in Geneva. Completed applications can be submitted to staff (dot) engagements (at) wipo (dot) int [cc: sasch (dot) wunsch-vincent (at) wipo (dot) int].

These should be great opportunities to learn about the policy work of issues SFC cares about. If you have any other internships ideas, be sure to get in touch.

On February 25th, 2010, Lawrence Lessig will deliver a talk on fair use and politics in online video from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA. Open Video Alliance and the Harvard Berkman Center are teaming up to provide a live webcast—you can tune in at http://openvideoalliance.org/lessig, or attend in person at one of many screening events. For free culture chapters, it is a great opportunity to bring your group together—check out the list of screenings or arrange your own.

Use this as an opportunity to convene a discussion, or start a workshop, or get your group off the ground!

Lessig’s talk will explore copyright in a digital age, and the importance of a doctrine like fair use. Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video. As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage creative expression and political participation, not just passive consumption.

If you want to host your own screening, fill out the form at http://openvideoalliance.org/event/lessig-registration/. Small grants are available to pay facilities fees, refreshments, or materials. If you have questions or comments, or if you’d like to get more information about hosting your own event, you can contact the event organizers at conference@openvideoalliance.org.

Free Culture X is only two weeks away. If you have not yet registered, now is the time to do it! Register now!

Give a dollar, $25, $100—it’s up to you. 100% of the proceeds will fund future Students for Free Culture projects. To sweeten the deal for you, we’re announcing some cool gifts:

•If you register at $50 or more, get a DVD with the complete Free Culture 2008 videos archive

•If you register at $75 or more, get a signed copy of one of these books:

• Remix by Lawrence Lessig OR
• Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins

•If you register at $100 or more, get one of these badges of coolness:

• a yourname@freeculture.org email address OR
• a custom answering machine greeting by none other than cyberscholar Jonathan Zittrain

Just register by February 9th at your chosen level and we’ll contact you to get your gift preferences. Gifts are cumulative, so if you register at $100 or more you get a DVD, a signed book, and a badge of coolness. Gifts apply to all previous registrations, too.

Questions? Email board@freeculture.org.

The following is a guest post from Nick Shockey of SPARC.

Last Wednesday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a Request for Information on the issue of Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research. Executive action stemming from this RFI could potentially open all federally funded science research to the public for free online access.

This has the exciting potential to greatly advance the goals of your Open Education Campaign. Not only could the more than $60 billion in research the US government funds annually be made available to all, but the government would also be endorsing openness as an academic ideal, sending a strong signal to publishers, universities, and various other stakeholders that this is the new standard.

With all the work Students for Free Culture has done on the issue of expanding access to educational materials, you are in a unique position to appreciate the tremendous impact executive action could have. Opening up all federally funded research to every student in the country (and world) would break down strong barriers to access that currently force students to settle for the materials their library can afford rather than what they truly need. A student’s education should be limited only by curiosity rather than the rapidly escalating journal prices that put the complete scholarly record out of reach for students at all but the most well funded institutions.

So what can you do to make public access a reality? The answer is that you can do a lot.

• First, you can take the time to respond to the questions in the RFI (the full text can be found at here) by submitting a comment to the Federal Register by January 7th (email comments to publicaccess-at-ostp-dot-gov).
• Second, there is a rotating set of questions on the Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog which changes every ten days – you can respond thoughtfully to the questions as well as other people’s comments right in the comment section of the blog (the first round ends December 20th, so don’t wait!).
• Finally, you can encourage other students and advocates to comment as well.

A strong student response in favor of a mandatory public access policy will truly help ensure that such a policy becomes a reality and that it follows SFC’s ideals of openness as closely as possible. I can’t wait to see the impact students make on this groundbreaking process and look forward to your responses!

Nick Shockey
Director of Student Advocacy, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

The next Students for Free Culture conference is February 13-14. That’s sooner than you think—and it’s never too early to start planning.

If you’re a student leader, now is the time to seek travel funding from your schools and departments. You’d be surprised to learn how much support is available for you to represent your school at an international conference. Consult with your professors, counselors, and department heads to find out about grant opportunities.

We will be working hard to secure travel funding for representatives from SFC chapters to attend the conference. But we can’t guarantee funding, so ask around! Contact us if you need an invitation letter or any other support.

If you’re interested in volunteering, we now have a collaborative mailing list. We’ll use the list in the day-to-day coordination of the conference, up to and after the event. Sign up here.

Stay tuned for more updates. To stay in touch, consider following us on Twitter/identi.ca or subscribing to our RSS feed.

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!